For those who’ve launched consumer products before: At what stage did you bring in a dedicated commercial / GTM lead? Before launch or after initial traction? I am launching Simuno next month and I’m considering bringing in someone to own revenue and partnerships early. Curious how you approached it.
Revenue is key in business, being consumer or b2b 🙂 GTM must be owned by someone at launch (if you don’t go to market, you’re not really launching). I found the most successful companies having one of their owners owning GTM. Bringing someone to do that as an employee, especially at launch, is risky and costly from my point of view. If you can’t/are not willing to do it yourself, I would go with finding a partner as soon as possible. If your GTM is unclear, revenues won’t come. I wish you all the success possible, I personally enjoy launches a lot 😄
teams usually bring in a dedicated gtm lead once there’s enough signal to product market fit that messaging and channels can be optimized rather than invented. the edge case appears when founders try to hire too early, because without clear retention or conversion data the role drifts into experimentation without a feedback loop. some consumer startups wait for early traction metrics before formalizing the hire, though category and price point can shift that timing quite a bit.
