GTM for Early Stage SaaS | Co-founder @ Datapad | SaaS Growth Advisor | Reforge | 1x Exit |

I’m a marketer, 2x entrepreneur with 1x exit, and helped companies to go from 0 to 8 figures.

My achievements:

- Built 2 VC backed startups with one exit

- Built a 7 figure productized marketing agency

- Became a mentor in top accelerators such as: 500, Plug and Play, Techstars

- Got to work with the portfolio companies of amazing investors such as A16z, Craft Ventures, YC

- Built a podcast with 20k downloads in a year-figure

- Transformed my body more times than Christian Bale ☺️

John Ozuysal

SEO and AEO agencies are dead

I replaced my $15k/mo agency with Claude Code.

Here is what my agent does:

- Creates content strategy around topics such as "ultimate guide to xyz" or "what is xyz" - zero defendability for AI search 

- Optimizes each post with [some made-up name] framework

- Found my ICP in 5 seconds, even though I couldn't figure it out for a year 

[screenshot of the flow] - I have no idea what any of this does. Neither does the person who built it.

We used this agent for 6 months, and below are the results from the AI search

[screenshot of Google Search Console]

And yes, we are tracking AI search from GSC, so all the AEO tools are unnecessary

I spoke with a CMO of Series B B2B SaaS last week about their AEO

He was furious.

"ChatGPT is telling people we're too expensive for small teams." - not correct at all

We pulled up the sources AI was citing.

Competitor blog posts. Reddit threads from 2021. A review site that hadn't been updated in 18 months.

His first instinct?

"We need more PR. More brand mentions. More visibility."

No. You don't.

That's not your problem.

Your problem is you never created content that answers the questions buyers are actually asking.

Best tools in your category. Alternatives. Comparisons. Use cases by company size.

You left that to competitors and review sites.

So now they're the source. Not you.

You're not invisible. You just handed the microphone to everyone else.

Early-stage companies have the opposite problem.

AI genuinely doesn't know they exist yet.

PR and brand mentions actually matter there.

But for you?

Create the content that answers buyer questions.

Become the source AI cites.

Stop letting competitors control your narrative.

TLDR: Assess your current situation before you invest in any AEO-related activity

---

If you want us to build a free AEO roadmap for you, apply from the link on my profile

Your buyers trust ChatGPT more than your sales team.

That's not an insult. That's just how people make decisions now.

They ask AI for recommendations. They get a shortlist. They do follow-up questions. By the time they land on your site, they've already decided whether you're a contender.

But here's the problem:

Most B2B SaaS companies have zero control over what AI says about them.
AI is citing outdated competitor blog posts. Old Reddit threads. Review sites that haven't been updated in over a year. And it's confidently presenting that information as if it's current.

I've seen AI tell buyers a product is "too expensive for small teams" based entirely on a competitor's comparison post from 2022. Completely inaccurate. But that's what the buyer heard.

So how do you take back control?

You become the source.

Step 1: Identify the 20-30 buying questions your ICP is asking AI right now. Turn your paid search keywords into questions.

Step 2: Ask those questions yourself. Look at what AI cites. What source types? Who gets mentioned?

Step 3: Fill the gaps. If AI cites a listicle, get on that listicle or create a competing one. If it cites a forum thread, go give a real, transparent answer. If it cites a video, make one.

Step 4: Optimize your help center so it answers every specific feature, integration, and use case question a buyer could ask in a follow-up.

Do this consistently for 6 weeks, and you'll see the shift.

The brands that control their AI narrative now will own their category later.

I think AI search visibility trackers are useless 

Why? 

Because I keep seeing AEO case studies with screenshots of the search console

I guess we are all missing something because my GSC is not giving me AI search visibility data 🤣 

Sad thing is, some of these posts are getting 500 comments

We are running an AI search sprint free for 3 SaaS companies

👇

We're opening up 3 free pilot slots to show you exactly where you stand on AI search and what to do about it.

Here's what you'll get:

- A full AI search audit of your brand vs your top competitors

- Your 30-day AI search content strategy + the brand mentions you need to build

- Your first revenue-focused content — written and ready to publish

We hand-pick the companies. We're not looking for volume. We're looking for fit.

That means Series A B2B SaaS. $1M+ ARR. A category worth owning. And a team that will actually execute on what we hand them — because we're not interested in doing great work that sits in a Google Doc.

Q2 2026 cohort has 3 spots.

If you think you're the right fit, apply from here: https://tally.so/r/442j4A

I haven't been to a graveyard in years.

Turns out I didn't need to, I just needed to open LinkedIn.

People here love the Kill Channels:

RIP Email. 

RIP Agencies. 

RIP Content. 

RIP Thought Leadership. 

RIP Ads.

At this point, everything's been declared dead at least 100 times.

And yet... somehow they all keep showing up to work on Monday.

Haven't invested in AEO yet? 

Don't start with content 👇

Start with a diagnosis.

Before creating any content, figure out whether the issue is visibility, representation (citation control), or both.

Later-stage companies usually already have visibility. The risk is how they’re being represented.

 AI search often pulls from competitor blogs, old Reddit threads, reviews, and third-party posts that don’t reflect the company’s current narrative.

The first step is to identify the URLs influencing AI answers and audit them for accuracy.

In parallel, build earned content quickly so AI systems learn from the company’s own materials, not someone else’s.

Earlier-stage companies typically have a visibility problem and a representation problem.

Start by mapping the prompts you want to win, then identify which URLs currently influence those prompts (often listicles and Reddit threads).

From there, focus on earned visibility by participating in those conversations and getting included where influence already exists.

Once there’s more budget, expand into creating content designed to compete for broader, category-level prompts.

We just increased AI search visibility for a B2B SaaS client by 100% in 30 days.

Want to see how we did it?

You can't. The case study doesn't exist. I made it up.

But you'd have believed it, right? Because you've seen 15 posts this month saying almost exactly that.

Here's the problem: a lot of people claiming to grow AI search visibility are backing it up with Google Search Console screenshots.

It does not tell you how often your brand appears in AI-generated responses. 

It does not tell you what AI systems say about you. It does not measure anything that would reasonably be called "AI search visibility."

Posting a GSC screenshot as proof of AEO results is either a misunderstanding of how this works or a deliberate misdirection aimed at people who don't know the difference.

If someone is showing you clean dashboards and confident attribution, ask them which tool produced it and how it works.

If the answer is a Google Search Console screenshot, walk away.

4 types of competitor-focused content I use to generate pipeline for SaaS

👇

1. Competitor vs You

You must own this story. If a prospect types “[competitor] alternative” into Google and only sees their page, you already lose. Create clean “You vs Competitor” pages that talk in revenue, churn, onboarding time, not vague feature lists. Show how you reduce risk, cut time-to-value, or lift expansion revenue.

2. Competitor alternatives

These people are in market now. They already pay for a tool. They just hate something about it. Create list posts like “7 alternatives to [competitor] for remote CS teams” and rank for those terms. Include your product in the list, show screenshots, add simple pricing context, and link to a focused trial or demo page. This brings high-intent trials fast.

3. Competitor comparisons

Big brands fund your pipeline. Use their demand. People search “[competitor A] vs [competitor B]” every day. Write posts and pages like “[A] vs [B] vs [You]” and speak to a specific ICP: “best for product-led teams”, “best for agencies”, “best for low-ACV SaaS”. You ride their brand search while positioning your product as the right fit for a clear segment.

4. Competitor use case content

Show how to do a key job in competitor tools, then show the simpler version in your product. “How to build a QBR dashboard in [competitor]” → then you show it takes 9 steps there and 3 in your app. If a competitor cannot support that use case, say it clearly and own the gap. This is where many of your best switch deals come from.

----

If you want us to generate a free AEO report, check the link on my bio !

Your competitors keep showing up in ChatGPT.

You don't.

Here's what nobody in the "AI SEO" space is saying clearly enough:

The AI doesn't care that your landing page ranks #1 on Google.

When someone asks "What's the best [your category] tool?" — ChatGPT isn't reading one page and picking a winner. You can be a source, but this is not the same as being "visible."

It's pulling from everywhere. Forums. Video platforms. Review sites. 

Knowledge bases. Third-party articles.

Then it stitches all of that together into a single answer.

Your competitor shows up in a roundup article. They're recommended in a forum thread. Someone made a walkthrough video about them. 

Their knowledge base answers a niche feature question.

That's 4 mentions across 4 different source types.

This is the game now. You have to build citation layers, stacking your brand's presence across the source types that AI models actually pull from.

Here's how to start:

- Take your best converting-value paid search keywords or highest converting organic keywords, or even better, ask your customers how they searched for you.

- Ask Claude to turn this into buyer prompts. For each prompt, check what is being cited, and what kind of sources? Whose mentioned?

- Then build your owned content and earned content strategy based on this information.

- If the AI is pulling from a listicle comparing your competitors, go create your own listicle and also get included in that one. 

- If it's citing a forum thread where someone asks about your category, go give a real, helpful answer from your actual team. If it's referencing a video walkthrough, make one.

Match the source type that's already winning the citation. Don't guess. Mirror what's working.

Treat it like a proper experiment. Pick 10questions to intervene on. Leave 10 untouched. Track the results over 6 weeks.

This is exactly how we run AEO experiments at House of Growth - AI Led Growth Agency

Companies running this playbook are seeing AI-referred traffic convert at dramatically higher rates than traditional search. 

And most of your competitors still think this is "too early" to worry about.

I see people bragging about creating blog posts with Claude code for AEO

Sad thing is, they are still creating blog posts such as:

- What is [topic]

- Ultimate guide to [topic]

You clearly have no idea how AEO works, otherwise you wouldn't create these and call them "AEO" focused posts

Why you don’t show up in AI search?

Here’s the simplest answer:

You have no content.

And nobody knows, mentions, or talks about your brand.

That’s it.

AI systems don’t “discover” brands magically.

They reflect what already exists on the internet.

Once you accept this, everything else makes sense.

Only then do details start to matter:

Entity optimization
Query fan-outs
Topical authority etc..

Alper Yurder 🤝

Co-founder & CRO of Flowla, interactive deal rooms your buyers LOVE 👉 Follow our podcast #salestherapy by Flowla 🎙️ on spotify

You’ve built a great product. Now you need a system to sell it. I build, operate and transfer GTM systems for founders scaling from traction to repeatable revenue. Whether going from first $500K to $10M or entering a new market.

There are too many GTM channels, tools and tactics to try. LinkedIn, outbound, content, SEO, paid ads, partnerships, events, podcasts. Founders are expected to figure this all out alone.

So you try outbound, no replies. Post on LinkedIn, crickets. Hire an SDR, they can’t sell what they don’t understand. Try an agency, generic playbook, no results.

I’ve been there. I co-founded Flowla and scaled it to $1M ARR. Owned sales, marketing, brand, outbound, the lot. No paid ads. Just founder-led growth loops with founder brand, content and systems that worked.

Before that, I led Witco’s UK market entry from zero to $1M ARR. International expansion into a new market with no brand, no pipeline, no team.

I cut my teeth in enterprise sales at MindGym (employee #20, stayed through to IPO), then scaled SMB and enterprise revenue at General Assembly before taking on full commercial leadership towards our exit. 

Five 0→1 journeys. One IPO, one exit, multiple international expansions. $60M+ in revenue closed across five startups as founder and/or CRO.

Now I run Forte Growth.

Me and my team, we help B2B founders build GTM systems that book meetings in weeks, not 18 months.

Whether you’re a technical founder who’s built your first $500K–$1M but now need a system to scale, going from zero to one, or entering a new market, I’ve got you covered. Different needs, different products, but always GTM system, clarity, and execution to get you to results.

3 ways we can work together:

✅ Fractional GTM Leader: I co-own your GTM system. Build, operate, transfer. Best for founders who got to $500K-$2M on hustle but now need a system to scale or expand into new international markets.

✅ GTM Sprints: Quick results. We build your founder brand, LinkedIn presence, and test message-market fit, then transition into scaling what works across inbound and outbound. Best for founders who need to start booking meetings fast and want to test working together before going fractional.

✅ GTM Coach: 1-to-1 or cohort. I help you figure out your buyer, nail messaging and positioning that books meetings, create content that builds trust, and build growth hacks and loops that scale your business. Best for early stage founders who need the help and look for a more affordable entry point. 

DM me “GTM” or visit fortegrowth.co to book a diagnostic call.

Co-Founder

Hey there, I'm an ex-sales leader turned co-founder, and I spend all day sharing ideas, solving problems and having #salestherapy with sales professionals from every sector and level. If you're after sales and G2M advice, you've come to the right place! And believe me, I've been through it all - from building SDR teams to closing multi-million dollar deals and everything in between. So, let's have some fun and chat sales!

👉Leaving a well-paid C-suite job for the startup grind is terrifying. I know because I did it. And some days I think of going back.

Some days I ask myself why I don’t just go back. Take a C-suite role at a mature company. Well-paid. 9 to 5. No 24/7 start-up hustle. No weight of the world on my shoulders.

Then I remember.

I travel when I want. I work from where I want. I work with incredible startups, VCs, on my own terms. Every win is self-made. Full ownership. I get to hire who I want. Build my own team. Build my own legacy.

Then I say ok it’s incredibly hard but it’s well worth it.

To anyone considering making the move from employment to entrepreneurship.

It’s incredibly hard. But it’s the best.

I’ve been on early stage grind for 6 years now since leaving late stage well-paid C-suite jobs. 

First as a CRO for a seed stage startup, then co-founder from zero, and now as a solo founder building Forte, where we provide cofounder level gtm and growth service to other founders scaling their businesses.

So it’s a few times the stress of building one company as we build 2-3 at a time as a fractional service and even more when I take care of vc portfolios as an advisor. But the early stage energy is different! I love it.

✈️Now on my way to Istanbul for a series of workshops, client work, and a visit to my parents. If you’re around, let’s meet.

P.S. I try to fly at least once a month. Not just to travel. Turns out a plane is the best place for deep focused work. No interruptions. No notifications. No AI.

Just thinking. The kind we get less and less of.

Alper Yurder

Founder @ Forte Growth | GTM Strategy & Market Expansion for B2B Startups | VC Portfolio Advisor | Former SaaS Co-Founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

No alternative text description for this image

👉 Just updated my 34-page playbook on how to audit your GTM and build a strategy that gets you to more leads and revenue in 8-14 weeks.

This is the exact framework I’ve used to help 16 startups from 2025 to date:
→ Create clarity across founders, sales, and product
→ Build roadmaps they actually stick to, to run 30 day test sprints
→ And in 2 cases - use the outcome directly in their fundraising decks

Normally I charge £3,5k to implement this in 2 full day workshops + write up.

Grab it while it’s free 👇

Please give a like & Comment “GTM” and I’ll send it your way.

Must be connected so I can DM.

👉 WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Most revenue teams get burned by outbound.

They launch channels. Spray messages. Burn budget.

Eventually, the realization hits:

❝We don’t need more tactics. We need a real strategy.❞

Because the unlock isn’t better copy or lists.

It’s alignment, trust, and clarity.

That’s what this GTM audit helps you build:

✅ Where to play (and what to ignore)

✅ What to say—and when to say it

✅ How to warm demand before you ever jump on a sales call

What you’ll get:

A GTM strategy audit you can run yourself

Or— if you need help, DM me and I’ll do the audit with you, and help you craft your roadmap

If you'd like to receive the playbook and start your own self-audit, please give a like, repost and comment

"GTM"

and I'll send it to you.

Happy building!

👉 Most founders I work with have the same problem. They know their product is good. Their first customers love it. But when they try to find MORE , it becomes chaos without the results:

LinkedIn posts? "Lead gen." Cold email? "Lead gen." Events? "Lead gen." DMs? "Lead gen."

No wonder nothing compounds. You're asking every channel to do the same job. That's like asking your CTO to also run sales.

Here's how channels actually work:

- LinkedIn posts don't generate leads directly. They build awareness and trust. 

When you post about the problems your buyer has, you're not trying to get them to book a call. You're trying to get them to remember your name when they need help.

- LinkedIn DMs convert. This is where you turn that awareness into a conversation. But only if they already know who you are. 

Cold DM from a stranger with zero content? Ignored. DM from someone whose post they liked last week? Replied.

- Cold email creates awareness at scale. It's an interruption channel. The job isn't to close a deal. The job is to get a reply. That's it. "Worth a conversation?" is the only CTA you need.

- Events build trust. Nobody buys from a 15-minute talk. But they remember the person who said something smart. Then when your DM lands in their inbox a week later, they reply.

- The system: Posts build awareness. Comments build relationships. DMs convert warm leads. Email reaches people who haven't found you yet. Events deepen trust with people already in your orbit.

Run them in parallel. Not sequentially.

One founder I worked with was only doing cold email. 2% reply rate. We added LinkedIn posting (3x/week about buyer problems) and commenting on target accounts. 

Within 4 weeks, his cold email reply rate doubled. Same emails. Same list. The only difference: people had seen his name before.

Here's the order that works:

- Pick LinkedIn. Not because it's best. Because it's fastest feedback.

- Post about buyer problems. Book meetings from DMs.

- Create content from every call you have. Every objection is a post. Every question is a carousel.

- Warm up your target accounts. Comment on their posts. React. Be visible.
Convert warm leads through DMs. They already know your name.

- Record every call (Fathom, Fireflies). Listen back. Write down the phrases that made prospects lean in.

- Learn and improve weekly. Which messages got replies? Which didn't? Rewrite.

- Scale with cold email as your awareness increases. People who've seen your posts reply to your emails at 2-3x the rate of cold strangers.

- Use email to educate, not just sell. Send them to your best LinkedIn post. Invite them to a webinar. Drive traffic to your website.

Repeat. Every cycle makes the next one faster.

That's not "pick a channel." That's a growth loop.

👉 Weekly, gradually move away from scattered tactics to a growth loop that compounds. This is what I crack all day every day with founders. 

DM me if you want to discuss

Fractional CRO & GTM Leader for B2B Startups expanding into new markets (Seed → Series B) | VC Portfolio Advisor | Former SaaS Cofounder (1 IPO, 1 Exit) 👉 DM me for a growth audit

👉 No fancy visual, just the exact playbook that built our linkedin-first revenue machine at Flowla thru founder brand & what I now implement with founders I work with to scale GTM - use linkedin as testing lab then scale email and SEO.

1-Define your persona as the people who book a call fastest and close fastest.
2-Pick three main persona types to target.
3-Write down urgency signals that confirm someone is your persona (role, pains, triggers).
4-Re-listen to customer calls. What do they want, care about, want to learn?
5-Summarise what they most want to hear from you in a few sentences.

6-Pick five competitors and study how they and their founders post on LinkedIn.
7-Note what works: topics, hooks, formats, CTAs, comment style.
8-Do external listening on Reddit and elsewhere. Ask ChatGPT what your audience cares about.
9-Optimise your LinkedIn profile fully for this persona (headline, About, banner, proof, clear next step).
10-Make sure it clearly says who you help, with what, and what they should do next.

11-Follow 1,000+ people matching your persona and urgency signals to train your feed.
12-Build a core list of 20–30 ICPs and allies you engage with every week.
13-Comment on their posts daily. Specific, useful, on-topic comments (you or your SDR).
14-Share your tone of voice with your SDR so they comment like you.
15-Publish thought-leadership posts 2–3 times per week.

16-Focus on the problems, questions, and topics your personas care most about.
17-Mix TOFU–MOFU–BOFU: awareness, evaluation, and decision-stage content.
18- 70–80% core domain, 20% other things to stay human.
19-Before and after each post, engage with ICPs' content. Be in their feed and comments.
20-Occasionally post product/FOMO content with screenshots so they see what you do.

21-Connect with people from your list and commenters. No pitch in the first message.
22-Test two DM styles. Friendly/curious vs. direct. See which opens more conversations.
23-Use posts and assets in DMs. Send a relevant post or guide instead of a cold pitch.
24-Track who replies, books, and closes fastest. Refine personas based on real data.
25-Collect repeated questions from comments and DMs. Turn each into a new post.

26-Move into assets: carousels, checklists, guides, mini-playbooks on topics they react to.
27-Reuse assets in comments and DMs. They get saved, shared, and boosted by the algorithm.
28-Keep doing competitive listening. Fold new angles back into your content.
29-Ask for testimonials, quotes, or screenshots as you deliver. Even from small wins.
30-Publish social proof regularly so talking to you feels like the obvious next step.

👉 Save this. Come back to it when you're ready to stop posting randomly and start posting with intent.

👉 I've diagnosed 20+ startups' outbound in the last 3 months. These were the main problems and here's how we fixed'em - with detailed examples:

Before you tweak anything, run this simple diagnostic:

Step 1: Sent 50+ messages with the same approach? If reply rate is under 5% 👉 Change your message.

Example: Genifea was messaging real estate agents saying "we put AI into your customer communications." Sent 80+ messages. Crickets. Then we dug into the actual pain: agents were losing deals because calls went unanswered when nobody was in the office. We rewrote the message around that: 

"How many calls did your office miss last week?" Reply rate went from 2% to +20%. Same product. Same audience. Different pain. (+ we did some work around founder brand & landing page too - nevertheless...)

Step 2: Same objection 3+ times? 👉 Try different positioning & messaging.

Example: A dev tools founder friend of mine kept hearing "We already have something for that." Three calls in a row. The product wasn't the problem, the positioning was. They were selling a feature, not a shift. We repositioned from "automated testing tool" to "the reason your fellow engineers at X ship 3x faster." The objection eased down.

Step 3: 100+ messages, no leads? 👉 Try different ICP or channel.

Example: Wealt was targeting "anyone earning £500K+." Investment bankers, PE guys, corporate execs. 100+ messages, barely any bites. We rebuilt around behaviour signals : ex-founders with recent exits. Same wealth bracket, completely different buying psychology. Reply rate went from <5% to 40%+ in 3 months.

Step 4: Good replies but no meetings? 👉 Try another CTA.

Example: Simplisales was getting "looks interesting, thanks!" and then silence. Their CTA was "let me know if you'd like a demo." We changed it to "worth 15 minutes this week to see if this fits, got time in my diary tomorrow?" Meeting rate doubled. The ask was too big. Make it small and human.

Step 5: None of the above? 👉 Scale what's working.

Example: OMMA had 28% reply rate, meetings booking weekly, deals closing. So we stopped optimising linkedin DMs and started scaling email: double the list, keep the similar message, add a second channel. Pipeline went from $200K to $600K in 90 days.

GTM isn't sending 1000 messages hoping for a reply. 

That's spamming. And my inbox suffers from that garbage,

GTM is about clarity -> tests -> compounding.

Fix the signal first. Then scale it.

👉 This is literally Phase 1 of every Forte Sprint. We don't strategize. We diagnose. Then fix and run weekly tests to get there faster.

Founder @ Forte | GTM systems for expanding B2B startups | Ex-SaaS Co-founder & CRO (5X Zero to 1, 1 IPO, 1 Exit) | VC Portfolio Growth Advisor

💡 There are 50+ go-to-market channels in B2B. The average SaaS company ran 5 core and 5.5 experiments in 2025*

That's a lot when you're a founder doing it mostly alone.

Kyle Poyar published research on which channels B2B SaaS companies actually used in 2025. I mapped them by the job they do in the funnel:

👇 

A few things stand out:

- LinkedIn dominates at 66%. Nothing else comes close for B2B. If you're not there, you're invisible to your buyers.

- Founder brand is only at 37%. That's way too low. At $500K-$5M ARR, your company brand IS your founder brand. This is the most underinvested channel on the list.

- Warm outbound (48%) is almost 2x intent-based outbound (33%). The "warm" part is doing the work. That's your content, your comments, your presence before the DM.

- The fastest-growing experiments: intent-based outbound, AI discovery, B2B influencers, Reddit. These are the ones to watch in 2026.

👉 But the biggest insight isn't which channels to pick. It's that each channel has one job in the funnel.

✅ Awareness channels get you seen. 

✅ Trust channels get you believed. 

✅ Conversion channels get you meetings. 

✅ Compounding channels make it predictable.

Most founders/ marketing people - run 5 awareness channels and wonder why nothing converts.

The system: pick one from each layer. Go deep. Let them compound.

Which channels are you running in 2026? What's compounding?

☀️2 days in Lanzarote and I feel like a human being again after 4 months of working with AI and turning into a 🤖. Afternoon run done and now responding to 100s of unresponded messages - finally. thank you sunshine, you always help me recover!

Founder @ Forte Growth | Revenue & Market Expansion for B2B SaaS | VC Portfolio GTM Advisor | Ex-SaaS Co-founder & CRO (1 IPO, 1 Exit)

👉 If you want to grow your business in the next 180 days, write down these GTM essentials and track them with a simple tracker👇

Without it, here's what happens:

One co-founder wants to update the website. Another wants to run five outbound sequences. The third is rewriting the pitch deck for the fourth time this month.

Everyone's busy. Nobody's aligned. Nothing compounds.

I've seen this pattern at every startup I've worked with. And at my own.

At Flowla, we burned months doing "a bit of everything." Content one week, outbound the next, partnerships the week after. We looked productive. We weren't.

The moment we got clear on ICP, channels, messaging, and priorities, everything changed. Revenue followed clarity. Not the other way around.

Now every engagement I run starts the same way.

Before we touch outbound. Before we write a single post. Before we open the CRM.

We build the GTM Clarity Tracker.

One document. 31 components. 30/60/90/180-day goals.

It covers everything:

✅ Who you sell to and why they buy now. 
✅ How customers find you and which channels actually work. 
✅ Your messaging, positioning, and proof stack. 
✅ Your content engine, LinkedIn rhythm, and visibility plan. 
✅ Your sales process from first touch to close. 

Your 3 mission-critical priorities - not twelve, three: product, sales, marketing. 

Revenue targets broken into a formula you can track weekly.

Every co-founder sees the same page. Every decision maps back to it. Every week has a clear priority.

It's not a strategy deck that sits in Google Drive. It's a living document you open every Monday.

When I built this for a legaltech startup preparing to raise, the founding team went from three different versions of "our GTM plan" to one page everyone could point to. They raised shortly after.

When I built this for a salestech company post-raise, the CEO stopped asking "what should we do next?" and started asking "are we on track against the plan?"

That's the shift.

From chaos to clarity. From scattered to focused. 

From "let's try everything" to "here's what matters this month."

I'll share the full playbook, 31 components. Description of each one. Examples. And the 30/60/90/180-day milestones to track against.

Comment "clarity" and I'll share the whole thing.

If you can't fill in a row, that's your priority.

👉 Your prospect list is your strategy. Get it wrong and the best message in the world won't save you.

I've always been against spray & pray. Unless your Total Addressable Market is everyone and their mother, you need to be careful with your outbound. The more targeted you are the shorter the sales cycle.

Which is why when we work with a client, we make sure our prospect lists are well curated. We start with LinkedIn outbound, which means you only get 100-120 connection requests and 20-30 messages to begin with.

So we don't spray and pray. We aim for high reply rates.

Unfortunately though, most B2B teams build lists the same way. Open a database. Filter by title, size, industry. Export 500 names.

Reply rate: 1-2%. Result is noise and pollution.

The reason our conversion is at 30% is because we don't filter by demographics. We decode the buyer and track their behaviour.

5 buying signals that work for most B2B companies 👇

1️⃣ HIRING SIGNALS Are they hiring for the role your product replaces? New leadership in your buyer's department? Team growing fast? Budget is unlocked and they're building.

2️⃣ FUNDING SIGNALS Recently raised. New budget cycle. Growth targets announced publicly. Money is available and there's pressure to spend it on results.

for this obviously Crunchbase or Clay  is best.

3️⃣ CONTENT SIGNALS Posting about the problem you solve. Asking for recommendations. Engaging with content in your space. They're telling you what they need. Listen. 

👉 Use a tool like Trigify.io for social listening to see what your buyers are posting.

4️⃣ EXPANSION SIGNALS Entering new markets. Opening new offices. Hiring in new geographies. The biggest buying window is when a company is growing into unfamiliar territory.

5️⃣ INTENT SIGNALS Visiting competitor websites. Reviewing tools on G2 or Capterra. Downloading industry reports. They've already decided they need something. Will they find you or someone else?

Demographics = who exists. 

Signals = who's ready.

The difference between a 2% reply rate and a 20% reply rate isn't your message. It's your list.

When you find the right buyer, there's a buyer for every product.

At Forte we help you find your buyers and convert them fast when you enter a new market. If you're going through a similar exercise DM me, let's chat.

🎉 Client Success story: Atria was one of our very first clients when we started Forte last year.

Technical founding team. Product gaining traction. But sales and marketing plan needed clarity to help them close the round.

We built their GTM one-pager - product, positioning, how they'll acquire clients and close them,

90-day roadmap, and founder-led sales and marketing playbook together.

They closed their +£700K shortly after.

This was the same formula I used before we raised our $1.5M round for Flowla.

Same equation every time: great founders, product somehow gaining traction.

But without GTM clarity, it’s hard to raise.

VCs don’t fund confusion. They fund conviction.

When an investor can immediately understand what you do, why now, and why you, conversations move faster. Rooms open. Rounds close.

A GTM plan isn’t a document. It’s a trust accelerator for the investor.

It creates alignment between cofounders, and creates focus for execution.

That’s why I start every engagement with creating a GTM one pager, all your GTM essentials, product, marketing and sales plan in one place. then we execute, test-iterate-update. but we have one point of reference to look at.

if you’d like to see an example DM me,

👉 When you work too much, your language changes first.

You get shorter with people. More agitated. Less patient. You're technically "fine" but everyone around you can feel it.

I see this around me all the time. Founders, managers, execs who look completely calm and collected on the outside. Then they share what's actually going on... Or they don't but it comes out in a team meeting, and noone understands where it's come from.

The stress is real. For everyone. At every level. I'm no exception. And noone truly is.

This AI craze. Staying on top of everything. Managing people for the first time. Running a business alone. None of it is easy. And no one is immune to it.

At Flowla, I had a rule: take a break every two months. A small escape. A day off. Whatever. Just reset.

Then I became a solo founder. Hiring. Delivering. Building product. Frameworks. Workshops. Client work. The rule quietly disappeared.

Last week I was catching up with an old friend. A growth manager who recently moved to Athens to work from there. She looked bright. Happy. Recharged. 

☀️ Luckily, I'm off for a much needed break. First in 8 months. I had no Xmas, no holiday no weekend these last months. Building, delivering. The balance lost.... 

So. Some much needed sunshine after the most horrendous rainy stretch London has seen in years.

Life isn't just about work. We all know this. We just forget it when things get busy.

The pipeline will still be there when you get back. The inbox will survive. Your clients won't disappear.

👉 But your energy, your patience, your clarity? Those need topping up.
If you're reading this and can't remember your last proper break, book one. 

Seriously. Even a long weekend.

I'm taking mine this week. Pics incoming. Something I haven't done in a long time. You should do the same.

"yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust = no sales!"

is the harsh truth I had to tell a founder last week expanding to the UK. $1M ARR. 50+ enterprise logos at home. real product, real customers. but the UK isn't working.

so I ran a quick diagnostic. here's what I found:
👉 ICP clarity (UK): 2/10. three segments identified from home market, none tested in UK.
👉 messaging: 2/10. product evolved but the UK pitch never got rebuilt.
👉 founder brand: 1/10. neither founder posts anything on linkedin. nobody in the UK knows they exist.
👉 lead gen: 2/10. one agency running linkedin outbound, stalled when the key person left.
👉 competitive positioning: 2/10. can't articulate why you'd pick them over the well-funded incumbents.
👉 growth tests/ non-scalable channels: non-tried so far, no podcast, no event presence, no industry expert interviews.
❌ paid ads: +10K spent on paid ads! most common mistake I see all the time. before message-market or channel market fit. 

home market score? 7/10. solid business. UK score? 2/10 across the board.
the product isn't the problem. the GTM is.

yes you have Nike as a logo but that's Nike Turkey, friend of your friend. a new market is a new game. no presence -> no trust -> no sales

this is the pattern i see over and over with SaaS companies expanding to the UK:

they assume what worked at home will work here. they hire an agency before 
they have message-market fit. no founder builds any visibility in the new market. they pitch features instead of positioning around a wedge.

the fix isn't complicated. it's just not obvious from the inside.
✅ pick a UK-specific ICP 
✅ rebuild the messaging for UK buyers 
✅ get one founder posting on linkedin consistently 
✅ test 3-5 angles fast on linkedin outbound 
✅ get 2-3 UK case studies at any cost
✅ balance earned vs. bought trust

we're starting a sprint together in march. so we can put the company back on track,

if you've cracked your home market but struggling internationally, the problem is almost never the product. it's always the system.

❌ You have no idea how many founder calls I have where they've just let go of a sales hire in a new market. 
Same story. +10 times last year alone. 👉 I've made the same mistake myself. Now I'm obsessed with helping others avoid it!

Raise money. Decide to expand. Hire a country manager or BD person in the new market. Give them a target and say "go get meetings."

3 months later: zero pipeline. The hire quits or gets fired. Back to square one.
The problem wasn't the hire. It was what they walked into. A blank slate with no system.

🤯 Mind you. I've been the leader told off for not being fast enough. Then been the leader or founder telling people off. Same story repeats!

6 things you owe yourself and your first hire before they start 👇

01 REBUILT ICP Your home market ICP won't transfer. At Witco, French property managers bought on relationships. UK buyers bought on ROI and case studies. 10 buyer conversations in the new market before you hire anyone.

02 TESTED MESSAGING 50 messages sent by you personally. 3 angles tested. See what resonates. Your hire needs proven templates. Not guesses from a brainstorming session.

03 CHANNEL STRATEGY What works HERE. Not what worked at home. In France, events drove 80% of deals. In the UK, LinkedIn content and targeted outbound converted faster than any event.

04 AI SCORING Claude scores every prospect 1-10 against signal criteria. Nobody under 7 gets a message. Quality over volume from day one.

05 WARM PIPELINE 5-10 conversations already started. Meetings already booked. Your hire walks into active pipeline. Not a cold market where nobody's heard of you.

06 DOCUMENTED PLAYBOOK What worked. Every objection you heard. The full sales cycle mapped. Your hire needs your brain on paper. Not your hope that they'll figure it out.

Founder-led first. Handover second.

I've done the Turkey to UK journey twice. Built two companies past £1M ARR in a new market. The playbook is different here. The buyer is different. The trust signals are different.

If your board is pushing expansion and your instinct is to hire first, you're starting at step 6. Start at step 1.

👉 Save this. Comment EXPAND and I'll send you the full expansion Sprint checklist.

💡 Hiring a GTM lead costs £80-120K a year if you're lucky!
You still have to manage them. Ramp them. Hope they figure out your market.
Here's what a Revenue Sprint gets you instead:

✅ GTM strategy locked in week 1-3, not month 3 
✅ Messaging written and tested before you spend a penny on ads 
✅ Target list built from your actual ICP, not a job description 
✅ First meetings booked by month 1 if you're post PMF
✅ A system your team can run after we're gone

A full-time hire is the right move. Eventually.

But not when you're still figuring out what works.

The Sprint is how you figure out what works.

👉 If you're between £500K and £5M ARR and expanding into a new market, DM me "Sprint" and I'll show you what 90 days looks like.

taplio

The Battle

John Ozuysal

Alper Yurder 🤝

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreJohn Ozuysal's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAlper Yurder 🤝's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

John Ozuysal

Alper Yurder 🤝

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}John Ozuysal's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAlper Yurder 🤝's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreJohn Ozuysal's LinkedIn Performance