I’m working on a new framework. I’m pretty stoked on it, but I want to know what you think.
The framework is born from working with hundreds of startups, and trying to isolate why some startups break through and reach velocity, and why more stay stuck or fail.
Every founder knows the common reasons for startup failure. Low product-market fit. Running out of capital. Poor market timing. And every founder is working super hard to avoid these obstacles.
But in reflecting on the patterns I’ve seen, I realized there’s a different cause of failure all together: startups haven’t properly identified the unique blockers standing between them and product-market fit.
When startups don’t properly diagnose what’s in the way, they stay stuck.
They spend time and capital building or fixing elements of their go-to-market strategy that were never going to create increased revenue.
They don’t spend time on what’s most broken, simply because they can’t fix what they can’t see.
This is what causes startup failure.
In order to find PMF, build a go-to-market playbook that reliably grows revenue, and simply survive, startups must identify and address all blockers at play. This is where my new Twelve Blockers Framework comes in.
Looking across all the startups I’ve worked with, it’s clear that hustle wasn’t the issue. Every founder was pouring energy into finding PMF every single day. But that effort didn’t often yield results – because they’d identified the wrong causes of their lack of traction.
- Some startups were adding more leads to the funnel, but they were targeting the wrong buyer
- Some startups spent time and money to hire a sales team, but they’d hired too early and didn’t have enough clarity to set hires up for success
- Some startups moved into new markets, assuming they were selling to the wrong buyer, but their lost deals were actually due to poor sales processes
This pattern showed up consistently across early-stage startups, spanning industries and ranging from the earliest idea phase through post-seed. If a startup was experiencing low revenue velocity, it was always due to a blocker that hadn’t been acknowledged or addressed yet.
So, let’s let ‘er rip: here are the Twelve Blockers, which I group into three different categories.
Category #1: Target market blockers
1. Selling to too many different buyers: When startups sell to anyone, they exponentially increase the amount of noise that must be sifted through, when the most important thing to do to get the PMF flywheel spinning is to instead isolate strong signal from one key buyer.
2. Weak match between supply and demand: If a team isn’t closing sales repeatably, they may not have gotten their customer’s needs right. It’s easy to attribute lost deals to something like “I didn’t create enough urgency,” or “they lost their budget, but otherwise they really wanted it.” In these cases, what’s usually happening is that the startup has over-estimated their target market's desire to buy, or misunderstood their truest needs.
3. Not enough analysis on demand signal: Without analyzing insights from closed deals (both won and lost), startups miss key insights about what kind of buyers have real demand, and how to properly sell to them. There are so many datapoints to sift through: from sales calls, to deals, to psychographics, to buyer segments. Identifying the attributes of a buyer who simply must have your product can be what takes your startups from low momentum to undeniable traction.
Category #2: Tactical blockers
4. Using GTM channels that don’t match your buyer: The way to bring prospects into the funnel depends a startup’s unique buyer type. Startups shouldn’t build an outreach strategy around email if their prospects don’t use email, or if they send every cold email to the trash. To create a healthy top-of-funnel, startups must reach buyers through channels and activities that are custom-fitted for them.
5. Using GTM tactics that don’t work pre-PMF: Startups often look to GTM tactics that are common for later-stage companies, like automated outbounding or LinkedIn InMail campaigns. However, late-stage companies have product-market fit and clarity on their target market and buyer psychographics. Early startups don't. Even when a company knows their value prop like the back of their hand, automated outreach campaigns have very low response rates. Later-stage companies also have large marketing teams that can manage these lower-yield GTM activities. Simply put, early-stage startups don’t have the same time, runway, or clarity as late-stage companies, so their GTM tactics should look different.
6. Using GTM tactics that don’t work in the age of AI: AI has enabled every company to outbound more. A lot more. This has inundated inboxes, and raised buyers’ defenses and skepticism. Outreach that is undeniably human (whether it’s digital or in-person) is what works. In the age of AI, founders need to stand out from the run-of-the-mill canned outreach that doesn’t work, and orient toward quality, not quantity.
7. Poor sales processes: Most founders have never sold before, and they are highly passionate about the product they’re building. These two factors create the conditions for avoidable selling mistakes: pitching too soon, pushing the product instead of pulling out insights, and doing too little discovery.
Category #3: organizational blockers
8. Team is over-indexed on building, under-indexed on selling: Many founders wait until their product feels ready to start selling, but those startups have then built a product based only on hypothetical data. There is an ocean of difference between a target customer who says “I would use this tool” in a discovery interview, and a target customer who has such a strong need that they will actually spend money and effort to buy a product. More product isn’t the solution startups often think it is.
9.The founder’s leading sales, but not selling enough: Founders should lead sales for as long as possible, because of how valuable the insights from sales calls are. But volume matters. Startups need a meaningful sample size of calls to understand if there’s real demand. Founders must commit time to sales every day, which requires the reprioritization and delegation of other workflows.
10. Sales hires are brought on too early: Founders look to hire sales help, usually a sales rep or a Head of Sales, for a variety of valid reasons: they’re new to selling, there are other competing priorities, they want more expertise on their bench. But more often than not, the startup isn’t actually ready for that hire, because they haven’t gotten clear on who buys and why. If startups don’t have a strong draft of their sales playbook, a sales hire won’t be successful (or happy), and the founder will end up back at square one.
11. Sales hires aren’t the right fit for stage: Once startups have proven clarity on their buyer and a strong sales playbook (which usually happens once they have at least fifty customers that look the same), hiring a rep or Head of Sales should accelerate revenue. Those hires need to be the right fit for early-stage. The playbook is still being built, and there is much unknown. If a founder hires someone who is used to post-PMF clarity, they may struggle to turn results.
12. Not identifying and clearing blockers until it’s too late: I often work with folks who have spent months or years solving for the wrong blockers. At that point, these startups have less runway and time to fix the true blockers at hand, or they might even be in true crisis mode. It’s really tough to know what’s actually standing in the way of revenue growth – it’s like trying to read the label from inside the bottle. Great startups will be proactive about when they need help because it gives them more time and runway to fix what’s not working.
So, what do you think? I’d love to hear your feedback.
One way I’m thinking about integrating the Twelve Blockers is into the Repeatable Sales Club’s Quarterly Intensive. Every three months, I’ll run a four-week intensive that helps members define their buyer, refresh their GTM strategy, and improve their sales script. I think integrating some element of Blocker Diagnosis at the top of the intensive could be really helpful, too. I’m looking at the week of May 11 to start the intensive. If you want to join, folks who come in before that date will get 15% discount for the first six months with the code FIRSTMOVER.
This is Extra Extra, a newsletter about the tactics and mindsets that drive early sales. I’m Caroline Fay, an exited social impact founder who’s spent my career launching and selling new products. I help non-traditional tech founders build sustainable, recurring revenue.
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Caroline Fay
