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Sell and Scale Confidently

2 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Effectively plan your company's GTM strategy and oversee its execution with confidence and without doubt

Opendoor
TripIt
AlchemistX
Y Combinator
Tint

Course overview

Get GTM right early to create the best outcome with the least stress

If you’re a founder with institutional backing, you’re probably doing a lot right. But if you’re a technical founder, you might be in unfamiliar territory.


Building the product is one thing, but now you need to sell and market it—or hire and manage those who do.


In short, you need to nail go-to-market (GTM).


To succeed, founders need to figure out GTM early because everything hinges on it. Not only does more revenue mean more cash and less dilution, it also means better metrics and higher valuations–for each round, and for your exit.


It’s hard to trust or invest in what you don’t understand. Many technical founders learn GTM on the job, leading to critical mistakes. This course aims to prevent that by tactical and practical knowledge–learned and practiced in a group setting with your peers.


WHAT TO EXPECT


This course combines live lessons, interaction, peer activities, and in depth discussion. You'll receive 9 hours of live instruction over 2 weeks, plus have 4 hours of unstructured, live time with the instructor for your own specific questions. All of it will be recorded and available after the course is over.


You'll participate in fun, small group or 1:1 activities, such as practicing negotiating a contract, pitching a sale, or asking questions of a prospect.


Every major skill taught in the class will be practiced at least once.


You will leave knowing:

• How to find prospects, nurture them through the sales process and close sales

• How to transition from founder-led to professional sales and marketing

• How to hire and manage sales and marketing teams

• What terms are typical for sales of various sizes, from self-serve to enterprise, and how to negotiate them

• How to find and manage lawyers

• How to break GTM challenges into smaller, sprint-sized experiments

• What metrics to follow to keep your team on track

• How to conceptualize and build a financial model for your GTM efforts

• How to communicate with investors, advisors and your board

• How and where to leverage outsiders to drive your GTM processes forward (agencies, advisors, partners, lawyers, etc.)


COURSE CONTENT

• The customer-centric approach to marketing and sales

• How to understand your customer's journey and reach them where they are

• How to drive top-of-funnel leads and nurture them to be ready to convert or engage with sales

• How to create awareness and build a brand

• How to nurture relationships with potential acquirers early in your company's journey–without being distracted or giving away the secret sauce

• How to run effective campaigns in cold outbound email, social, and other tactics

• How to structure partnerships for success

• How to structure your customer agreements to increase your chances of closing, retention and growth while reducing sales cycle

• How to price at every stage of growth to drive higher close rates and better net revenue retention (NRR)


The course also includes:

• The top-of-mind questions you and your peers have on GTM

• Specific tactics, scripts and questions you can ask to uncover willingness to pay and pains your customers have

• Things you can do right now to drive additional leads–without sending a single cold email

• Detailed how-tos on things like the Customer Advisory Board hack and other strategies employed by veteran founders

• Hands on exercises reviewed by your instructor

• Detailed metrics on key channels so that you know if what you're doing is working

• Pitfalls and risks to be aware of so that you're never caught in a rut

• Optional homework or projects to help retain learnings–that are also useful in your business.


If you follow my writing, listen to my podcast, or have been through my sessions at the Alchemist Accelerator, you'll find this course draws on all of it so that you can internalize it and put it to practice.


Founders don't have to do everything themselves. You'll learn what you need to DIY everything GTM, but you'll also have the confidence to hire and manage others in various GTM roles.


WHO WILL BENEFIT MOST FROM THIS COURSE


While the course is open to all, the people who will get the most out of it:

• Are founders of technology companies, especially those launching novel products such as deep tech or AI companies

• Have a background in product, engineering, design, etc.

• Have raised institutional capital (Series Seed or later)

• Are at a company with a product either in development or already in market


WHO THIS COURSE IS NOT FOR


• Junior sales people or people trying to get into sales for the first time. The material is focused on management and board-level issues as much as it is on being good at sales; there are better courses for you if you're learning basic tech sales skills.

• People who think their product is perfect and have all their GTM problems figured out. Participants will benefit the most if everyone comes with a beginners' mindset and a curious approach. Nobody knows all the GTM answers (not even your instructor).

• People looking for the GTM magic bullet that will solve all of their sales or marketing problems. Sorry, no magic bullets here. But you will learn tactics, approaches, and strategies that might help you solve your problem without a magic bullet.

• People looking for a 1:1 coach or advisor, though there will be Q&A sessions, and you will definitely get to know your instructor and peers.

Who is this course for

01

Founders who come from a technical background–engineering, product, finance

02

First time CEOs and anyone who is in charge of bringing something new to market for the first time

03

Leaders of companies with a new or novel product that hasn't been sold before, such as deep tech or artificial intelligence

04

Founders hiring or managing GTM individual contributors for Series Seed and later companies

What you’ll get out of this course

Identify and target your ideal customers and customer personas

Understand how to tell quickly the future customers from the time wasters. Build a customer-centric funnel that drives the right customers to your product or sales teams.

Implement and test different GTM channels to fill your funnel with quality leads

Become more than proficient at the key channels most startups use to get their first 10-100 customers–from board intros to cold email, paid advertising, social, events and more. Model how you can scale this into your next milestone–whether breakeven, funding round or acquisition.

Build a killer sales deck, landing page or funnel to convert prospects

Details are what lead to more customer conversions. You'll know what details matter and you'll even fill in many of them during the course–like high-performing sales decks, landing pages, or funnels.

Build your GTM team and know how to lead them with confidence and authority, from a place of knowledge

With a superior understanding of GTM you'll be better positioned to hire and manage a team. Whether you already have a team, and want more confidence and gravitas, or are still doing founder-led selling, you'll leave armed with a hiring plan, dashboards, and interviewing tips.

Structure and negotiate sales agreements that close quickly and drive real revenue

Know the right type of agreement for your goals, so you can create fast, low friction sales cycles–or go toe-to-toe with enterprise procurement and legal teams to maximize the value of each deal.

Build partnerships that create real value and possibly lead to M&A

Learn how to build partnerships that support your strategy rather than distract from it. Know how to identify and court potential future acquirers–without ever looking desperate.

This course includes

10 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

2 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

13 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Dec 2—Dec 8

    Dec

    2

    Introduction: Marketing v. Sales

    Mon 12/26:00 PM—7:30 PM (UTC)

    The Customer Journey: Marketing v. Sales

    4 items

    Dec

    3

    Office Hours

    Tue 12/36:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Dec

    4

    Top of Funnel: Awareness and Demand Generation

    Wed 12/46:00 PM—7:30 PM (UTC)

    Top of Funnel: Awareness and Demand Generation

    3 items

    Dec

    4

    Office Hours

    Wed 12/410:00 PM—11:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Dec

    5

    Cold Outbound, Social Selling, and Events

    Thu 12/56:00 PM—7:30 PM (UTC)

    Cold Outbound, Social Selling, and Events

    3 items

Week 2

Dec 9—Dec 13

    Dec

    9

    Closing Sales & Partners

    Mon 12/96:00 PM—7:30 PM (UTC)

    Closing Sales & Partners

    2 items

    Dec

    10

    Office hours

    Tue 12/106:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Dec

    11

    Pricing: Strategies and Tactics

    Wed 12/116:00 PM—7:30 PM (UTC)

    Pricing: Strategies and Tactics From Lists to Negotiations

    2 items

    Dec

    11

    Office Hours

    Wed 12/1110:00 PM—11:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Dec

    12

    Growth: Account Management, Your Team and Your Model

    Thu 12/126:00 PM—7:30 PM (UTC)

    Growth: Account Management, Your Team and Your Model

    1 item

What people are saying

        Alex saved us from crashing into brick walls a couple of times. That's where the value is for me.
Rohan Puri

Rohan Puri

Founder & CEO, Stable
        Alex was instrumental in the early days of Tint. We closed more customers than we'd have done alone and jumpstarted our GTM motion.
Matheus Riolfi

Matheus Riolfi

Founder & CEO, Tint.ai

Meet your instructor

Alexander Shartsis

Alexander Shartsis

Alex started his career as the first business development hire at companies like TripIt (Acq: SAP/Concur) and Drawbridge (Acq: LinkedIn). He has built businesses from a mathematical proof on a whiteboard to a $10mm+ run rate–in 13 months– as the first and only business guy on an otherwise highly technical team.


After bootstrapping his own mobile startup with two cofounders, he raised $6.5 million in venture capital for his own AI startup, Perfect Price, which he left in 2020.


Since then he has overseen corporate acquisitions at Opendoor (NASDAQ: OPEN), served as CRO for the largest private EV charging network in the US, and–perhaps most importantly–advised countless founders on GTM. 


Today, besides teaching this course, Alex hosts the Seed to Sequoia podcast where he interviews VCs, founders and entrepreneurs on their GTM learnings, and he advises early stage founders via his firm, Silverwood.



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Course schedule

4-6 hours per week

  • Mondays, Wednesdays & Thursdays

    1:00pm - 2:30pm EST

    Three live, interactive courses per week covering all things GTM.

  • Tuesdays and Wednesdays

    1:00pm-2:00pm EST and 5:00-6:00pm EST

    Optional office hours, two days a week including a time Tuesday that works for many global timezones.

  • Weekly projects

    2 hours per week

    Take home projects for your business enable you to apply learning and get live feedback in class and at office hours.

Free resource

GTM Assessment

GTM is complex and encompasses a broad range of activities. These expand exponentially as your organization grows. Success depends on some but not all of these components working well together. Our structured assessment sheet helps CEOs break down success (or failure) into smaller pieces, so that you can find what is working and do more of it–and stop wasting time on what isn't working.

Get this free resource

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

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