We love your company but your GotoMarket Strategy Blows!

OK...That is not exactly the way our newest investors phrased it... they were way too polite for that, but that was the essence of the message they were delivering to me.

Stage2 Capital, had just joined our Series A round. I don't think the digital ink was even dry on the Investment docs when I had my first Zoom call with Mark Roberge and Jay Po where they explained that the way I had designed my GotoMarket strategy was more than likely going to end in tears.

I immediately sat up and took notice. The reason is that Stage2 Capital is not your average VC firm. Mark is a Professor at Harvard Business School, Former CRO of Hubspot, Author of the best selling Book "The Sales Acceleration Formula", and MD of Stage2 Capital, a VC fund that is built to help companies with their GTM strategy. What makes Stage2 pretty interesting is that all of their LPs are pretty much the who's who of CROs or CMOs at amazing companies.

Also on the call was Jay Po, MD, and Co-founder of Stage 2 who has worked at Bessemer and knows a thing or two about investing in SaaS companies.

I was super excited to have Stage 2 on board as investors, but I have to admit I was surprised as to how quickly they were digging in and helping. They quickly articulated exactly why my plan was flawed, and it didn't take long before I realized this to be true. Likewise, with my Head of Sales and my Head of Marketing. We were all in total agreement that we needed to rethink our expansion strategy.

Luckily, Stage2 was there to help. It's easy to criticize, but it's much harder to help fix the problem and deliver a path to a solution. They shared best practice and philosophy, they gave us Excel templates to work with, and they provided guidance along the way as we re-formulated our plan.

We presented our new plan back to Mark and Jay a couple of weeks later, and I think they felt like proud parents watching one of their kids reach some new milestone of understanding. We got the thumbs up on our new plan, and within a week I was presenting it to the board. I shared this story with the board, and took them through the logic and rationale of the planning process. Needless to say, it was a very easy board meeting, and everyone was happy with our new business plan.

Well, I thought that was going to be that... and that Stage2 was now going to put on their capes and fly off into the sunset to help their next Portfolio company.... but No... Not so fast!

There were several more Zoom meetings scheduled with my Head of Customer Succes, my Head of EMEA and my Head of North America. Then I was told... "Brent we are nearly ready to present you with your assessment".

My Assessment??? I had flashbacks to school... waiting for my end of year report card. I thought I was doing a reasonable job, but I didn't know how Sales and Marketing experts were going to score a first-time CEO.

So yesterday I was sent through a detailed 14-page document and braced myself for a 90-minute Zoom meeting to go through it. (that is the screenshot above).

Well, all I can say is "Wow"... I was totally blown away at the insightfulness and detail that went into the report. 3 Key issues to focus on for the next 90 days, with some very specific tactics and examples of reports, metrics, and outcomes.

Now, if you are a super experienced CEO that doesn't like to be told how to run your business, then perhaps you won't be as impressed as I was with this document. But if you are like me and you are working things out as you are growing the business and want as much help as possible navigating the unknown from experienced advisors... then you will view this type of advice as priceless. Thank you Stage2.