You Built a Good Product… So How Do You Help It Find Its Way to the Market?

A Go-To-Market strategy is not a launch plan; rather, it is a system of decisions that determines who you sell to, why they will buy from you, how you reach them, and whether you can repeat the process profitably.

In January 2015, Amir Barsoum, co-founder of Vezeeta, was sitting at a conference in Silicon Valley when he heard an Uber executive speak about the Pay as you go model. Back then, Vezeeta was not just an idea on paper; the company existed, the technology was there, doctors were using the platform, and the market whose problem it was trying to solve was already massive.

However, things were not going as smoothly as they should.

According to a study published by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the company had around 20 employees and about 500 registered doctors, and it was struggling to find a scalable model. The change that followed was not merely adding a new feature to the app, but rather rethinking who the ecosystem should actually be built around in the first place.

Vezeeta pivoted from a doctor-centric model to a patient-centric model, altered some of its evaluation and interaction mechanisms, and began viewing the healthcare journey from a different angle. Some time after this pivot—according to IFC data published in 2018—the company reached around 200 employees, 10,000 doctors, and over 200,000 users. (IFC)

It was not a single change that shaped Vezeeta into its current form, nor can what succeeded for them simply be copied by another company to guarantee success. That is because you might have a good product, a real problem, and a large market… yet the way you try to bring this product to market remains incorrect.

And here begins the story of Go-To-Market Strategy.

The Product Is Not the Business

One of the most tempting ideas for any founder is believing that the hardest part is over once a good product is built.

We build the product, set the price, launch a campaign, hire the sales team, and then growth begins.

But the market does not work with such linear simplicity.

In fact, customers do not evaluate the product in isolation; they compare it to something they are already doing. This could be a competitor's product, an employee performing the task manually, an Excel spreadsheet, a phone call, or even a decision to do nothing at all.

And even when the problem the product solves is real, it does not necessarily mean it is urgent enough to pay for its solution. Even when the customer wants the solution, the cost of reaching them might exceed the value of what they will buy. The end user might be convinced while the economic buyer is not. Or the product might be excellent, but its distribution method does not fit market behavior.

This is why the prevailing mindset that having a good product is enough falls short; Vezeeta had a good product, yet that product suffered from the market's lack of understanding despite needing it. Instead, this product must be transformed into an understandable value for the customer that generates revenue for the company, and this is precisely the space where a Go-To-Market strategy operates.

So What Is a Go-To-Market Strategy?

The term itself suggests a single event... entering the market, as if we spent months inside the company developing the product, and then the day came when we "go to market."

Hence, GTM is sometimes reduced to a Launch Campaign, a marketing plan, or a sales plan.

However, the practical application of the concept is much broader.

Mark Roberge, a lecturer at Harvard Business School and former Senior Vice President of Sales at HubSpot, describes Go-To-Market as a revenue system comprising the target market, ideal customer profile, pricing model, demand generation, sales methodology, sales team structure, and other components. Most importantly, the design of this ecosystem evolves depending on the product, customer, market, and company stage. (Harvard Business Review)

In other words, GTM is the set of decisions that fundamentally determines whether what we built can turn into a viable business.

Here, a distinction must be made between four things that are often confused with one another:

• Product Strategy: Defines what we will build and the value the product delivers.

• Marketing Strategy: Deals with the market, customer, demand, positioning, and communication.

• Sales Strategy: Defines how commercial opportunities convert into customers and revenue.

• Whereas Go-To-Market Strategy: Orchestrates the way these

• elements work alongside pricing, distribution, channels, and unit economics as a single unified system.

Therefore, a product launch is part of GTM, but it is not GTM itself.

Six Questions Before Asking the Market to Buy

Instead of viewing a Go-To-Market strategy as a checklist of steps completed one after another, it might be far more useful to treat it as six questions whose answers the company must continuously test.

These represent the core pillars connecting customer, market, value proposition, testing, channels, and economics when building a Go-To-Market strategy.

WHO – Who is it for?

Who is the customer we are truly trying to serve?

"Everyone who needs my product" is not an answer... No, it is not an answer at all.

Suppose you offer inventory management software. A small retail shop could use it, as well as a retail chain, a factory, a distributor, and an e-commerce company.

All of them can use the product.

• But is the problem equally acute for all of them?

• Do they have the same willingness and ability to pay?

• Can you reach them with equal ease?

• Is the decision-making cycle identical?

• Is your product currently capable of delivering a great result for each of them?

Selecting the initial customer is not merely a marketing decision; it is a choice that impacts the product, pricing, channels, sales, customer service, and even cash flows.

This is why Careem, for instance, started out very differently from the consumer service the public later came to know.

According to its founder Mudassir Sheikha, the first version was web-based and targeted corporate clients; the company initially focused on institutions such as consulting, law, and accounting firms before launching the broader consumer app about a year later. (The National)

The ultimate market was huge, but the starting point was narrower—which is precisely what was needed. 

WHERE – Which market?

Which market is worth starting in?

Having millions of potential customers does not mean you have a good business opportunity, because they are necessarily distributed across different markets. There is a distinction between theoretical market size and the market you can reach and compete in right now.

That is why writing TAM, SAM, and SOM in an investor pitch deck is not enough to consider market analysis complete.

We need to understand:

Demand size, market growth, buyer behavior, regulations, customer acquisition cost, distribution channels, competitors, and alternatives.

In its studies on commercializing new innovations, McKinsey notes that companies most successful at turning innovation into businesses conduct rigorous market and segment selection at an early stage, rather than building the product first and then searching for a place to push it. (McKinsey & Company)

Here arises one of the most common mistakes: a company views a competitor strictly as another firm offering a similar product, whereas your biggest competitor is often the status quo.

WHY – Why choose you? 

Why would the customer abandon what they currently use and choose you?

If your answer is something like "we have higher quality, better service, newer technology," these all sound nice internally, but they are not necessarily sufficient reasons for a customer to change their behavior.

Because the customer knows very well that change itself carries a cost.

Time to learn.

Risk.

Procurement processes.

Data migration.

Employee training.

The possibility that the new solution fails.

Therefore, presenting your product's value in a genuine and compelling way that convinces the customer should not be centered solely around "what do we offer?"

Instead, it must pivot to a different angle... the customer's own perspective.

What result will they get, and why is that result worth the cost of switching from their current method to ours?

Hence, the Value Proposition cannot be separated from understanding the problem and existing alternatives.

PROVE – What must we prove?

What is the riskiest assumption in our model?

This is where the MVP comes in, but not as a "cheap version of the product." The primary purpose of early testing is to reduce the cost of being wrong.

Perhaps your biggest risk is not whether you can build the technology as you might think, but rather:

Does the customer even care?

Will they pay?

Will they use the product repeatedly?

Can our chosen channel acquire customers at a reasonable cost?

For this reason, market testing should not wait for a complete product.

McKinsey highlights the importance of early research and testing an MVP with prospective customers, utilizing continuous feedback during the build process rather than waiting for the final product to see if the market wants it. (McKinsey & Company) The real goal of an MVP is not to prove you are right, but to discover you are wrong while the cost of being wrong is still low.

REACH – How do we reach them?

What is the right message and channel for this customer?

Only after all the preceding questions does it make sense to talk about advertising.

Because Facebook, LinkedIn, sales representatives, retail distribution, and partnerships are merely channels to amplify our product's voice, not strategies in themselves.

They are channels.

And even the best channel in the world will not save us if we have:

A misunderstanding of the true customer

A weak value proposition

An inappropriate price

Likewise, the failure of an ad campaign does not necessarily mean the channel is bad; perhaps the ad reached the right audience with the wrong message, or the message was good but the product required a longer sales conversation, or perhaps the customer uses the channel but does not make purchasing decisions there.

The question is therefore not simply "where is my audience?" as some believe, but rather: how do they discover the problem, how do they search for a solution, who influences the decision, and where does the purchase occur?

WORK – Does the unit economics work?

Can we repeat the process and remain profitable?

Here lies some of the most expensive mistakes: a company generates sales and assumes it has found the right model, but revenue does not always equal a viable business model.

If you spend 5,000 EGP to acquire a customer who generates 2,000 EGP in margin over their lifetime, increasing the marketing budget will not solve the problem... it will accelerate it!

That is why pricing, contribution margin, customer acquisition cost (CAC), retention, and customer lifetime value (LTV) belong at the heart of GTM, not in a financial appendix after the product launch.

Even pricing decisions must begin early; research on pricing new products indicates that pricing should not wait until development ends because it impacts the target market and the profitability of growth itself. (McKinsey & Company)

There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Go-To-Market Strategy

Here is perhaps the most crucial point: Vezeeta needed to rethink which stakeholder the service experience revolved around. Careem started with a specific corporate segment before broadening its model.

As for Fawry, it faced an entirely different problem.

When the company started, Egypt was a heavily cash-dependent market. The IFC notes that 94% of transactions were cash-based up until 2014. Fawry's early years were tough; the company did not just need functional payment technology, but also needed to convince consumers that their money was safe, convince merchants to install POS terminals, and build a physical network users could readily access. (IFC)

By the time the IFC invested in 2012-2013, the network had exceeded 10,000 points of presence. (IFC)

In this case, the strength and reach of the distribution network was not merely a place where the product was sold; it was part of the value offered by the product itself.

This is why copying another company's Go-To-Market strategy is dangerous.

One company might succeed through digital self-service, while another product requires a distributor network.

Freemium might make sense in one market, while a sales-led model is the solution in another.

A company's biggest challenge might be acquisition, while another's core issue is retention, pricing, or trust.

There is no single playbook.

Therefore, there are questions that must be answered based on your specific business context, not by listening to a podcast with a successful entrepreneur and copying their formula.

Going to Market Is Not the End of the Process

Perhaps the most misleading misconception about Go-To-Market is believing that the market is the end of the journey. In reality, the market is where we first obtain data that does not rely entirely on our assumptions.

• Who bought?

• Who didn't buy?

• Why?

• Who retained?

• Who churned?

• Which message worked?

• Which segment performed best?

  • What did the customer refuse to pay for?

This is why Roberge emphasizes that a Go-To-Market system cannot be treated as a static optimization; shifting competitors, customers, technology, and economic conditions mean that the system itself requires continuous re-evaluation. (Harvard Business Review)

Thus, the process looks more like:

Understand → Select → Test → Go to Market → Learn → Adjust → Test Again.

And not:

Build → Launch → Done.

Before You Burn Cash to Reach the Market

You should know that many companies failed not from a lack of ideas nor weak products.

Rather, they suffered from rushing to advertise their product as soon as it was ready, because most founders' passion for their product blinds them to what lies beyond the product... going to market.

Going to market must be systematic, answering: 

Who do we sell to?

In which market?

Why will they choose us?

What have we proven?

How do we reach them?

And do the unit economics allow us to repeat the process?

These decisions are what enable a product to find its way to market.

And perhaps the first of them is the most deceptive.

Because most companies can describe their product in minutes, yet hesitate significantly when asked a simpler question:

Who is the specific customer you should start with?

And that is the question we will address in the next article of the series —From Idea to Market—

Your customer is not everyone who needs your product... How do you choose the first market you can win in?