Startup go-to-market strategies keep arriving shaped like corporate plans: allocated budget per channel, timelines, KPIs, PowerPoint slides. Gerard argues that is a fundamental misunderstanding. Early-stage marketing is experimental, and the right mental model is the gold prospector. Nobody designs a mineshaft, conveyor belts and pulleys before finding gold. They pan, scrape and dig, follow the traces, and build infrastructure only once they know where the gold is. A startup strategy tests softly held assumptions about the target customer, the positioning against existing solutions, and how to earn attention, and one channel is enough to start. Fractal works in weekly sprints for this reason: if a test takes more than a week, you are probably over-invested in one idea. Know there is gold in the mountain, then work out where to dig by digging.

Your startup strategy does not need a budget per channel