Building a Fundraising-Ready GTM Strategy

Building a Fundraising-Ready GTM Strategy is a session from Alper Yurder of Forte Growth on the go to market plan an investor wants to see: a GTM roadmap that fits on one to two pages, proof you can close deals yourself, and a 20-step path from an unknown company to $3M ARR.

It is for early-stage B2B founders who have to raise while the product, the ICP and the messaging are still moving. The problem it solves is the question behind every round: show me how you are going to spend my money.

Raising while everything is in the air

Early stage fundraising feels like building mid-air. You are pitching, hiring, selling and raising, all at once. It is chaotic, and it is doable.

The same lessons repeat across companies, and founders make the same mistakes over and over. The session is about skipping them. It draws on Alper's own time in the seat: co-founder of Flowla, which reached £1M ARR with £0 on paid ads and raised £1.5M, $60M+ revenue closed, and 15 years in B2B go to market.

The market makes those mistakes more expensive. Money is scarce, and buyers are harder to win: they are overwhelmed by choice, and they do their own research before they buy.

What investors look for: clarity, credibility, repeatability

A clear GTM roadmap makes fundraising easier, because it answers the investor's question before it is asked. The deck builds the answer in three layers:

1. A clear GTM strategy. A specific, actionable plan to reach customers.
2. Founder-led sales. Proven ability to close deals yourself.
3. AI-powered demand generation. Efficient customer acquisition as you grow.

The deck then lists four things that may still be unfinished when you raise:

• Product evolution. Still iterating towards product-market fit.
• A fuzzy ICP. The ideal customer profile needs refining.
• Half-baked messaging. The value proposition lacks clarity.
• No sales motion. No repeatable process yet.

And still, you need to raise. The rest of the session is about closing those gaps while the round goes on.

What to do about it: roadmap, founder-led sales, growth loops

• GTM roadmap. Focus first: a roadmap that sharpens the product and how you win customers, and gives an investor something concrete to back.
• Founder-led sales. Prove you can sell it yourself before a raise pays for a sales team. It is also the fastest way to learn what to build.
• Growth loops. Use AI and the right workflows to build trust and credibility fast enough to create demand: your first 100 true fans, then becoming the obvious choice, then turning inbound into outbound, in weeks rather than months.

Atria: GTM built during a pre-seed raise

Atria came in mid-raise for their pre-seed round, with product, pitch and go to market all in the air. The work ran on three tracks: ICP and positioning workshops, structured outbound campaigns, and refining the pitch deck, which ended up with a 90-day roadmap inside it. Atria raised £700K shortly after.

Three takeaways for later in the journey

GTM is more than sending 1,000 emails and hoping for one meeting. Outbound only works with inbound. Trust is the basis of sales. Authority and credibility are the basis of product marketing. Treat your go to market like your product: test, iterate, improve.

You no longer need to hire ten people and wait six months for results. AI now covers work that used to need a hire: signal-based outreach, SDR agents, content and commenting, presentations built in seconds, and websites and landing pages built in minutes. The tools change quickly. The point does not.

Product-market fit is not a moment, it is a moving target. It sharpens over time, and so do GTM, sales and marketing. Iterate on them the way you iterate on product. Go to market is a product problem, not only a sales problem.

The GTM one-pager

The GTM roadmap itself is short: one to two pages, in five sections.

1. Context and focus. The goal, recent funding and the next milestones.
2. ICP and personas. Who you sell to, their pain points, buyer versus user, and why now.
3. GTM motion. Sales-led or product-led, bottom-up or top-down.
4. Acquisition channels. Scalable and non-scalable, and what happens this quarter versus later.
5. Execution plan. The next 180 days, with owners, KPIs and weekly cycles for testing and learning.

Four rules for writing it. Be specific. Prioritise. Show how you will learn fast. Keep it short.

Founder-led sales: learning, recording, iterating

Founder-led sales is not about working harder. It is about learning, recording and iterating, so a repeatable, structured process exists early. It is tempting to put off building a sales process until you hire a team. Documenting the motion early shortens sales cycles and prepares you to grow faster.

1. Build your sales playbook. Document the end-to-end sales process.
2. Refine it weekly. Treat sales like product development. Test and iterate on follow-ups, qualification, pricing and the handover between sales and customer success.
3. Codify everything. A simple internal wiki or Notion page with messaging, objections and scripts, the sales process, and playbooks for outreach, demos and closing.

That page matters in a raise. It is the difference between saying you can close and showing how.

From unknown to $3M ARR in 20 steps

Inbound and outbound work together here, to build trust, authority and credibility beyond the founder's own network.

Steps 1 to 6: build the foundation

• 1. Audit and self-review your GTM. Use the one-pager to get co-founders on the same page and set 90, 180 and 360-day plans.
• 2. Validate the problem and message-market fit. Talk to customers early and use their language.
• 3. Define your ICP and personas. Focus on best-fit customers. Avoid selling to everyone.
• 4. Build 100 true fans. Early believers who love the product and tell others.
• 5. Use outbound to test messaging. A fast feedback loop on positioning.
• 6. Map the buyer journey and moments of trust. Content for each touchpoint.

Steps 7 to 14: build the growth engine

• 7. Inbound engine. Content that ranks, educates and converts.
• 8. Expert roundups. Feature others to gain authority and backlinks.
• 9. Inbound and outbound loops. Outbound touchpoints drive inbound traffic.
• 10. Founder-led sales and playbook. Turn the process into a system.
• 11. Scalable and non-scalable channels. Long-term bets such as SEO and paid, mixed with scrappy tactics.
• 12. Founder brand and content. People buy from people, so show up on LinkedIn.
• 13. Non-scalable experiments. Events, partnerships and communities, tested fast.
• 14. Growth plays. Scalable and non-scalable tactics to test each quarter.

Steps 15 to 20: scale what works

• 15. SEO and organic traffic. Evergreen content and backlinks.
• 16. Paid ads, after product-market fit. Spend once you know it converts.
• 17. A scalable sales process. A machine from lead to customer.
• 18. Quarterly review. Review experiments and cut what is not working.
• 19. Playbooks and SOPs. Capture processes for faster hiring.
• 20. Growth loops across teams. Sales, marketing and product working together so growth compounds.

It all runs in fortnightly sprints, with conversion, CAC and LTV measured every quarter and one new growth experiment each quarter. Build systems, not random tactics.

Questions founders ask

What do investors want to see in a GTM strategy?

A specific plan to reach customers, proof that the founder can close deals, and efficient customer acquisition. On paper that is a one to two-page roadmap: context, ICP and personas, GTM motion, acquisition channels, and a 180-day execution plan with owners and KPIs.

Can we raise before our ICP and messaging are settled?

Yes. The deck assumes the product, ICP and messaging are still moving when you raise, so the GTM work happens during the round, not after it. Atria did it mid-raise for their pre-seed round and raised £700K shortly after, with a 90-day roadmap inside the deck.

When should we start paid ads?

After product-market fit, once you know what converts. Paid ads is step 16 of 20, after the ICP, true fans, outbound message testing and founder-led sales are in place. If you are unsure whether you are there, the GTM diagnostic shows what is still missing.