Jennifer Prishtina | GTM Playbook

A Startup's Guide to Marketing

Build the Right Playbook

Marketing
as a Portfolio
of Bets

By Jennifer Prishtina

HEAD OF MARKETING | AUSTIN, TX

Introduction

The Philosophy

Startup Marketing Isn't a Plan. It's an Experiment.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Prishtina — a 3x founding marketer. I build GTM systems from zero.

This is my playbook for building the playbook.

One experience changed how I think about go-to-market: leading marketing for an innovation management startup. Innovation teams treat ideas as a portfolio of bets. Nothing gets funded until there's evidence.

The philosophy just makes good sense — so I started applying these methodologies to marketing. Now, I run marketing as a portfolio of bets.

1

A marketing playbook captures what works: your objectives, audience, positioning, customer journey, channels, and the workflows and metrics that keep it running. But nobody can hand you that playbook.

2

Every playbook is different. The one that worked at your last company was built for a different product, buyer, and market. Copy and paste it, and you inherit answers to questions you haven't tested yet.

3

Startups have to figure it out themselves. This guide shows you how. It uses GTM Sprints as the experimental foundation: small, time-boxed bets that turn hypotheses into evidence, so your playbook is built on real signal from your ICP, not another company's.

4

Inside, you'll find where you need to start: the strategic foundation, the funnel and where it leaks, and the channels worth testing, plus the sprint loop that ties them together. It won't write your whole playbook, but it gets you from audience to channels, and shows you how to build the rest.

Inside the Playbook

Early-Stage GTM Strategies

Four moves that turn guessing into a system.

GTM SprintsThe How-To

The operating rhythm behind everything below — time-boxed cycles where you hypothesize, test, learn, tighten, and repeat. Every strategy gets built and refined through this loop.

01

Strategic Foundation

Make product marketing your first problem to solve — before outbound, content, or paid ever enter the picture.

02

Funnel Repair

Fix your leaky bucket before you scale demand — optimizing retention, conversion, and consideration from the bottom up.

03

Channel Strategy

Find the channels that move the needle — then go all in, using the Bullseye Framework to test before you commit.

How GTM Sprints Work

Treat your GTM motion like a loop — not a launch.

In early-stage marketing, you can't spend months planning a perfect launch. You need signal, fast. That's why I execute using GTM Sprints: time-boxed cycles where you place small bets, learn quickly, and turn what works into a repeatable play.

These sprints can be applied to anything from message testing to finding your channel mix.

How It Works

A sprint has five moves: form one clear hypothesis around a single goal, design and run a focused experiment, capture signal, then iterate, and roll what you learned into the next cycle.

The point isn't the timeline — I've run sprints as short as two weeks and as long as six. It's the tempo: hypothesize → test → learn → tighten → repeat.

The market won't wait for your plan. If you're not learning quickly, you're just guessing very, very slowly — and burning budget while you do it.

AI Take: I've turned the GTM Sprint into a series of Claude Skills that refine the hypothesis, design the experiment, and capture signal.

GTM Sprint Loop

Tempo Matters. Timeline Doesn't.

No. 1: Strategic Foundation

1

Make product marketing your first problem to solve.

At its core, product marketing is understanding your customer, clarifying the message, and mapping it to the moments that matter. It's the strategic work that should happen before execution — and usually doesn't.

When you skip it, you waste budget on activity that creates noise but doesn't convert. You end up with a great pitch deck, a polished website, and a sales team that still can't explain why someone should buy.

Prioritize it and everything else — outbound, content, partnerships, paid ads — gets more effective because it's been pressure-tested in real conversations with real buyers.

AI Take: I built a series of product marketing workshops as Claude Skills, then use their outputs as a "brain" that powers a sales enablement hub. See hub

Foundation-First Strategy

Start here. Iterate often.

Segmentation

The market, divided into meaningful groups to find where you can win.

ICP & Buyer Personas

Who you're for — and how they think, buy, and decide.

Positioning, Messaging & Value Prop

Where you stand, why buyers should care, and the words that make it land.

Competitive Intel

Know how buyers evaluate you versus alternatives — including doing nothing.

Pricing & Product Offering

What you sell, how you package it, and what it signals.

Sales Enablement

The tools your sales team needs to make your story repeatable.

Get these six right before you hire your first demand gen person. They give every channel a fighting chance to convert.

No. 2: Funnel Repair

2

Fix your leaky bucket before you scale demand.

When opportunities feel like they're disappearing or your churn rate is high, the instinct is to pour on more demand—more outbound, more content, more spend. But in early-stage, that's often the most expensive way to learn.

More leads won't save a broken message, a fuzzy ICP, or a demo that doesn't convert. If prospects are stalling, ghosting, or churning, the problem usually isn't volume — it's a leaky bucket.

Start optimizing here: Earn awareness with a narrow ICP and a narrow set of use cases. Nurture consideration by arming your champion early. Convert by shortening your demo to one workflow. Retain your customers by proving value fast.

AI Take: Monitor drop-off by stage in Amplitude. Connect to the Claude API to synthesize signals and surface alerts in real time.

Flip the Funnel

Optimize starting with retention.

Upside-down funnel repair: retention, conversion, consideration, awareness

No. 3: Channel Strategy

3

Find the channels that move the needle — then go all in.

Most founders default to the channels they already know. The Bullseye Framework — from Traction by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares — forces you to consider every traction channel before betting on any of them.

The process: brainstorm how you'd use every channel → rank them into inner circle, potential, and long shots → test your top 3–5 with small, cheap experiments → focus on what moves the needle.

And it will change. The channels that get you to $1M won't be the channels that get you to $10M. Your mix evolves as you scale — so keep running the process.

AI Take: Use Claude Code to build channel agents. Example: enrich leads by connecting to Apollo or Clay via API, auto-route by ICP fit, and trigger sequences in your CRM — without leaving your stack.

Bullseye Framework

Adapted for 2026

Jennifer Prishtina adapted this framework from Traction by Weinberg & Mares

Appendix

Appendix: Glossary

Strategic Foundation

Segmentation

Carving your market into meaningful groups to identify where you have the right to win.

ICP

The specific profile of your best-fit customer — who they are, what they need, and why they buy.

Buyer Personas

The specific people inside your ICP — their titles, motivations, objections, and how they buy.

Positioning & Value Prop

Where you sit in the market and the specific outcomes you deliver that make you worth buying.

Messaging

The language you use to communicate your positioning — pressure-tested in real sales conversations.

Competitive Intelligence

Actively monitoring alternatives — including doing nothing — so you know how buyers evaluate you.

Pricing Strategy

Pricing signals your positioning. The wrong model creates friction at the moment that matters most.

Sales Enablement

The battlecards, talk tracks, and objection-handling tools that make your sales story repeatable.

GTM Infrastructure

GTM Engineering

Using automation, AI, and custom tooling to build scalable, data-driven acquisition and conversion systems.

Content Marketing

Creating valuable content that attracts, educates, and converts — blogs, video, podcasts, webinars, and lead magnets.

Strategic Partnerships

Forming alliances with complementary companies to access their distribution, customer base, or credibility.

Account-Based Marketing

Orchestrating personalized campaigns targeting specific high-value accounts, aligning sales and marketing to convert.

Top Channels for 0→1

SEO / AEO / GEO

Optimizing so customers find you across search engines, AI answer engines, and generative platforms.

Social Selling

A founder or thought leader building their network and presence on platforms like LinkedIn to attract prospects through credibility, content, and direct engagement.

Cold Outbound

Proactively reaching out via email, phone, or DM to generate pipeline — especially high-value in early-stage B2B.

Email Marketing

Building and nurturing a direct line to prospects and customers through sequenced, targeted emails.

Trade Shows & Events

Getting in front of buyers and insiders at in-person gatherings — including hosted and sponsored events.

Additional Channels

Social Media

Building an organic brand presence across social platforms to grow awareness, trust, and inbound interest.

Public Relations

Getting coverage in media, podcasts, and industry publications to build awareness and credibility at scale.

Paid Media

Running paid ads across search, social, and display to reach and convert your target audience with measurable ROI.

Referral Programs

Turning customers, affiliates, and advocates into a structured acquisition channel through incentivized referrals.

Community Building

Creating and nurturing communities — forums, groups, Slack channels, user networks — around your product or problem space.

Open to New Marketing
Leadership Opportunities

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