According to TechCrunch, in the season finale of the Build Mode podcast, host Isabelle Johannessen interviewed Paul Irving, partner and COO of GTMfund. The discussion centered on actionable go-to-market strategies for early-stage startups competing in the AI era. Irving argued that distribution has become the final remaining competitive moat, as technical advantages now disappear in months instead of years. He emphasized that every company needs a unique GTM motion built for its specific ideal customer profile. The conversation also highlighted the critical power of warm-introduction mapping and building authentic relationships with operators who can open doors.
Distribution is the new moat
Here’s the thing: Paul Irving’s core argument is brutally simple and probably correct. In a world where any technical feature can be copied by a well-funded competitor in a few months—or replicated by an open-source model in a few weeks—what do you actually own? Your code? Not for long. Your data? Maybe, but that’s getting commoditized too. The only thing that’s genuinely hard to copy at scale is a deeply ingrained, efficient, and authentic way of reaching and selling to customers. That’s your distribution. That’s your moat. It’s not a sexy, venture-capital buzzword like “proprietary AI,” but it’s what actually pays the bills. Basically, if your entire strategy hinges on a technical lead, you’re building on sand.
GTM is not one-size-fits-all
And that’s why Irving’s point about a unique go-to-market motion is so critical. You can’t just look at what Salesforce did or copy HubSpot’s playbook. Your motion has to be a perfect fit for your specific Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Are you selling to DevOps engineers? Your entire outreach, messaging, and sales process will look radically different than if you’re selling to marketing VPs. This is where so many startups fail. They get the product right but treat “sales” as a generic afterthought. They try to force a square peg into a round hole because some blog post said “product-led growth” is the only way. Nope. You need a motion as unique as your product claim to be.
The power of real relationships
The most human part of the discussion, though, was about warm introductions and authenticity. Irving pointed out the altruistic nature of the startup ecosystem—founders and operators who genuinely want to help. But the key is approaching with curiosity, not a transactional ask. This isn’t about spamming LinkedIn connections. It’s about mapping your network, understanding who knows who, and building a real relationship before you need a favor. It’s slow. It’s hard to scale. But in an era of AI-generated spam and cold outreach bots, authentic human connection might be the most powerful distribution hack of all. Think about it: whose email are you more likely to open?
What this means for builders
So what’s the takeaway for an early-stage founder? I think it means you need to invest in your GTM strategy with the same intensity you invest in your product roadmap. From day one. Your first sales hire might be as important as your first engineer. You need to obsess over your ICP, not just your user persona. And you have to believe that how you go to market is a core part of your product’s value, not just a necessary evil. The companies that win in this AI-saturated market won’t be the ones with the cleverest algorithms. They’ll be the ones who figured out how to talk to the right people, in the right way, at the right time. Everything else is just a feature waiting to be copied.
