The Signals You’re Missing: Why Great Startups Still Struggle to Break Through
A free checklist to help your portfolio companies avoid early growth stalls caused by weak messaging.
Venture capital is built on finding patterns. As investors, we learn to identify recurring traits in successful teams: founder-market fit, early traction, product velocity, and clear vision. But one pattern is often overlooked, even though it directly affects a startup's ability to win customers, attract follow-on capital, and build a brand that endures.
That pattern is messaging.
Across dozens of early-stage startups, we've seen the same issue repeat. Founders with world-class products and strong teams hit a wall in growth, often just after their Seed or Series A rounds. Sales slow down. Cold outreach underperforms. Prospects ask for more calls but don’t convert. Investors get vague updates about "iterating on GTM."
It's easy to assume the problem is sales process, pricing, or product-market fit. But dig a little deeper and you’ll often find this:
The startup isn’t clearly communicating why they matter.
Messaging isn’t just copy on a website. It’s the connective tissue between a product and its market. It affects how prospects react to outbound emails, how investors perceive traction, and how confidently founders pitch at conferences or on Zoom.
According to research by Gong.io, clarity and specificity in messaging have a measurable impact on conversion rates in sales conversations. Cold email benchmarks show average response rates hover around 1 to 3 percent, but that number can double or triple when the message is framed around a clear, compelling value proposition.
In other words, sharp messaging is not a nice-to-have. It is a force multiplier.
Where Most Startups Go Wrong
In the early days, founders write their own messaging. That makes sense. No one knows the vision better. But as they scale, two problems often emerge:
They never update their core message. What worked to raise a pre-seed round doesn't resonate with enterprise buyers.
They use insider language. Messaging becomes product-centric and full of jargon that makes sense internally but falls flat externally.
The result is friction in every go-to-market motion. SDRs don’t know how to open conversations. Websites don't convert. Sales decks try to do too much.
This is not just a communications issue. It becomes a growth ceiling.
A Checklist for Better Messaging
To help address this early, we've created a free resource:
"The Lean GTM Checklist"
This short, tactical checklist is designed for early-stage founders and GTM leaders. It walks through the five most critical areas startups need to tighten before investing in SDRs or scaling outbound.
What you'll find inside:
A method to define and validate your top buyer personas
How to write value props using your prospect's own words
What urgency triggers actually work in early outreach
How to build an outbound sequence that balances quality and deliverability
Metrics to define what "signal" looks like before you scale
Documentation strategies that make SDR handoff seamless
Financial checkpoints like CAC and funnel-stage conversions that are often skipped
Why This Matters for VCs
If you're actively advising portfolio companies through early-stage growth, this checklist can save time and uncover blind spots. It helps focus founder energy on what actually moves the needle.
And if you’re evaluating new investments, strong messaging is an early signal of operational clarity. It reveals whether a team understands their market, can communicate it, and has the discipline to focus.
As Paul Graham famously said, "Startups live or die by how well they understand their users." We would add: how well they explain that understanding matters just as much.
Download the checklist here and share it with any founder who could benefit from tighter messaging.
Clear, compelling communication isn’t just good branding. It’s good business.