Chapter 4Strategist: Direct Your Product's Go-to-Market

The launch of Pocket 4.0 set the small company on a totally different trajectory. Nate, now CEO of a venture-backed startup, was up at the white board as the team gathered to solve the problem of how to follow 4.0. His marker squeaked as he wrote 5.0's key features on the wall-sized canvas. The affable CTO stared at the whiteboard and asked, “How do we make all this matter?”

Unlike B2B companies, where an analyst can anoint a company “leader” and shape its future, the fate of a consumer app like Pocket's lies in the hands of ordinary people. An app can have a moment but then fade. The team needed a way to boost and grow people's interest. And they needed something press-worthy to compete with hundreds of thousands of other apps vying for attention.

Crowded into the sole conference room with a window, Nate wrote the marketing strategies guiding Pocket on the whiteboard: grow a loyal user base, define and lead the category, and leverage partnerships for growth. Using them as guides to judge each idea, the team agreed an online launch like 4.0's wasn't enough. It wouldn't define the category nor elevate Pocket's importance to potential partners. They needed something that let them tell the whole story of why saving Internet content to view later enabled mobile lifestyles and was good for content creators.

The solution came in an idea internally called Pocket Matters. It was an in-person 5.0 launch event with press, partners, ...

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