Why Network-Led Growth is the Future of GTM

After launching and scaling Verbatim’s content studio, one thing is clear. 

Network-led growth is the future of early-stage GTM motions for B2B founders.

Every B2B company, ours included, is fueled by networks and network referrals, especially in the early stages.

We're a small company. We launched in January so we've been around for about a year, and since then, our growth has been largely network-driven.

That means that partners in the space, customers, and investors are referring deals, while experts, founders, and operators are also sending potential clients our way.

From my lens as a B2B founder, and having worked with 50+ B2B founders at Verbatim, every single one of us relies on network-led growth from around pre-seed to series A.

Usually, at series A, the company has built out the various sales and marketing functions to drive the pipeline through paid performance, growth, and marketing.

All of those are crucial as a company moves away from network-led growth, but in the beginning, it's really all about your network.

Network-Led Growth in 2022 = Chaotic and Unstructured

Network-led growth as it currently exists happens almost entirely via email, text, Slack messages, and calls – all of which require a lot of manual work for founders. Also, most of this goes down behind closed doors, so it can be hard to codify and organize. 

One of the most notable pain points that we're solving for at Verbatim is that the network-led growth is chaotic and extremely random. 

As it exists, network-led growth is extremely important for the early stages of growth of your business but lacks codification or structure – it's chaotic and completely random.

The Multiple Stages of Solving for Network-Led Growth

To cut through the chaos, we're looking to build products that make network-led growth more structured, organized, and gamified.

Our vision is a simple way for founders to reach out to the right person (be that an investor, operator, customer, or partner) on the right channel, with the right incentive, at the right time.

Over the next few years, Verbatim will launch products to accelerate these go-to-market functions and network-led growth.

But for the time being, organized network-led growth is a completely white space where software, bootstrap, and even service-oriented products like the one we run at Verbatim all tie into accelerating network-led growth for B2B companies.

Network-led growth is the present, and it will be the future – at the early stages of every company, it's really the only way to grow.

Surfacing Networks with Social-Proof Led Content

One of the lowest lift paths to activating and strengthening network nodes is through content.

That’s what we do at Verbatim – we identify the high-profile nodes in your network for you to activate by spotlighting them with content.

As a B2B business ourselves, we’ve seen incredible value in having a lot of the conversations with advisors, investors, and partners “in public” via editorial content instead of keeping those conversations completely private via text and email.

This content facilitates introductions and illuminates those conversations in a way that other people can see and get interested in – which is the first step in generating pipeline.