Free GTM Planner: Prototype Your Go-to-Market in 10 Minutes

A GTM planning tool turns a handful of inputs about your company into a draft go-to-market plan you can argue with. The free AI Startup GTM Planner asks for five things (category, stage, primary buyer, sales motion and monthly budget) and returns a step-by-step 90-day plan, a ranked channel mix, the key metrics to track and a plan you can download. It takes about 10 minutes and it's free.

This post explains what each input does, how the plan gets built, how to pressure-test what comes out, and three worked examples so you can see what a finished plan looks like before you run your own.

What the GTM planner does (and what it doesn't)

The planner is a prototyping tool. It's built for the moment when a founder knows they need a go-to-market plan, has a dozen channel ideas, and needs a structured first draft to react to.

It does four things:

• Matches your category and buyer to the channels that usually work for that combination.
• Sequences the work into a 90-day plan, so setup comes before scale.
• Ranks a channel mix, so you know where the first dollar and first hour go.
• Names the metrics that tell you whether the plan is working.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't know your product, your competitors or your team. It gives you the plan a sensible operator would sketch on a whiteboard in the first meeting. Your job is to edit it with what only you know.

The five inputs and why each one matters

Each input shifts the plan in a specific way. Getting them honest matters more than getting them flattering.

A few notes from watching founders fill in forms like this:

• Pick the category your buyer would use, not the one your pitch deck uses. If customers call you "contract review software," you're vertical AI, even if the engine underneath is an agent.
• Pick the stage you're at, not the one you're raising for. A seed company planning like a Series B company plans too much paid spend and too many hires.
• Pick one buyer. If you genuinely sell to two, run the planner twice and compare.
• Enter the budget you'll actually spend. Not the one in the board deck.

How the planner builds your 90-day plan

The plan follows a sequence I'd use with any early-stage team: foundations first, then a small number of channels, then a review that cuts what isn't working.

Broadly, the 90 days break into three blocks:

• Weeks 1 to 4: Foundations. Positioning, the core pages, tracking and the assets each chosen channel needs.
• Weeks 5 to 8: Run the channels. Steady execution on the top-ranked channels with fixed test budgets.
• Weeks 9 to 13: Review and double down. Compare channels on the metrics the plan named, cut the weakest, put more time on the strongest.

The ranked channel mix sits next to the plan. The top channels are the ones the plan spends most time on. Lower-ranked channels are listed so you know they were considered, not so you run them all.

How to pressure-test the plan before you commit

A generated plan is a draft. Before you share it with your team or board, run these checks:

• Can you name a real person who owns each channel in the top three?
• Does the weekly time required fit your team's actual hours?
• Is there at least one channel that gives a signal within four weeks?
• Is there at least one channel that compounds (SEO, AI search, content, community)?
• Does the budget cover the minimum test size for every paid channel listed?
• Is each metric something you can measure today, with the tools you have?
• Have you written a kill rule for each channel (what result by which week means stop)?
• Does anything in the plan depend on proof you don't have yet, such as case studies or benchmarks?

If two or more boxes stay empty, change the inputs and rerun. Lowering the budget or switching motion often produces a more honest plan than forcing the first one to fit.

Three worked examples of GTM planner output

These are illustrations of the kind of plan the tool produces, written out so you can compare them with your own. The companies are fictional.

Example 1: pre-seed AI devtool

Inputs: AI devtools/API, pre-seed, developers (backend engineers), product-led, $3K a month.

Ranked channel mix:

• Rank 1: Documentation and problem-first SEO
• Rank 2: Developer communities (Hacker News, Discord, relevant subreddits)
• Rank 3: Founder posts on X with technical teardowns
• Rank 4: Open-source example repos
• Rank 5: Email onboarding tied to the first successful API call

90-day plan:

• Weeks 1 to 2: Rewrite the quickstart, add analytics on the first API call, set up Search Console.
• Weeks 3 to 4: Publish five problem-first docs pages and one comparison page.
• Weeks 5 to 6: Launch a Show HN with a reproducible benchmark.
• Weeks 7 to 8: Answer community questions daily and ship one example repo.
• Weeks 9 to 12: One technical post every two weeks and a three-email onboarding sequence.
• Week 13: Review which pages and posts produced active keys.

Key metrics: weekly active API keys, time to first successful call, docs pages ranked in the top 10.

My edit if this were mine: drop item 3 to fourth place unless the founder already has a following. Docs and communities will do more with $3K.

Example 2: seed-stage B2B AI SaaS

Inputs: B2B AI SaaS, seed, business teams (heads of customer support at 100 to 1,000 person companies), founder-led sales, $12K a month.

Ranked channel mix:

• Rank 1: Founder-led LinkedIn content
• Rank 2: Use-case and comparison pages for search and AI assistants
• Rank 3: Targeted outbound to lookalike accounts
• Rank 4: One customer case study a month
• Rank 5: Small LinkedIn retargeting budget

90-day plan:

• Weeks 1 to 2: Five customer interviews and one-page messaging doc.
• Weeks 3 to 4: Three use-case pages and two comparison pages.
• Weeks 5 to 8: Founder posts three times a week, outbound to 200 accounts, first case study published.
• Weeks 9 to 12: Retargeting live on site visitors, second case study, first press pitch around a customer result.
• Week 13: Qualified demos by source, cut the weakest channel.

Key metrics: qualified demos per week, demo-to-pilot rate, outbound reply rate.

My edit: check the outbound domain setup before week 5. A burned sending domain can quietly wreck a quarter.

Example 3: Series A vertical AI

Inputs: vertical AI, Series A, enterprise execs (compliance leads at mid-size fintechs), sales-led, $30K a month.

Ranked channel mix:

• Rank 1: Trade press and earned media
• Rank 2: One industry event per quarter, with a speaking slot or roundtable
• Rank 3: Design-partner case studies
• Rank 4: Account-based outbound to a named list
• Rank 5: Webinars co-hosted with customers

90-day plan:

• Weeks 1 to 2: Trust page covering security, data handling and model governance.
• Weeks 3 to 4: Two case studies drafted with customer sign-off, media list built.
• Weeks 5 to 8: Data-backed story pitched to fintech trade press, event slot confirmed, outbound to 100 named accounts.
• Weeks 9 to 12: Event execution, customer webinar, follow-up sequence to event contacts.
• Week 13: Pipeline by source and pilot-to-paid rate.

Key metrics: pipeline from named accounts, pilot-to-paid conversion, sales cycle length.

My edit: make earned media earn its first-place rank by tying every pitch to a customer result. Compliance buyers forward articles to their boards, which is why it ranks so high. When the story is a funding round or a category launch, that's the point where founders bring me in on AI startup PR.

How to turn the output into a one-page GTM doc

The planner gives you a draft. A one-page GTM document turns it into something the whole team can run.

Download the AI startup GTM canvas and copy these across:

• Your inputs, as written, at the top of the page.
• The top three channels from the ranked mix, with an owner for each.
• The 90-day plan, edited after your pressure test.
• One primary metric with a week-13 target.
• Kill rules for each channel.
• What you're not doing this quarter, and why.

Review it with your co-founder before you share it more widely. Most disagreements show up in the "not doing" box, which is exactly where you want them to show up.

Common input mistakes that skew the plan

Most weak plans come from optimistic inputs rather than a weak tool. The ones I see most often:

• Choosing "sales-led" with a small budget. The plan will assume reps and events you can't afford. If the founder is doing the selling, choose founder-led.
• Entering total burn as the marketing budget. The budget field is for program spend: ads, tools, content, events. Salaries sit outside it.
• Choosing a buyer two levels too senior. If the person who actually signs up is a staff engineer, enter that, even if the CTO signs the contract later.
• Treating Web3 protocol as a catch-all. If your token is secondary and you sell an AI product, pick the AI category and handle the token work separately.
• Ignoring the stage you're actually at. The plan for a Series A team assumes a marketing owner exists. If yours doesn't, choose seed.

Fix the input, rerun, and compare the two outputs side by side. The differences show you which assumptions the plan was leaning on.

When to rerun the planner

Rerun it whenever an input changes. The common triggers:

• You raise a round and your stage or budget changes.
• Your first ten customers turn out to be a different buyer than you planned for.
• You switch motion, for example from founder-led sales to a first sales hire.
• A channel you ranked first underperforms for two full review cycles.

For more context on the choices the planner asks you to make, the guide to AI startup GTM motions explains how to pick a motion, and the marketing plan by category shows the full plan for each AI category.

Ten minutes of honest inputs will get you further than a week of polishing a plan nobody tested.

Ready to draft yours? Open the free AI Startup GTM Planner.