I recently spoke with Zach Ronski from Fello Agency about medtech marketing. Reflecting on that conversation, I realized we didn’t touch on commercialization more broadly, and how strategy, planning, and execution need to connect if a promising startup with an excellent product is going to maximize impact and scale to a successful exit.

I took sections of that interview and expounded on these topics. I am excited to apply what I’ve learned in my role at Stead Impact Ventures in helping our portfolio companies achieve success.

Strategy is the Foundation

A list of action items is not a strategy. Strategy is the logic of the business – why this company, in this market, with this product, can win consistently. It’s not about doing more, it’s about doing the right things in the right order. A lot of early-stage teams confuse tactics for strategy, and this is very much like confusing busyness with productivity. When we build go-to-market plans without anchoring them in strategy, we end up with heroic effort and limited traction. When GTM and company strategy are aligned, we get real leverage and power.

Companies with superior products often fail to scale because they don’t define what market they should be playing in, what advantage they are building, and who the real beneficiaries of the product are.

Running expensive marketing campaigns before validating the path to purchase, or identifying the ideal customer, or chasing high-profile KOLs who didn’t reflect the day-to-day constraints of real buyers (or behaviors of real users), are not just marketing problems, but are fundamentally from a misalignment between execution and strategy.

Start with Clarity

Who is the economic buyer? What triggers their decision-making? Where will defensibility come from? Product-market fit isn’t just about usage – it’s about a validated pathway to growth. Proving someone can (or even that they will) use it, doesn’t prove that someone will buy it.

Often, the Buyer Isn’t the User

The solution here isn’t more sales reps or more brochures. It’s in messaging and positioning to the right audiences. If you need to appeal to the needs of a procurement team as much as the end-user, we need to frame a narrative around risk reduction and cost predictability, or whatever the buyer actually cares about. Selling value rather than features applies whether or not the buyer and end-user are the same. GTM motion needs to be aligned with the buying logic of the market.

Product Strategy Also Needs to Align

That same principle applies to product development and design. I often push teams to define features as if they were press-releasing them. Why does this matter? What pain does it solve? What’s the proof? Value delivery doesn’t have to be complex, but it does have to be clear. It is a common scenario to go to backlog and triage and realise that more than half of the product roadmap is solving for edge cases surfaced by key opinion leaders, not by the average user. Ensuring that your development path is pointed at the same target market as the company and commercialization strategies is critical and will save months (or years) of wasted engineering time and money. We need to focus on scalable adoption, over the needs of the early adopters.

The Bridge Between Strategy and Tactics

Planning matters too. A strong annual business plan links long-term strategy to near-term execution. It’s not just about setting targets, but about sequencing. If onboarding a customer takes four weeks, don’t try to close five at the same time right away. Get one implementation airtight, then scale. Don’t chase new segments until your messaging resonates with your core customer (which should be clearly defined in line with the company strategy). Go-to-market scale without operational repeatability only stress tests weaknesses.

Revising Plans

Continuously evaluating what’s working and what isn’t is critical. But we need to keep in mind that we can be flexible on tactics but must remain firm on strategy.

If something isn’t working, we don’t pivot the vision – we revise the playbook and recalibrate the approach. Staying disciplined on strategy creates optionality. And optionality, in turn, creates value.

The Importance of Data

Data is now very firmly an asset class in its own right and AI can be embedded into everything. That raises the bar for differentiation. Both buyers and investors are savvier and expect a path to scale and a reason to believe it’s defensible. Your commercial plan needs to reflect your strategic moat, and data acquisition and application requires a specific plan, or you’ll lose them.

I’m excited to keep working alongside our portfolio companies, past, present, and future, to build strong businesses with massive positive impact. Getting to scale is never easy, but by anchoring commercialization to well-defined company strategy, making planning a real discipline, and executing deliberately, I know we can all get there. The impact we make along the way is what makes it all worth it.

 

Aidan Thompson joined Stead Impact Ventures earlier this year and brings his academic background (including a PhD in Neuroscience) and commercialization, product, and marketing experience to support our portfolio companies in scaling to successful exit. Connect with him on LinkedIn.