Before Series A, your budget isn’t strategy—it’s survival. Every line item is a bet. The question is whether you’re betting on activity, or outcomes.
The best GTM teams don’t start with the spreadsheet. They start with the funnel. Here’s how to budget with data before you have much of it—and cut the fluff before it cuts you.
Anchor Everything to Pipeline Math
Start with what you need: revenue or pipeline target. Then reverse it.
How many qualified ops do you need? At what close rate? What’s the typical deal size?
Then: how many meetings does that take? And how many leads to get those meetings?
Now you’re not just budgeting for “marketing.” You’re budgeting for “300 leads to land 30 meetings that turn into $300k in pipe.”
Separate Experiments from Engine
Not every spend needs to scale. Early GTM budgets blur this.
Your newsletter platform? Engine. Your paid LinkedIn test? Experiment.
Label them. Track ROI fast. Don’t optimise experiments too early—and don’t underspend on the engines that work.
Budget by Stage, Not Channel
Don’t ask “how much on events?” Ask “how much to generate first-touch awareness?” “How much to convert trial users?” That’s how you figure out if your funnel is balanced or bloated.
It also makes budget reviews sharper. If paid is dragging but conversion is strong, you’ve got a lead problem, not a pitch problem.
Track What’s Real
Don’t track MQLs. Track leads that booked a meeting.
Don’t track followers. Track traffic that converted.
Pre-A teams don’t have room for proxies. Build your stack to report only what changes headcount, revenue, or investor confidence.
Invest in the Feedback Loop
Set aside time and tools to actually look at the data weekly.
Could be a shared sheet. But if you don’t close the loop, you’re not doing data-driven anything.
Most GTM budgets at this stage aren’t too small, they’re just scattered. Put the money where the funnel breaks. Skip the rest.
Data doesn’t mean dashboards. It means decisions. Make yours faster. Make fewer bad ones. That’s how you stay in the game.
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