Harries: Paid marketing before PMF is early B2B startups' biggest mistake
Luke Harries · 20VC: ElevenLabs Head of Growth on Why You Do Not Need PMs | The 7-Part Launch Playbook That Gets 700K+ Views Per Product | The Truth About CAC, Payback & Performance Marketing in AI with Luke Harries · May 23, 2025 · at 1:00:34
Luke Harries is the Head of Growth at ElevenLabs. He discusses early-stage startup growth strategy during a quick-fire segment on 20VC.
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“The biggest mistake I see early founders making, particularly for BtoB, is doing paid marketing too early. Because if you don't have PMF yet, you're not going to get paid marketing working, and you're going to spend all your time and all your engineering time optimizing funnels and conversion and creating these different creative and ads and caring about your rankings and your meta metrics. None of that actually matters, apart from just build an incredible product, and I think the core loop of do incredible launches and build an incredible product is enough for any BtoB or prosumer product to get that initial product market”
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