What to build after raising a seed round
After a seed round, build the system before the senior marketing hire: a first segment, a message that books meetings, a checked list, outbound and founder content, a CRM and a written sales process. Then hire people to run something that already works. Forte Growth builds and runs that system.
The trap after a seed round
New money brings pressure to hire, and the first move is often a head of marketing or a couple of SDRs. If nothing has been built for them, they spend their first months building it, on a salary, while the runway gets shorter. A good hire can still fail this way, because the job they were given was two jobs: build the system, then produce from it.
Forte Growth's rule is that the hire should walk into a system, not a blank page.
What to build first, in order
- Find where pipeline breaks today. At Forte Growth that is a pipeline audit inside the first month.
- Choose one first segment: the buyers who buy fastest, and the ones to turn away.
- Write one message that books meetings, tested on real conversations.
- Build a checked list of accounts and people.
- Put outbound live on email and LinkedIn; at Forte Growth that happens inside three weeks.
- Add founder content that backs the outbound, because early buyers buy the founder.
- Set up a CRM that tracks every reply, and write a sales process someone else can run.
When to make the first marketing hire
Hire when there is something to run: a message that has booked meetings, a list, a working rhythm and numbers to improve. The job description then writes itself, and the hire inherits a system instead of building one. Who to hire first depends on what is missing; the options are compared in who to hire first for go to market.
What the alternative costs
As a worked example, five UK marketing roles (a head of marketing, a growth marketer, a content lead, an SDR and a marketing operations person) come to around £250,000 a year in London base salary, before employer National Insurance, pension, commission and recruitment fees. A seed company rarely needs all five at once. The working is in what an in-house marketing team costs in the UK.
Building the system first: Genifea
Genifea, an AI agents company, started with a product and no market presence. Working with Forte Growth it locked its ideal customer profile, rewrote its message from real customer calls and built a LinkedIn presence from zero. In month three it had 20 meetings.
How Forte Growth works with seed companies
Forte Growth builds and runs go to market and marketing for B2B startups and scale-ups, from strategy to sales. It starts with a pipeline audit inside the first month, then the go to market strategy, then the build, with the first outbound live inside three weeks. You own what it builds, and you either hand it to your team or keep Forte Growth running it. Forte Growth works with funded seed and Series A companies, and helps hire the team that will run the system once it works. How the function is run is on the outsourced marketing department page.
Common questions
What should a startup do after raising a seed round?
Build the go to market system before hiring into it: a first segment, a message that books meetings, a checked list, outbound, founder content, a CRM and a written sales process. Then hire people to run and improve it.
Should our first hire after a seed round be a head of marketing?
Only if there is a system for them to run. A senior hire who walks into a blank page spends their first months building it. Build the message, the list and the process first, then hire to run them.
How long does it take to build a go to market system after raising?
At Forte Growth the pipeline audit happens inside the first month and the first outbound goes live inside three weeks. How quickly that turns into revenue depends on the market and the sales cycle, so no date is promised.
Does founder-led sales still matter after a seed round?
Yes. Buyers of an early company buy the founder. The aim is not to remove the founder from sales but to stop the founder being the only source of pipeline, with a system and a process others can run.
Sources
- Genifea: Forte Growth's live case study, read 14 October 2026.
- The £250,000 worked example uses the Robert Walters UK Salary Survey 2026, with exclusions as stated on Forte Growth's in-house team cost page.
Last reviewed October 2026.