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For · AI Companies

Most AI companies launch to practitioners. They never reach the economic buyer.

By the time they notice, the sales cycle has taught the wrong habits. Go-to-market strategy for Series A-B AI companies past validation but pre-scale. Category architecture, buyer-role ICP, evaluator trust, and a sales motion that actually closes.

Built for Applied AI CEOs at Series A-B, $1M-$20M ARR. Applies to VPs of Product at AI companies, Heads of Growth at AI infrastructure companies, founding GTM leads, and similar strategic leaders at AI companies past validation but pre-scale.

// Entry for AI companies

Positioning & GTM Sprint

Category narrative. ICP architecture by buyer role. Sales motion definition. Positioning artifacts. 90-day execution sequence.

$7,500 · 14 business days
Start with 4 questions →

Go-to-market strategy for AI companies, built for Applied AI CEOs at Series A-B with $1M-$20M ARR. The engagement sequences category narrative first, then ICP architecture segmented by practitioner, champion, economic buyer, and procurement, then sales motion and 90-day execution. Entry is the $7,500 Positioning and GTM Sprint delivered in 14 business days. Founder-led. Limited capacity per quarter.

47%
Representative outcome

47% reduction in CAC payback period. Series A AI infrastructure company.

90 days from strategy engagement to measurable shift. No change to product. No change to ICP. The fix was the order in which the story was told.

CAC payback 24mo → 12.7mo · 90 days
The Three Failure Patterns

What breaks in AI GTM. Not generic. Specific to this category.

Every stalled AI company engagement traces back to one of these. Most trace back to all three, stacked.

Pattern 01 · Category collapse

No reference frame for the buyer.

They cannot evaluate because nothing in their mental model maps to what you sell. The demo is strong. The follow-up goes quiet. Nobody can describe the product internally to the economic buyer without mangling it.

Pattern 02 · Evaluator trust gap

Practitioners love the product. Economic buyers stall.

Usage metrics look healthy. Pilot adoption is real. Then procurement and security review begins and the deal goes silent for six weeks. The champion was never prepared to defend the purchase outside the practitioner circle.

Pattern 03 · Pricing erosion

Capability improvement outpaces contract cycle.

Every renewal negotiation resets down. The buyer points at free tier and open model progress. Contract length shortens. ACV erodes quarter over quarter. Annual pricing designed for stable SaaS breaks when capability drifts every 90 days.

What the Sprint Covers

Strategy artifacts your team can execute from. No retainer required.

Fourteen business days. One founder. Five deliverables engineered for direct handoff to sales, product, and marketing.

What this looks like in practice

Forty pilots. Zero contracts.

A vertical AI company in the legal workflow space had 40+ active pilots. Zero converted to contract in 90 days. The diagnosis: evaluator trust was strong, champion-to-economic-buyer handoff was broken.

Six weeks after repositioning the sales motion: first $180K contract closed.

Vertical AI · Legal workflow · 6 weeks post-repositioning
What to Expect

One engagement. One strategist in the room.

No account managers. No junior analysts on the file. No handoff to a delivery team three days after contract.

The founder, whose broader work is at stantscherenkow.com, leads every engagement. The strategy does not leave the room.

This is why capacity is limited to a small number of AI company engagements per quarter. The constraint is real, not a sales lever.

Fit

Who this is for. Who it is not for.

// Strong fit

Fit

  • Applied AI CEO, VP Product, or Head of Growth at a Series A-B AI company
  • $1M-$20M ARR, past product-market validation, pre-scale
  • Pipeline exists but conversion is stalling at economic-buyer or procurement stage
  • Pricing is eroding faster than expected at renewal
  • Sales team is demoing features because the category is undefined
  • Willing to rebuild the narrative before activating more channels
// Not fit

Not fit

  • Pre-product-market-fit, still searching for an initial customer signal
  • Research spinout without commercial motion yet defined
  • Under $1M ARR and still running founder-led sales as the only channel
  • Primary need is brand identity or visual system rather than GTM
  • Looking for channel execution without a strategy layer first
  • Not prepared to act on the strategy within 90 days of delivery
Desired outcome

What 90 days from the sprint looks like.

  1. Sales calls open with a category statement, not a product demo. Buyers know within 60 seconds where to place you in their mental model.
  2. The four-buyer ICP architecture is live in the CRM. Pipeline is scored by role. Deals stuck at champion stage are visible and worked separately from deals stuck at procurement.
  3. Security, compliance, and model-behavior artifacts sit at top-of-funnel. The evaluator stack sees the answers before the demo, not after the pilot.
  4. The sales motion has a defined champion-to-economic-buyer handoff. No more pilots that never convert because the economic buyer was never in the room.
  5. Pricing posture accounts for capability drift. Usage-indexed, outcome-indexed, or shortened contract cycle. Renewals stop resetting down.
  6. CAC payback is trending toward benchmark within the quarter. Not because more is being spent. Because fewer deals are burning six months before dying.
Qualify

Four questions. Then the sprint scope.

Capacity is limited. The four questions below route you to the right entry point. All four are required.

Q1Where are you in the GTM motion?
Q2What is your ARR range?
Q3Who is the primary buyer for your product?
Q4What broke first?
YouContact
// Submit routes to the Positioning Sprint scope
Where this starts

Your AI product is real.
Build the motion that reaches the buyer with the checkbook.

Four qualifying questions. If there is fit, the next step is the Positioning and GTM Sprint: $7,500 flat, 14 business days, founder-led. Capacity is limited.

// Limited capacity · AI company engagements per quarter