How Clarus wants to fix one of Africa’s most expensive startup mistakes

Many startups don’t fail because of bad products but because they never figure out how to sell and scale them. Clarus is building the GTM systems that help founders turn great ideas into repeatable growth.

On the Clarus website, a simple statement greets visitors: Building a great product is hard, but it is just the beginning. A bulk of the work is building out systems to get this amazing product to your users. 

It’s an idea most founders come to appreciate, often painfully, only after launch. When startups fail, the post-mortems tend to circle familiar explanations: a lack of funding, poor macroeconomic conditions, co-founder disputes, or the absence of a real market need. Yet, one critical factor — the lack of a clear, executable go-to-market (GTM) strategy — is frequently underplayed or misunderstood. 

Many startups don’t fail because they built the wrong product; they fail because they never figured out how to consistently sell, distribute, and scale. This is the gap Clarus wants to fill.

Why early-stage startups struggle with GTM

For many early-stage startups, go-to-market is an afterthought. Founders spend months, sometimes years, building a product, refining features, and chasing technical excellence. 

The assumption for such founders is that adoption will be a natural consequence of having a great product. In reality, that’s rarely the case. Even the most critical solutions struggle without a clear plan for how they will reach, convert, and retain customers.

One reason startups repeatedly make mistakes with their GTM strategies is resource constraints. Where founders must manage capital allocation prudently, GTM strategies are often pushed to the back burner. The result is a patchwork of experiments. Ads here, cold emails there, influencer marketing, and a few partnerships that never quite coalesce into a repeatable system.

There’s also a knowledge gap that forces teams to adopt ineffective strategies. Many startups go to market without an understanding of who their ideal customers are. Early traction, often driven by friends and family, can be misleading, leading founders to mistake it for product-market fit. 

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