For years, when startups were ready to sell their products, they could rely on various traditional playbooks. However, like many other areas, AI is transforming how companies prepare to enter the market. “You can achieve more with fewer resources than ever before, ” Max Altschuler, general partner at GTMfund, told the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt last month. The challenge for founders and operators will be finding the right balance. Although some startups have started hiring developers with AI expertise to tackle typical go-to-market (GTM) challenges, Altschuler noted that there remains a strong need for specific domain knowledge. “When you have great advisors around, you can learn some of the tried-and-true playbooks. Those methods haven’t disappeared. I believe it’s still essential to have a general understanding of how and why certain marketing strategies work, ” Altschuler explained. Alison Wagonfeld, vice president of marketing at Google Cloud, emphasized that marketing as a craft remains essential. “You definitely need AI knowledge, curiosity about AI, and technologists, but also an understanding of marketing’s purpose—to grasp customer insights, conduct research, and recognize what great creative content looks like, ” Wagonfeld stated. Teams adopting AI can operate faster.

“You can deploy many more messages quickly and then think more holistically about which metrics you want to drive, ” she added. Marc Manara, head of startups at OpenAI, observed that many startups have incorporated AI into their GTM strategies, not solely to minimize resource use. “There is a movement toward doing more with less, but also being very precise in how you do it, ” he said. “The level of personalization and signal tracking achievable with AI is now a differentiator. ” He highlighted tools that generate leads with far greater sophistication than before. Instead of relying on simple database queries, AI prompts enable startups to identify prospective customers that precisely match specific criteria. Inbound marketing has evolved as well, he added, using the outcomes of these prompts to qualify and score inbound leads “with much greater accuracy than was possible previously. ” When building a go-to-market strategy, Wagonfeld stressed the importance of considering the qualities desired in a GTM team. “There’s a hiring mindset shift—from focusing on specialists skilled in narrow marketing or sales subfields to prioritizing curiosity and understanding, ” she said. “That’s almost the top trait to look for now. ”