Why Showing Up Isn’t a Go-to-Market Strategy

I spent two weeks this October at more than 30 events across SF Tech Week, LA Tech Week and TechCrunch Disrupt. Many of the founders I met had flown in from abroad, a lot of them for TechCrunch, hoping to leave with customers, investors or both.

Their plans sounded familiar. Relocate a co-founder. Open an office. Book a booth. Hire someone on the ground. Raise while they’re here.

None of those is a mistake. Being in the ecosystem does real work for a startup. But across every room, the same lesson kept coming back: access isn’t the work, and showing up isn’t a go-to-market strategy.

The short answer: showing up gives you access to investors, partners and sometimes customers, and it puts your thinking under pressure. It doesn’t decide who you sell to, which investors fit, which channels reach them or what story makes them act. That work comes with you, wherever you are.

What does being in Silicon Valley actually do for a startup?

It compresses time. In one week you can meet more investors, operators, partners and peers than in months of cold outreach from another market. The accelerators, trade offices, banks and law firms that specialize in companies like yours are all within a few blocks of each other.

It also applies pressure. In San Francisco, a vague answer doesn’t survive long. Someone will ask who your customer is, why they’d buy now and why you’re the one to sell it to them, often in the first conversation. Founders who spend time here tend to sharpen faster because the questions keep coming.

That pressure is one of the best things about the ecosystem. It pushes you toward the work. It can’t do the work for you.

Are your customers at Tech Week?

It depends on who you sell to. If your buyers are developers, AI teams, startup founders or investors, Tech Week may be exactly their room. For many of the founders I met, it wasn’t.

They sell to food safety directors at manufacturers, heads of inspection at industrial service firms, finance leaders at mid-market companies, hospital decision-makers, and dairy farmers and the dealers who serve them. Those buyers rarely spend a week at startup side events. When I asked one founder how many of their target customers attend events like these, the answer came back immediately: “Absolutely not.”

That isn’t a criticism of the events. It’s a question to answer before booking the next one: is this where my buyer is, or where my peers are? Both can be worth the trip. They’re worth it for different reasons.

Can you raise money by meeting investors at events?

Meeting investors at an event can open a door. What happens next depends on fit, a credible introduction and a compelling investment case.

Many of the rounds investors lead start with someone they already trust: a founder they’ve backed, a co-investor, an accelerator or another ecosystem partner. One investor I spoke with described his deal flow in exactly those terms, with friends at other funds, accelerators and portfolio founders making introductions.

When I asked founders who had come to raise who their ideal investor was, the most common answer was some version of “investors who can add value.” That’s the fundraising version of “we sell to everyone.”

Raising works much like selling, and the same questions apply:

Which investors fit your stage, sector, check size and geography?

Which of them matter most, and in what order?

Who can make a credible introduction to each one?

What does that investor need to believe, and does your narrative get them there?

A good conversation at a conference is a strong start. It doesn’t answer any of those questions for you.

Will moving to the US or hiring locally fix your go-to-market strategy?

Both can help. Neither makes the underlying decisions.

Moving puts you closer to investors, partners and talent, and it signals commitment. But the US isn’t one market. Your first customers might be concentrated in Texas, spread across the Midwest, clustered around hospitals in Boston or reachable from anywhere through a marketplace. One of the clearest plans I heard came from a founder whose customers aren’t startups, so he’s choosing between New York, Austin and Washington, DC, based on where they are. The customer should choose the city.

Hiring has the same shape. Entering a market takes three kinds of work:

deciding: which customer comes first, and how to position and price the offer

building: the message and materials that make the case

running: the outreach, meetings and follow-up

Some people are strong at more than one. Still, don’t assume a single hire will own the strategy, the preparation and the execution. A salesperson on the ground still needs to know who to call, where those people gather and what to say when they get there.

What should founders decide before the next event, move or hire?

Start with the customer. Choosing who comes first is the hardest decision and the one most often put off, because keeping options open feels safer. Every channel decision depends on it.

Once the customer is clear, the channel questions get concrete. Where does this buyer already learn about products like yours? Who do they trust when they evaluate one? How do they buy, and who else has to approve it? Which partners already sit between you and them?

Then make the pieces fit:

A dealer needs a margin your pricing allows.

A marketplace listing needs packaging that matches how the customer buys.

A trade-show booth needs a message for people who have never heard of you.

An investor introduction needs a case built for that investor.

Much of this can start before you travel. Buyer conversations, investor mapping, conference research and partner discussions don’t require an address in San Francisco.

The work comes with you

For me, these two weeks were the right room. The people I work with are founders, and they were all there.

For most of the founders I met, the ecosystem did what it does best: it opened doors and asked hard questions. What they do with both depends on work that no booth, address or new hire can do for them.

If nobody on your team has done that work in the market you’re entering, bring in someone who has. It’s the core of the go-to-market work I do with founders, whether they’re entering a new market, launching a product or moving beyond founder-led sales. That means choosing which customers to focus on, then shaping the positioning, offer, pricing, channels and story that reach them.

If you’re taking a company into a new market, Product-Market Fit Doesn’t Transfer covers why what worked at home has to be re-earned there.