John Gauch 2025-08-03 John Gauch 2025-08-03

Struggling with Growth? You Can't Create Demand—You Need to Find It

If your emails, ads, or other sales and marketing activities are falling flat, it might be that you’re trying to generate demand where none exists. In this post, I break down what’s at the root of PMF and growth by reviewing the basics: uncovering real problems felt by people actively trying to make progress.

Illustration created with the assistance of ChatGPT by OpenAI.

Hi! I'm a startup fractional COO who works hip to hip with founders as their operating partner. I amplify founder contributions by serving as a thought partner and taking on critical and delegable growth and operations responsibilities, particularly for companies in the $1 to $10 million revenue range. Over 20+ years, I have worked on dozens of startups (Synervoz, Feldspar, Axiom, Spartan, IAN), helping build one industry-transforming business to exceed $100M in revenue and a second to (so far) nearly reach that very rare milestone.

Introduction

You've noticed that your emails aren't hitting. Or it's your ads. Or it’s your trade show booth meetings. Are your prospects numb? Is it the ICP? The channel? The messaging? Maybe AI is steering you wrong, or it’s just the times.

You're not alone.

If you’re the founder of a venture-backed startup, you’re rightfully preoccupied with the idea of finding product market fit (PMF). If you’re the founder of a profitable business with similar growth ambitions, you’re also looking for an unmet or undermet problem you can solve to increase sales.

It’s hard.

So, what will it take to grow your business? First and foremost, it will take getting the basics right.

You Can’t Manufacture Demand

To start, let's get on the same page with one fundamental idea: You can't manufacture demand for your product where it doesn't exist. You can only discover prospects by identifying the people who are already feeling friction in their lives and are trying to make progress.

If people don’t have a problem to solve, or there aren’t enough of them to meet your business’s requirements, there’s never going to be scalable PMF. There’s never going to be a promising new growth channel.

I won’t get into it here, but your solution also has to outperform the alternatives—not across the board, but at solving that specific problem, for that specific person, in that specific moment. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be great. It just has to be better than their current solution or workaround—or better than doing nothing.

Sales and marketing is about finding and connecting with people who are struggling with a problem and searching for a solution. They might not know precisely what they need at the start, but if your solution clearly helps them achieve a better future, you have a chance to be the one who helps them. Your most promising short-term prospects aren't the passive lookers either. It is the group of people actively looking and deciding how to solve their problem.

Some people may be stewing with their problem and not taking any action besides feeling unhappy. “Silently suffering” is how someone put it once. They're too early in the buying timeline to become a customer today. You want to connect with these people, too, and consider ways to nudge them along (more on that below). Initially, focus on prospects further along in the timeline.

Here's an example of what I mean: Say you build and license an audio SDK. Your potential market today consists of developers who are currently facing an audio challenge that your product solves. It's not every developer who is part of a team building audio tech.

No problem, no customer.

This framing draws on the Jobs to Be Done framework, co-developed by Bob Moesta.

Use the Four Forces

Bob also describes how four forces drive or resist the change entailed in buying something new:

Pushes (away from current pains)
Pulls (toward an exciting new solution)
Habits (comfort in what is familiar)
Anxieties (fear of what change means)

Purchases occur when the pushes and pulls are strong enough to overcome the friction of habits and anxieties.

Effective sales and marketing encourage a shift from the old way to the new way by strengthening the forces promoting change and reducing those causing drag. When you get that right, as Bob Moesta says, people pull your product into their lives.

Let's walk through two foundational and durable sales and marketing concepts that follow from these principles:

Read also: How to Learn Jobs to be Done

Provide Value

We said the purpose of a business is to help people make the progress they desire in their lives. It's not just a product obligation; that should be the mission of the organization as a whole. The entire customer experience should be designed with this end in mind, including sales and marketing.

Sales and marketing shouldn't push your product. Effective Sales and marketing helps people clarify their problems and shows them how to take the next steps to solve them. It’s a big, scary world out there, sales and marketers ought to see themselves as guides helping prospects choose a path to a solution. Engaging with customers like this also earns trust from genuinely being helpful.

That's delivering value.

Imagine how a prospective customer can move from where they are to where they want to be. This approach to sales and marketing centers on questions like:

How are people feeling now, in their struggling situation? What are people trying to do but can't? What's frustrating them?
What does better look like? How does your product help? What are its strengths and shortcomings?
To make a switch, from where someone is now, what do they need to know? What gets in their way? What are they afraid of? How do you tap into what motivates them and reduce their fears and anxieties?

Again, your go-to-market motion must make the math of the four forces work (pushes + pulls > habits + anxieties). No product bragging. No "educational content" that doesn't have a clear purpose. Foster self-motivation that helps someone move forward.

How does your sales and marketing stack up?

Show Up at Watering Holes

To apply this sales and marketing principle, you need to find people in a struggling situation. Go where they already are or find a way to bring them to you.

This isn't easy, but it's critical.

Look for the places and ways your audience has “opted in" to being a prospect. That's where you need to be, too.

Let me give you a concrete example. One particularly well-performing cold outbound campaign I worked on started by scraping public information about attendees at a niche audio industry event:

By attending that event, people raised their hands to say they were working on and cared about the kind of audio projects we care about, demonstrated by our audio SDK and related services.
We crafted an outbound email that linked to a YouTube talk on a timely, thorny audio challenge by one of our team members who also attended the event. The talk was technical and useful; it was not a sales pitch. Many event attendees may have been wrestling with or would be curious about the subject matter.

The campaign emails had a 55% open rate, a 30% click-through rate, and an 18% reply rate. It also converted a new customer immediately and opened up conversations with several others.

Why did we achieve those results?

We'd zeroed in on a much more promising audience than "every developer on a team building an audio product or feature." Still, not everyone who got our email was a potential customer. But by attending the event, they'd raised their hand to say they wanted to learn something new. Many were likely trying to connect the dots to understand or solve an audio challenge.

We distinguished ourselves by demonstrating our expertise as audio problem solvers. Even if we didn't address the exact problem someone was working on, the talk topic was curiosity-arousing, and it doesn't take a massive leap for a watcher to bet that if we could help with one audio challenge, we could help with others like it.

Are you showing up when your most likely customers come knocking?

Organic SEO is often underutilized by entrepreneurs because it requires a bit of time to yield results. It's sidelined in favor of performance marketing or cold outbounds perhaps. But organic SEO is how you get discovered by people actively searching for solutions to a problem. This is huge. These people have intent. They're already looking for you. You don't need to chase them; you just need to be easy to find.

And this is more important now than ever.

It's not just people searching. It's AI agents.

The same general principles that help you rank in Google will help you get pulled into AI-generated suggestions, too. Stick with the fundamentals: In the simplest terms, create genuinely helpful content, keep it updated, and keep at it.

Where are the watering holes your prospects are hanging out right now?

Example: From My Business

As a fractional COO, I work with founders who have already achieved considerable success with their companies, closing a Seed or Series A financing and generating $1 million to $10 million in annual revenue. Many of them are in tech, but not all. Some are venture-backed and others are profitable growth businesses.

However, not every founder meeting that fits that description is a real prospect.

My prospects are unhappy with how their business is going:

Finding scalable PMF after early traction might be proving difficult.
Growth may not be where they want it.
They may be feeling the team isn't aligned or executing well.
Business operations may be creaking, groaning, or breaking altogether.

They want to see giant leaps forward, as well, not incremental improvements.

They're likely overworked and stressed, as a result, which leaves them emotionally and physically frayed, from doing too much. Still, they’re fighters, with big ambitions. It’s not just about money either. Many aspire to transform the very nature of the industries in which they operate.

These founders we feeling a lot of pressure.

Again, I don't serve every founder fitting the high-level demographic criteria I shared (e.g., someone running a $1 to $10M business). They need to be in a struggling situation, similar to what I shared.

They’re not my prospective customer if:

They have the support they need, and it’s going well.
They lack the support they need, you don’t want to do anything about it, and they’re okay with the implications.

The people I help are unhappy (and likely aware of it) with their current situation, and they're either passively or actively exploring how to solve for it. They are on the buying timeline somewhere between their "first thought” and deciding on a purchase.

How did they get into that situation? When the company grows, founders need to grow too. They need to adapt their role. Too often, they try to do it all in the face of increasing challenges, such as:

finding PMF or a new growth lever amid growing operational demands, or
orchestrating and managing their scaleup if they've tapped into growth

The founder role needs to change, and they may require an operating partner to make that happen—someone to take on mission-critical but delegable tasks, allowing them to focus on the top two to three things that only they can do, as CEO and founder.

My prospects are dissatisfied and want to make changes. When the math of the four forces works out, they work with me or implement another solution to make progress. The role of my go-to-market activities is to help founders figure out what they need and how to choose the right solution to achieve their personal and business goals.

To illustrate, as part of my content marketing efforts, I wrote a LinkedIn post that discusses how founders can become stuck trying to do it all in their businesses, why this is an undesirable situation, and how to start getting out of it.

I've connected with founders where they are, on LinkedIn.

I've specified who I want to speak to by asking if they feel they may be a bottleneck to their business.
For those who feel this way, I hope I've helped them understand why this might be happening.
And I’ve suggested ways to get out of the situation—i.e., baby steps on the buying timeline toward making a switch from what they are doing now.

The LinkedIn post isn't about me; it's about the founder. However, it’s doing the important work of helping the founder and creating a potential future customer.

Conclusion

The take-away: Treat sales and marketing as a genuine effort to help someone solve a meaningful problem in their lives and turn that demand into a purchase.

You can't create demand. But you can spot it, understand it, and work with it. If your sales and marketing efforts help someone in a struggling situation make sense of what they're facing and take one step forward, that's a win. And that's how you grow, by putting one step in front of the other.

Want help applying these ideas to your business? Reach out or follow my contributions on LinkedIn.

John Gauch 2025-07-30 John Gauch 2025-07-30

Journey of a Founder: Series A Is a Reckoning—Operator Imperatives for Getting to Series B

The Journey of a Founder series continues. You’ve raised a Series A. You’ve got early traction and capital to grow. But now the real work begins. What does it feel like to lead a company through this phase, and what actually helps you reach Series B? In this founder/operator roundtable, we explore what happens after the early wins, from hiring and trust-building to evolving your founder role and avoiding the ops pitfalls that can sink momentum. This is the messy middle, what I sometimes call “the reckoning.”

Event 1—Part 1: Hosted by John Gauch and Jimmy Malik.

Illustration showing startup event title and participants John Gauch Jimmy Malik Alice Nawfal and Justin Etkin for part 1 blog post

Hi there - I'm a startup fractional COO who works hip to hip with founders as their operating partner. I amplify founder contributions by serving as a thought partner and assuming critical and delegable growth and operations responsibilities, particularly for companies in the $1 to $10 million revenue range. Over 20+ years, I have worked on dozens of startups (Synervoz, Feldspar, Axiom, Spartan, IAN), helping build one industry-transforming business to exceed $100M in revenue and a second to (so far) nearly reach that very rare milestone.

Jimmy Malik and I hosted this second roundtable in our Journey of a Founder series in collaboration with the Operators Guild (OG), where we're both members. Our guest co-founders (and fellow OGers) were Alice Nawful, of Notabene, and Justin Etkin, of Tropic.

The roundtable video recording isn't available publicly; however, I have summarized some of the top insights for you here. I also recommend checking out the OG if you're a company founder, co-founder, or operator at a high-growth business looking for a like-minded community of peers.

We don't cover everything you need to know to run a business, but we cover a lot of ground. Enjoy.

Introduction

Scaling a startup from Series A to Series C is full of tough choices, shifting priorities, and relentless tests of leadership. What worked at Series A can fall apart at Series B, or later, in the face of increasing demands for growth, structure, and disciplined execution.

This post breaks down what it feels like, critical areas to focus on, and lessons every operator can apply. These insights aren't just for venture-backed companies either; they're relevant if you're the founder of a growing business that needs to evolve from scrappy, founder-led leadership to making major leaps in performance.

(This is Part 1. If you're looking for Part 2 on Series B → C, read it here.)

What Series A to Series B Feels Like

You've shown notable progress with the business. However, it's not yet clear you're on a reliably upward trajectory. There's going to be a lot more fight before you can declare victory (or defeat). Founder-financed companies often find themselves in a similar spot after they've proven their business works when there's potential and the path forward isn't obvious.

I see this period as a reckoning.

The basics that got you here still matter: understanding customers, testing assumptions, making thoughtful decisions, hiring smartly. Capital in the bank doesn't change that; if anything, it raises the bar. What are you going to do with that money?

At the same time, the work itself shifts. The breadth of problems, the pace of decisions, and the complexity of the business all spike. One hour, you're deep in the weeds fixing a broken operational process; the next, you're selling a senior leader you want to hire on your vision. This context switching is relentless. And because the data you wish you had doesn't exist yet, you need to rely on gut feel over hard knowledge more than you like.

This stage also brings a psychological shift: Trust becomes an increasingly valuable currency. The only way you, the founder, can share the management burden with teammates is if you have trust in them and the way you work together. To reach this point, a high-performing company has likely tapped an operating partner to the CEO, allowing the CEO to promote the company vision and focus on strategy and top initiatives only they can lead. If this hasn't happened yet, and you want the business to continue to move forward in leaps and bounds, it's time.

Likely, you're gearing up to hire for other roles, too. In addition to filling staff roles to keep up with growth, you may be bringing on more experienced people who know more than you do in their area of expertise. That's the point. But it can still feel jarring when you're ready to make your first full-time finance hire, for instance, and you realize how much more they know than you do. It's humbling.

Meanwhile, your operational foundation gets stress-tested: finance, legal, HR, and other business ops. Building operations to date has been iterative, making trade-offs and putting together "good enough" processes to serve your current and near-term future needs. Systems or processes you justifiably deprioritized before might cost you time, money, and goodwill now. You may need to revamp what you had prioritized and put into place earlier, and quickly catch up on things you ignored or hacked together … or risk dragging down the business.

In this period, as well, unexpected and hairy challenges lurk. Every company has its version. The business is not entirely settled. You're confronting unknowns as well as potentially disruptive events in the external environment, like a shift in market demand. There's always something material still to figure out.

Was product‑market fit (PMF) real or a fleeting bump?

Is the market big enough to support your scale objectives, or you we about to hit a wall?
Are you ready for the larger customers and new segments you’re chasing?

One thing that's not unique to this period is the careful decision-making required around how to use your resources: Remember that cash in the bank? For a venture-backed concern, this is your latest round. For a high-growth business, it's your accumulated war chest. You'll need to make deliberate decisions between extending runway, investing in critical infrastructure, and accelerating growth.

Series A is about continuing to refine the business and building certainty while everything—your business model, your market, your product, your processes, your team, and you—is being stress‑tested. It's exciting. It's demanding. It's a trial that you need to survive to build and sustain a successful business that has a big impact on the world.

Read also: Journey of a Founder: A Startup Story

Top Imperatives

Remain customer-focused and dialed into the problem you solve for them. Stay curious. Treat PMF as a moving target. There may be a difference between the early signs of PMF (what gets you to a Series A) and the durable, scalable PMF you need to reach Series B and beyond.
Shift your time, as founder, from the early days, when you did it all. Ideally, you did that before now. Less time in the weeds, more big-picture leadership. You can't solve every problem.

As the founder, you need to reduce your information advantage by spreading what you know among the team. (It can feel scary.) The quality of your operational rhythm dictates how comfortable you may be staying out of the weeds. Bi-directional processes giving all parties the information they need will tell the founder where the team is headed. If that's the right direction, you'll be able to focus confidently on your uniue founder’s agenda. Low trust resulting from poor hires or operational deficiencies is often what leads to micromanagement. When this is all working perfectly, it can still feel stressful, since you aren't as close to the details of the business anymore.

Accept that your team is in a period of flux. You still need standout generalists, and you're also bringing on subject matter experts and possibly introducing different levels of seniority. It's going to get a bit messy. Don't let your ego get in the way of hiring people who outclass you. Be careful: It's tempting to over-title early hires or promote generalists too quickly.

The company may be transforming itself every six months. Don't let your leadership approach or the team fall behind. Pick a frequency (quarterly, for example) and conduct a holistic check-in on the current business needs and how you and your team is aligned.

What's working well?
What's not working?
What's missing?
Who can step in or step it up?
How do you fill the gaps?

Suppose someone isn’t scaling to match business needs. They may need additional support, or if the situation can’t be improved, you may need to n that case, acting sooner may feel uncomfortable than later, but it may be the right move.

Prioritize like your life depends on it. The team can't do everything that needs to be done either. Be explicit about what matters most right now. Consciously pick what you're going to knock out of the park, what's going to get midling attention, and what's less important. Be explicit about it. Decide how to sequence initiatives.
Keep ops lightweight but strong enough not to break. The startup debt that hurts the most isn't always engineering. It may be in finance, customer success, or another area. Stay alert. Invest in the key areas. Expect many of the ways you do things now will break, and you'll need to patch them up or replace them later.

Finally, avoid this misstep: Growth is the ultimate imperative, but so is avoiding an existential crisis originating from the failure of the company's operations. Ask yourself: What do we need to be working on today that might not have an immediate impact but will be critical soon? Some improvements have long lead times. Plan the rebuild before events make change a crisis or impossible.

If you're in this stretch of business building (i.e., wrestling with growth, hiring, patchingor rewiting operations), I'm always up for a conversation.

Read Part 2: Series B to Series C—Scaling Challenges and Leadership Imperatives

John Gauch 2024-04-15 John Gauch 2024-04-15

How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Industry

In this post, I discuss the essential steps to becoming a thought leader in your industry by elevating your reputation, engaging your audience, and influencing others with your unique expert insights. This can be a fantastic way for startup CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs to raise the profile of your business too.

This blog post is an AI experiment.

Representation of a chalk bought where an educator has written Thought Leadership and a symbol for strength — Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels.

In case you’re new here - I'm John Gauch – a seasoned fractional COO, sales coach and mentor. Over 20+ years, I have applied my growth and operations skills to help dozens of startups, building one high-impact venture to nearly $100M in revenue and a second to exceed that benchmark. I began my career as a tech lawyer in New York City and developed my expertise in progressive roles in business development, finance, sales, marketing and product, working along the way with companies like Amazon, IBM and Microsoft.

Becoming a thought leader in your industry is a fantastic way to share your experience and learnings. It can also be a fantastic way to bring attention to your startup.

This guide provides strategies and actionable insights you can apply to establish authority and influence in your field.

Being a thought leader positions you as a credible expert, creating opportunities for media exposure and collaboration with others. It is based on trust and loyalty among an audience. Having actual expertise is necessary (of course) but may not be enough. There are key steps you can take to help you achieve this standing.

It’s harder than ever for businesses to get people’s attention. The business landscape is ultra-competitive. If you’re a founder or CEO of a startup, establishing yourself as a thought leader can cut through the noise and raise the profile of your company and product with prospective customers, investors and employees.

What is a Thought Leader?

So what exactly is a thought leader? A thought leader is an individual recognized as an authority in their field—someone whose expertise and perspectives are sought after and valued. They influence and inspire others. Embracing thought leadership is not just about gaining recognition, though; it's an opportunity to drive change, spur innovation, and lead the conversation in your space.

Understanding Thought Leadership

Becoming a thought leader requires more than just expertise; it involves a commitment to sharing knowledge and influencing others. Thought leaders are characterized by their deep understanding of their field, their ability to foresee industry trends and their willingness to share their insights to help others.

It's important to differentiate between a thought leader and an influencer too. While influencers often rely on popularity and social media presence, thought leaders build their reputation on their expertise and the value this provides. Thought leaders are trusted voices in their industries, guiding others.

Successful thought leaders can be found across various sectors, such as Simon Sinek, in leadership and management, and Brené Brown, in personal development and leadership.

Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader

Identify Your Niche

Choose a specific area to focus on. Your niche should align with your passions and strengths, and it should be a field where you can offer rare insight and perspectives. To identify your niche, start by evaluating your skills, experiences and interests:

What topics are you most passionate about?
Where do you have the most expertise and experience?
What industry trends or challenges excite you?

Once you've identified your niche, do some research. Pinpoint gaps in the market where your insights can make a significant impact. A targeted approach will help you establish yourself as a go-to expert in the chosen field.

Build Your Knowledge and Expertise

Becoming a thought leader requires a deep and continuously evolving understanding of your niche. This means committing to staying up to date with the latest industry trends and advancements.

Continuous Learning. Enroll in relevant courses, attend workshops, and pursue certifications that enhance your knowledge base.
Reading and Research. Regularly read industry publications, research papers and books authored by other thought leaders.
Networking. Engage with other experts in your field through professional associations, online forums and industry events.

Create High-Quality Content

Creating and sharing high-quality content is essential for establishing yourself as a thought leader. Your content should reflect your expertise, provide value to your audience and demonstrate a unique perspective.

Blogs and Articles. Write informative and engaging blog posts or articles that address common challenges in your industry. Be sure to use real-world examples and case studies to illustrate your points.
White papers and E-books. Develop in-depth white papers or e-books that offer comprehensive insights into specific topics.
Videos and Webinars: Utilize multimedia content like videos and webinars to reach a broader audience. These formats also allow you to explain complex ideas in a more accessible and engaging way.
Social Media. Share your content on social media platforms to increase its reach.

Engage with Your Audience

Engagement is a key component of thought leadership. It's not enough to just produce content; you need to actively interact with your audience to build a strong community. It's crucial to use platforms like LinkedIn to share your content and engage in conversations. Responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions relevant to your niche will enhance your visibility and credibility.

Encouraging followers to share their experiences and insights fosters a collaborative environment, where everyone can learn and grow together. Moreover, seeking feedback from your audience helps you understand their needs and preferences, providing valuable insights for improving your content and approach.

By actively engaging with your audience, you demonstrate that you value their input and are committed to their growth and development. This interaction reinforces your position as a thought leader, further establishing your credibility and influence in your field.

Network with Other Leaders

Networking with other thought leaders and industry experts can amplify your influence and provide valuable opportunities for collaboration. Building relationships with peers can also offer new perspectives and insights that enrich your own understanding of your focus area.

Attend Industry Events. Participate in conferences and seminars
Join Professional Associations. Becoming a member of professional organizations can help you connect with like-minded individuals and stay updated on industry trends.
Collaborate on Projects. Look for opportunities to collaborate with other experts on projects, research or content creation. Leverage each other's strengths and reach a broader audience.
Mentorship and Coaching. Engage in mentorship, by mentoring others and seeking guidance from more experienced leaders.

Speak at Industry Events

Public speaking is a powerful way to establish yourself as a thought leader and share your expertise with a wider audience. Speaking at industry events allows you to showcase your knowledge and connect with professionals in your field.

Developing compelling presentations that highlight your expertise and provide valuable insights is essential. Ensure you practice your delivery to make your presentations more impactful. Compelling visuals and real-world examples will keep your audience interested and involved. Where possible, follow up with attendees after your speaking engagements to strengthen your connections.

Measuring Your Impact

Measure your impact as a thought leader to understand your influence and improve your strategy. The metrics will vary depending on the medium you’re using to communicate.

Engagement metrics will show which content resonates most with your audience. More followers show your credibility is growing, and shares suggest your content is spreading effectively. Analyze this data to refine your strategy. Focus on content that generates high engagement, and revise underperforming content. Regularly measuring your impact ensures your efforts are effective and keeps you aligned with your goals.

By following this guide, you can leverage your hard-earned experience to make your voice more influential. Becoming a thought leader is a powerful way to inspire others and drive change. Successfully pursuing this path will also raise the profile of your startup and its products effectively and powerfully, by providing value to your target audience.

If you’re a startup CEO, founder or entrepreneur, and you want to chat about what you are building and whether I can be helpful in some way, I’d love to connect. Learn about my services and please reach out.

John Gauch 2024-01-02 John Gauch 2024-01-02

50 Top Apps, SaaS Solutions, Services and Sites for Startups

Startup CEOs and founders are very demanding when it comes to the tech they use to run their businesses. They have high expectations. They should, too. See how this list of apps, SaaS solutions, services, and sites lines up with your tech stack and hopefully get some new ideas for what to add or switch.

Updated May 30, 2025, including the AI apps everyone should be using or experimenting with.

Image for blog post about list of top tech for startups — Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels.

I hope you find this list helpful - I'm John Gauch, a consultant with extensive experience in business operations and growth. I specialize in helping startups implement both strategies effectively. As a fractional COO, I work with founders and CEOs through each step, tailoring solutions to your unique needs and objectives.

Updated May 30, 2025.

What started as a list of 50 startup apps has grown well past that figure, and I’ll keep adding to it.

I personally don’t find those lists or infographics of every possible option for a problem super useful. I don’t need another time-sucking To Do, to evaluate all of the choices. I want to know what’s a reasonably safe bet, get started with it and turn back to the business of growing my company.

With regard to each product on my list, I've either used it, and I recommend it, or someone I know and trust has used it, and they recommended it to me. The list is biased toward Seed to Series A companies because that’s where I spend most of my time, although it includes some products for brand-new companies (drawn from the venture studio work I do).

That said, feedback is invited—if you feel like something should be added, or if you have used one of the products and had a negative experience. Email me and let me know.

I don’t mention project management tools (e.g., Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Trello) because everyone seems to have a favorite, and they all seem reasonably decent. I use Trello for my personal task tracking. I wouldn’t spin too long trying to ascertain which one of them is “best.”

Again, if your choice of a new web app (etc.) to add to your startup’s tech stack is not going to make or break your business, don’t over-index on it. Do some quick research. Get together a couple or a few ideas. Do a brief analysis. Pick one and turn back to the activities that are going to be far more impactful on your organization and its success.

That’s the benefit of having a list like this. I hope it helps.

Top Startup Tools

Product	Description	Other Options
1Password	Password management and security
Ahrefs	Ahrefs for SEO analysis and backlinks; AlsoAsked for keyword analysis on competitors and search term difficulty	Semrush	Also Asked
Airtable	Collaborative work management
Amazon AWS	Cloud computing
Apollo	List building from search critera. Send sequences. Consider checking out new kind on the block Unify. Fiber AI is the same idea but for recruiting	Unify	Fiber AI
Arc Tech	Treasury services
Bill.com	Billing and financial automation
Brandpad	Brand development and management
Brixx	Financial forecasting and planning software
Carta	Equity management and valuation, but watch the latest news about them	Pulley
ChatGPT	ChatGPT remains my go-to GAI tool. I list Perplexity but have heard mix reports recently	Claude	Perplexity
Clay	Import lists and enrich them (more options than Apollo). Consider also checking out newcomer Unify	Unify
Clerky	Legal and compliance solutions (company setup)
Clockify	Time tracking
DailyBot	Slack stand-ups
Deel	Global payroll and compliance. Deel is an EOR that recently purchased a PEO
DocSend	Document sharing and tracking (for a fundraising, DocSend + Dropbox or Google Drive + Google Sheets for tracking)
Docusign	Electronic contracts
Fathom	AI notetakers	Granola.ai	Fellow.app
Expensify	Expense management and tracking	Tentative: Float (Canada)
Figma	Design and prototyping
Flowster	Workflow automation and processes
Freshworks	Customer engagement and support software	Zendesk
GitHub	Software Engineering version control and collaborative software
Google Analytics	Website analysis	Hotjar
Google Workspace	Collaboration and productivity tools (email, storage, etc.)	Dropbox (storage only)
Grammarly	Communication assistant including AI support
Greenhouse	Recruiting and applicant tracking	Breezy	Recruitee
Guideline	401(k) providers	Human Interest
Gumloop	AI-driven workflows; AI agents/operators	Lindy AI
Gusto	Payroll, benefits, and HR services	Humi (Canada)	Rippling
Hubspot	Customer relations management (CRM). To include LinkedIn in your sequences, try Dripify	Dripify
Indinero	Bookkeeping service. The Bench recommendation is tentative	Bench
Intercom	Customer messaging and support
Jenkins	Open-source automation server for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD)
KnowBe4	Security traininig
Linear	Issue tracking and project management
Loom	Video messaging
Luma	Event registration and management
Mercury	Banking for startups and businesses. Consider Mercury credit card too	Bluevine
Microsoft Azure	Cloud computing platform
Microsoft 365	Productivity apps (still use them as good as Google is)
Miro	Online collaborative whiteboard	Excalidraw
NeverBounce	Stand-alone email deliverability solution
Newfront	Insurance brokerage	Founder Shield
Notion	Collaborative workspace for your organization, with built-in AI support
Okta	Identity and access management
PaperStreet	Investor updates
Pave	Compensation information for startups
PitchBook	Data and research for private investments
Quickbooks	Cloud accounting software. Also hearing increasingly about Campfire in this category	Xero
Rippling	HR PEO	Justworks
Ramp	Corporate card and services. Brex may not be an option for smaller startups	American Express	Brex
Scribe	Creation of SOPs and internal documentation
Secureframe	Compliance and security automation
Segment	Customer data platform
Secureframe	Compliance and security automation
Slack	Team messaging
Stripe	Online payment processing and business tools
Supernormal	AI tool for meetings
User Interviews	Customer research
VPM	Virtual mailbox
Vouch	Business insurance. Also Embroker	Zen Insurance (Canada)	Hiscox
Voxer	Team audio messaging
Webflow	Website design and development
WeWork	Co-working (in bankruptcy but still operating)
Wise	Foreign exchange
Wordsmith	I am looking at these AI legal tools now	Pincites
Yubico	Hardware security keys
Zoom	Video conferencing

While the companies aren’t vetted, another interesting place to search for potentially valuable services is the Y Combinator community of companies.

If you’re a startup CEO or founder, and you feel it would be interesting to chat, I’d love to connect. Learn about my services and please reach out.

John Gauch 2023-12-10 John Gauch 2023-12-10

When Don’t You Need a Fractional COO Like Me

It’s usually a bad sign if a product claims that it can do everything for everyone. Swiss Army Knives aren’t really great knives at all, but they do have a Job to be Done—they make great gifts even if they’re barely ever used afterward. I try not to fall into this trap. This blog posts lays out some of the signs that you don’t need the help of a fractional COO at all.

Stop image signifying not everyone needs to consider brining on a fractional COO — Photo by Linda Eller-Shein from Pexels.

In case this is your first visit, I’m John Gauch – a seasoned fractional COO, sales coach and mentor. Over 20+ years, I have applied my growth and operations skills to help dozens of startups, building one high-impact venture to nearly $100M in revenue and a second to exceed that benchmark. I began my career as a tech lawyer in New York City. I developed my expertise in progressive roles in business development, finance, sales, marketing and product, working along the way with companies like Amazon, IBM and Microsoft.

There is no right or wrong reason to want to build a business. Maybe it’s a creative outlet for one person. Someone else might be obsessed with solving a nagging problem they observed out in the world. Perhaps a third person never fit into a traditional corporate job and has a ton to offer in a role and company of their own making.

Business building is about changing the future.

A successful new business makes the world different than it is today, and I’ll be a match for anyone who aspires to have a huge positive impact on the lives of their customers and stakeholders.

This brief post is not about all that. It’s about when it might not make sense to work together formally, even if we are a match regarding outlook and values. You can still try me, but I may not be a fit in either of these two situations.

Situation One

You’ve got all the right team members with the right skills and experience in the right roles. You’re not struggling with scaling yourself, and you’re not missing any key capabilities. You have plenty of time to learn what you need to know. You are only spending time on the activities you alone can do. The team has everything else covered.

AND

The organization is learning quickly and efficiently. You have demonstrable evidence you’re onto a compelling new business opportunity (i.e., traction). You have practices and processes to surface the big assumptions and unknowns you need to test or get clarity on to move the business forward. You’re not struggling with team alignment or direction. You are sure about your next moves.

Situation Two

Your team makes you feel superhuman. You’ve eliminated all the significant unknowns relating to the business. Moreover, you’ve built the supporting infrastructure to scale. These efforts are going smoothly. You are making incremental business improvements. You are not making major shifts. You are not feeling out of control. You’re clearly well on your way to building a successful and sustainable business.

Congratulations to you for all that you’ve achieved so far. It is a real feat.

If you feel like you fall into Situation One or Situation Two, and there are still aspects of the business or your work life that you want to change, I’m always happy to chat. I’m also glad to be in touch purely for information sharing and networking purposes.

John Gauch 2023-11-12 John Gauch 2023-11-12

What I Need to Know to Make Investor Referrals

These are the six things I need to know to make investor referrals for CEOs and founding team members when we haven’t worked together before. Answering these six questions is also a valuable shorthand for quickly vetting any new business idea.

Photo representing investor networking — Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels.

In case this is your first time at the site - I'm John Gauch, a consultant with extensive experience in business operations and growth. I specialize in helping startups implement both strategies effectively. As a fractional COO, I work with founders and CEOs through each step, tailoring solutions to your unique needs and objectives.

I love to be helpful whenever I can be. This is particularly true when it comes to supporting startup CEOs and founding teams. Making introductions is one way I can do that.

The intro could be to someone with expertise in an industry or a specific role (etc.). Sometimes, it's to investors. If I haven't worked with a company, it can be a little challenging to make investor introductions, though.

To address that difficulty, I've summarized the essential information I need to know to introduce a company to investors in situations where I haven't worked with that company for an extended time.

It’s also useful as a shorthand for quickly vetting any new business idea.

There are six questions.

The first question is: What is the problem to be solved?

In particular, I want to know whether an unmet or under-met need is arising in people’s lives. I'm looking for something visceral. I sometimes ask people to imagine the first part of a typical Shark Tank pitch, where the entrepreneur describes some hardship they've experienced or observed. People aren’t going to change their ways if they don’t feel a push arising from an uncomfortable situation.

The second question is connected: What are the existing alternatives to solving this problem?

Maybe it's a current something that falls short in accomplishing a task. Maybe there isn't a good existing alternative at all, and people are silently struggling--unhappy and unable to progress toward the better future they imagine.

The third question is: When does this situation arise?

What's the specific context when this unmet or under-met need shows up? Again, the idea here is to be very specific. Who are the people this happens to? When do they face the situation? What are they doing at that time? Why are they doing it?

You'll notice very little about the product so far, which is by design. Most important is whether you have identified and can describe a compelling problem worth solving. That's what we're trying to understand with these first three questions. Once you've gotten this far, you should tell an in-depth, true story about a struggling situation in which people find themselves.

Read also: How to Learn Jobs to be Done

Now you can answer question 4: What does your product do?

The description should detail how the product bridges the current gap between what people are trying to do and what they can achieve now.

Part five follows: How big is this opportunity?

Is this a $1 million revenue opp or something much bigger? Ash Murray suggests entrepreneurs start with a back-of-the-envelope calculation and then move onto a more detailed estimation, in each case looking at your annual recurring revenue in month 12 of year 3 after your launch. I like his approach.

I created my own step-by-step guide (originally for a University of Hawaii startup program) that you can find here.

Ideally, you’ll also show the total addressable market size, and how it was determined (hint: it should be based in part on the information you’ve described in questions one to three).

The last question, and it’s often a hard one to answer: Why now?

Why could your product only exist now versus a year ago or 10 years ago? There are many intelligent and creative people in the world, and many are struggling to progress in different aspects of their lives. A compelling “why now” answer suggests you’re working on a problem that could only be solved recently. This increases the attractiveness of the idea significantly because it could be a genuine new-to-the-world innovation.

It raises questions if your product could have existed anytime in recent history and hasn't or did but doesn’t now.

Maybe there isn't a problem to solve after all. People have tried and failed, and you’re just the latest making an attempt.
Maybe there's an issue with feasibility. People have tried and failed because the product can’t be built or the business model math doesn’t work.
Maybe the product isn’t differentiated from a bunch of current alternatives. It’s just one more product in a long list of similar products that have been around for a while.

If there’s not a good “why now” answer, it doesn't mean you can't continue to build your business and maybe even thrive, but it suggests it may not be an explosive new opportunity with tons of growth potential.

Could you have discovered an enormous opportunity that others have missed or failed to execute? I suppose so, but in that case, could you explain why that may be.

If I could only ask an entrepreneur one question about their company and product it would probably be this.

Answering these six questions will help ensure your new business is on the right track and help me or anyone else share your message with others.

What's the unmet or undermet problem?
What are the current alternatives that are falling short?
What is the context?
What is the product?
What is the scale of the opportunity?
Why is this idea coming into existence now?

For my covering intro email to investors, I’d also love to highlight the traction you've gotten so far (e.g., notable customer numbers, wrapping up a round, a brand-name investor) and what you’re looking for from the meeting (e.g., a networking meeting to talk about the space you’re operating in or a call to see if they’re interested in participating in a fundraising round). Sot let me know that too.

With this information, I can make an informed and meaningful investor introduction that will serve both parties well.

I’m always happy to chat about business building. Please reach out to learn more about my work or just to be and stay in touch.

John Gauch 2023-09-12 John Gauch 2023-09-12

How to Learn Jobs to be Done

Find out how to get started with Jobs to be Done, do your first JTBD interviews, get colleagues on board with the concept, and deepen your outstanding of the framework, methods and tools--to start and grow a business and align a team.

Photo representing someone navigating their Jobs to be Done learning journey — Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels.

In case this is your first time visiting - I'm John Gauch, a consultant with extensive experience in business operations and growth planning. I specialize in helping startups implement strategies effectively in both areas. In my work as a fractional COO, I work with founders and CEOs through each step of the process, tailoring solutions to fit your unique needs and objectives.

Creating and sustaining a successful business entails doing countless things right. Knowing the Job to be Done (JTBD) of your customers and how your product helps them may not make it easier to start and grow a company, but it will make what you should be doing more obvious--and less subject to guesswork.

Co-architected by Clayton Christensen and Bob Moesta, a "Job to be Done" is the progress someone is trying to make in a struggling situation. Putting the JTBD framework to use effectively requires a commitment to understanding people's lives.

It is less about, "How do I make people want my product?" More about, "How do I make a product people want?"
It is less about, "How do I 'sell' more of my product?" More about, "How do I help people make the progress they are seeking?"

Applying the JTBD framework tells us why people pull your product into their lives, how to communicate with them compellingly, and how to satisfy them after they make a purchase. It can also tell us whether a brand new product idea is likely to work or not. In a May 2012 interview with Horace Dediu, Christensen contemplated: "10 years down the road, people will look back at my research, and they might say this idea of Jobs to be Done is a bigger idea than was 'disruption'," the theory that initially brought Christensen to the business world's attention.

Today, people around the globe put JTBD to use at companies of all sizes across industries.

Not only will applying JTBD and the associated mindset help you grow a business and innovate. When combined with practices and tools such as customer experience mapping and complementary metrics, leaders can articulate a clearer vision, dial in the organization's value proposition, align the team, and develop accountability among team members.

To learn all about JTBD, and how do do and use customer interviews, read my series of posts on the topic at Medium.

If you’re a startup CEO or founder, and you feel it would be interesting to chat, I’d love to connect. Learn about my services and please reach out.

This blog post appeared originally on LinkedIn.

John Gauch 2023-08-29 John Gauch 2023-08-29

Estimating Product Market Opportunity

I often scratch my head trying to understand the market opportunity described in many startup investor presentations. I’m not saying it’s easy to measure by any means, and in this post I lay out an alternative way to to think about and calculate this popular figure.

Image showing common desk tools representing the analysis required to determine a product's market opportunity — Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels.

First time here? I'm John Gauch, a consultant with extensive experience in business operations and growth planning. I specialize in helping startups implement strategies effectively in both areas. In my work as a fractional COO, I work with founders and CEOs through each step of the process, tailoring solutions to fit your unique needs and objectives.

TAM (Total Addressable / Available Market), SAM (Serviceable Available Market) and SOM (Service Obtainable Market) are popular conventions that we all see in investor pitch decks.

TAM can loosely categorize opportunity scale (large, medium, small), for example.

I am really interested in a figure sometimes captured in the SAM or SOM, but this is case by case depending on how people calculate them.

The market opportunity number I like to see is this:

Equation for alternative market opportunity calculation

Specifically excluded from the number:

I do not view this as a static figure. We can update it if/as our customer understanding changes. We can also handicap the number to reflect the likely prospects today, versus those experiencing barriers to purchase due to access, cost, skill or time, for instance.

I am not saying this is easy math or we can do it with absolute, scientific precision, but there is a ton of value in just trying. Calculating market opportunity in this way requires understanding:

the specific problem a product helps customers to solve
the situation when that problem arises
the better way customers are seeking

To uncover these often-hidden customer insights, we can use lean approaches, such as interviews, which go beyond what we can learn in a survey or focus group.

Read also: How to Learn Jobs to be Done

What we discover will inform a lot more than a market opportunity number. It will likely inform our strategy, product and marketing approach, helping us to build and scale our businesses.

If you’re a startup CEO or founder, and you feel it would be interesting to chat, I’d love to connect. Learn about my services and please reach out.

This blog post appeared originally on LinkedIn.