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Zero to Launch · Session 01 · Wed Aug 5, 2026

GTM Engineering

Go-to-market engineering, end to end

Ship AIPhoenix, ArizonaPress → to begin

Ship AIGTM Engineering01/22

You can ship code forever and never launch anything.

That's the room. That's why this program exists.

Ship AIGTM Engineering02/22

What this program is

  • Six Wednesdays, then a weekendAug 5 to Oct 14, then Oct 16–18. Free, in person, teams of 1–4.
  • You launch something you already builtMost hackathons ban existing projects. This one rewards shipping the thing that's been sitting at 90%.
  • Nothing is required of you in the roomSit and watch, or build along. Nobody is put on the spot.
Ship AIGTM Engineering03/22

Tonight is the map. Everything after this hangs off it.

Ship AIGTM Engineering04/22

Tonight

  1. 01The three acts — Launch, Grow, Optimize
  2. 02Funnel modeling, and which numbers lie
  3. 03GTM engineering vs. marketing
  4. 04B2C and B2B, side by side
  5. 05Program mechanics — 15 minutes, then it's out of the way
Ship AIGTM Engineering05/22

Where we are

  1. Aug 5GTM Engineering
  2. Aug 19Zero to $3,000
  3. Sep 2Outbound Agents
  4. Sep 16Unfair Advantage
  5. Oct 7Ship the Surface
  6. Oct 14Agentic Growth
  7. Oct 16Hackathon

Six Wednesdays, then the weekend. Every session is free and standalone — you don't have to attend all of them to compete in October, and catching up late is explicitly allowed.

Ship AIGTM Engineering06/22

Act one

The three acts

Every go-to-market motion is one of three jobs. Doing them out of order is the most common way a good product stays invisible.

Ship AIGTM Engineering07/22

Launch → Grow → Optimize

  1. LaunchGet it in front of anyone at all. The bar is a stranger using it, not a perfect product.
  2. GrowFind one channel that repeats. One — two at once and you learn nothing from either.
  3. OptimizeSqueeze the funnel you already have. Cheapest act, and the one everybody starts with.

The failure mode is jumping to act three. You cannot optimize a funnel nobody is in.

Ship AIGTM Engineering08/22

Most builders pick tactics before they have a model.

An ad account before a funnel. A blog before a keyword. A pricing page before unit economics.

Ship AIGTM Engineering09/22

Act two

Model the funnel

Not the six stages from a template. The four you can actually put a number against this week.

Ship AIGTM Engineering10/22

Measure every stage, not the last one

  1. Awarenessimpressions, referrers
  2. Interestsessions, time on page78%
  3. Activationsignup → first real use67%
  4. Revenuefirst paid event65%
  5. Retentionweek 4 still here65%

Revenue is a lagging number. It tells you something broke, never where. The lit stage is where most builder funnels actually leak.

Ship AIGTM Engineering11/22

Two ways to do this

Marketing

  • Buy ads
  • Hire salespeople
  • Agency retainer
  • Attribution by vibes
  • Scale by spending more

GTM engineering

  • Programmatic pages
  • Outbound agents
  • Automated attribution
  • Community as a funnel stage
  • Scale by shipping more

One of these is a budget. The other is a codebase. You already know how to build a codebase.

Ship AIGTM Engineering12/22

One product, many routes to market

GTM engineering is the work of splitting one thing you built into every surface a stranger might find it on — and instrumenting each one so you know which of them worked.

  • Search
  • Community
  • Outbound
  • Paid
Ship AIGTM Engineering13/22

Act three

The fork

Nearly every framework splits at B2C and B2B. You get a dedicated session on each — the next two Wednesdays.

Ship AIGTM Engineering14/22

B2C and B2B, side by side

B2CB2B
FunnelAwareness → Activation → Revenue → ReferralAwareness → Evaluation → Decision → Expansion
ShapeMany users, small chequesFew customers, large cheques
The workChannels and creativeNamed accounts and conversations
Time to first saleMinutesWeeks
Your session02 — Aug 1903 — Sep 2

Attend both anyway. Plenty transfers, and the one you think you are is sometimes wrong.

Ship AIGTM Engineering15/22

Do this tonight

~/your-product

/gtm-map

reading package.json, README.md, app/proposing 5 funnel stages…wrote 01-roadmap/README.md

Reads your repo and your site first, proposes the funnel stages that apply to you specifically, calls the fork, and writes it to 01-roadmap/README.md.

Argue with it. If it proposes a stage you'll never measure, cut the stage.

Ship AIGTM Engineering16/22

If you already have traffic

~/your-product

/funnel-audit

pulling 30d of events…stage 3 → 4 converting at 6%wrote 01-roadmap/audit.md

Finds the stage that's actually leaking, which is almost never the one you assumed.

Ship AIGTM Engineering17/22

Program mechanics

  • Everything is open sourceThe template repo, the skill files, these slides. Take them and run the process years from now if you want.
  • Attending is open to everyoneCompeting in October needs a registered repo and a deliverable per workshop. Catching up late is fine.
  • Build window opens Aug 3Existing products welcome. That's the whole point.
  • Five prize categoriesFour judged, plus a room-voted Crowd Favorite — the one you can win alongside a judged category.
Ship AIGTM Engineering18/22

How October is scored

  1. Shipped40
  2. Receipts30
  3. Growth engine20
  4. Craft10

Shipped is the biggest band on purpose — this is a launch weekend, not a build weekend. Receipts is the one most teams under-invest in, and it's worth almost as much.

Ship AIGTM Engineering19/22

Work backwards from October 16

  1. AugRoadmap, first channel, funnel instrumented.
  2. SepPipeline or paid test. Positioning settled.
  3. Oct 7Site deployed, profiles fixed.
  4. Oct 16It goes public.

Ten weeks. A dated list with fewer than ten items on it — longer than that and it isn't a plan.

Ship AIGTM Engineering20/22

Feel the fear and do it anyways.

Ship AIGTM Engineering21/22

Next

Zero to $3,000 — Wed Aug 19, CEI Gateway

One business, one dashboard, no redactions. $0 to $3,000 in 30 days with zero paid, then scaling into paid profitably.

shipai.club · Free, always

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