120: Maja Voje: Untangling Go-to-Market for startup marketers and founders

Humans of Martech

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Maja Voje, Founder of Growth Labs and the Author of GTM Strategist.

Summary: This episode with Maja is a playbook for startup marketers, growth advisors, early stage founders and anyone curious about go-to-market strategies. We untangle the most popular questions about growing early stage startups, from picking the right early channels and leveraging qualitative insights, to uncovering the limitations of willingness to pay and locking down the moving target of product market fit. We also cover how to overcome biases, leverage intuition and simplify all things go-to-market.

About Maja

• Maja started her career bouncing from government consulting, journalist intern and Program Manager roles
• She then kickstarted her entrepreneurial journey and launched Growth Lab, an early version of her consultancy where she moonlighted as a consultant
• She worked at Google on Speech Ops, where she led a team of 9 on a globally coordinated technology development project
• She later worked for various startups across London and Brussels; leading marketing, comms and growth strategy
• She then worked remotely for a web3 blockchain startup based in Hong Kong and took on the role of CMO where she raised over 20M in growth capital and attracted 16,000 early adopters
• She’s a mentor at the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program
• She’s the author of GTM Strategist, a comprehensive guide on launching a new product and gaining PMF
• Today she’s doubled down on her consultancy Growth Lab where she’s worked with brands like Heineken, Bayer, Miro and ProductLed. She’s also taught Growth principles to more than 50,000 students around the world including employees from Tesla, Apple, Deloitte, Adidas…

Maja, what a wild and amazing journey, thanks so much for your time today.

What CMOs and Growth Advisors of the Future Should be Doing Today

Maja shares straightforward advice for those setting their sights on a Chief Marketing Officer or growth advisor role: stick with it. Jumping from one project to another without fully engaging in the entire lifecycle—from planning to execution to scaling—might seem dynamic, but it lacks the depth that comes from true commitment. She believes that the real insight into marketing leadership springs from not just launching a product but also from nurturing it and watching it grow to a stage where it can be replicated efficiently and effectively.

During the interview, Maja described what she calls a "speed learning period." This intense phase of hard work, though daunting, is invaluable. Here, you're not just working; you're absorbing through active participation. It's a time filled with late nights, teamwork, and, yes, lots of pizza and energy drinks. It's about making the most out of the resources around you—mentors, colleagues, and the safety net of not yet playing with your own money.

Maja also touched on the psychological barriers like imposter syndrome that can stunt growth. Her advice? Push past those doubts. Success breeds confidence, and with each win, the blueprint for repeating those successes becomes clearer and more intuitive. She advocates for a mix-and-match approach to professional roles: try a bit of mentoring here, some part-time consulting there, and see what suits you best.

She’s passionate about remaining relevant and adaptive in the fast-paced marketing world. For Maja, it’s not just about keeping up; it’s about continuously applying what works on a larger scale and helping more people with those proven strategies. This excitement for her work shines through when she talks about scaling what works and bringing more value to more clients.

Key takeaway: To really prepare for a CMO role, immerse yourself completely in projects and embrace the learning that comes with each phase. Avoid hopping too quickly from one opportunity to the next without reaping the full benefits of your experiences. Stay versatile, stay engaged, and remember, adapting proven strategies on a wider scale can amplify your impact and keep your skills sharp in a competitive field.

Recognizing the Value of Simplicity in GTM Strategies

When Maja talks about marketing strategies, she hits home the need for simplicity. It's easy for marketers, especially the seasoned ones, to fall into the trap of making things more complicated than they need to be. Maja explains that the smarter you get, the harder it can be to keep things straightforward. You start seeing more angles, more risks, and more possibilities, and suddenly, you're stuck—nothing moves because you're overthinking every detail. This is what Maja refers to as the "curse of intelligence." You know so much that it actually starts to hold you back.

In her view, one of the biggest hitches in deploying marketing strategies is the sheer overwhelm of options. This often leads to what she describes as "analysis paralysis." You end up doing nothing because you're too caught up in your head, dissecting various possibilities and scenarios. And in a world where speed to market is crucial, being stuck in this loop can be disastrous.

But there's more to it. According to Maja, bigger companies often struggle with decision-making because it feels safer to spread the responsibility around. This might mean bringing in various consultants and team members to weigh in, which can drag out the process even further. It’s like trying to cook a meal with too many chefs in the kitchen—everyone has an opinion, but dinner never gets made.

Maja stresses the importance of creating a culture where it's okay to make mistakes. The best teams, she says, treat failures as stepping stones to better solutions. They use a scientific approach, testing ideas, learning from missteps, and gradually getting wiser. It's about creating a space where people feel secure enough to try new things without fear of retribution if they don’t hit the mark right away.

Key takeaway: Keep your marketing strategies simple. Don’t let knowledge become a barrier to action. Encourage a team environment where trying and failing is just part of the process, because that’s how you find what really works. This not only keeps your team moving forward but also ensures you remain agile and responsive in a competitive marketplace.

GTM for Products that are Good but not Great

Maja delves into the raw experiences of working in startup environments where resources are tight but ambitions run high. She shares that the perfect product is a myth that hinders more than it helps. It's a common trap for many startups—they spend too much time polishing a product instead of getting it into the market to start learning from real customer feedback. Maja emphasizes the importance of launching early and initiating those critical feedback loops that inform successful go-to-market strategies.

In her journey, Maja has seen startups falter not just because their products were imperfect, but often because they weren't communicating effectively with the right market segments. She recounts how targeting can make or break the initial traction of a product. Sometimes, a pivot in the target audience, whether geographic or demographic, can dramatically shift the results. Maja advocates for starting small and embracing activities that might not scale initially but can provide invaluable insights and early adopters.

For example, Maja describes a CRM startup's approach to finding its niche. They simply posted an invite to their beta version in a large Facebook group and quickly gathered their first 100 users. This initial user base helped them understand that their product wasn't suitable for e-commerce but was a hit with solo entre...