2026-06-16-q2-goals-gtm

Decision: Q2 goals & GTM plan (June 2026 sprint planning)

Set in the 2026-06-16 Vincent + Elliot goals/sprint-planning session (~1hr before the awaze call). Ladders up to the offering/pricing/fundraise posture in 2026-06-15-offering-pricing-fundraise.

Canonical living doc: Quarterly Goals · June–August 2026 (Google Drive, last edited 2026-06-16) — the brain holds the durable decisions below; the doc holds the live goal/objective/KPI detail + a Master Assumption Map. Jan goals it carries forward: prove users will pay, get real customer feedback, prove organic optimisation works with direct-booker.

Current truth

• Paying-customer target: 5 in Q2 (June–Aug, ~10 weeks), stretch to 10. Elliot proposed 30; Vincent rejected it — not a feasibility doubt but a deliberate choice: 30 would spread them too thin, undermine support + feedback quality, and scale before the tech is proven. Grow only on proven value; the rest go on a waitlist. Quality bar for first customers: good name recognition, high case-study potential, strong feedback loops, personal relationship (“investable case-study-creating customers”). direct-booker is the anchor objective.
• Convert existing accounts (Q2 targets, from the goals doc): Statista → onto platform + wider agent services; mitchells-and-butlers → build ChatGPT Apps + close the advisory; lucid → onto platform priced higher (expand or cut); ManpowerGroup → open a ChatGPT-App / MCP discussion; Stellantis → close an MCP-Apps build. See pipeline.
• Goals → objectives → KPIs structure restored (the January model): top-level goals carry KPIs; objectives are actionable workstreams mapping to goals (Direct Booker, demo video, BD outreach); sprint tasks sit under objectives. Objectives must be measurable + plannable. Sprint detail lives in Linear, not here.
• Q2 KPI targets (from the goals doc): a ~$52k/mo blended run-rate ≈ $2,370 platform MRR (30 × $79) + ~$50k services MRR (≈ 10 × $5k or 5 × $10k); the registry tracker grows ~50 → 200+ daily users and 58 → 200+ subscribers (the primary lead magnet); “own the category” = +50% impressions on LinkedIn / X / YouTube. Targets to steer by, not committed forecasts.
• Brand / company name: decided to decide — no name chosen yet (must-have; Elliot leans critical). The confusion is costing them: an event listed “ghostteam.ai” not the product; podcast intros need lengthy explanation; “everyone thinks we’re a ghost team.” Direction: one umbrella brand for Ghost Team + Agent Discovery, short / brandable / pivot-proof, likely .ai if the right .com is unavailable. Candidate positioning: “show up and sell where your customers already are” with ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini visual context. “ADO” as a term is being questioned. SEO is blocked until the domain/name is decided. Constraint: they can’t drop the ghostteam.ai Google/email identity (locked into 100+ services) — so “what happens to Ghost Team” is a sub-question. Durable naming detail lives in naming-and-positioning.
• Offering clarity (critical): a two-sentence company description (YC standard) that states what Ghostteam does — and, by implication, what it doesn’t. “Agent discovery intelligence” is too confusing as current framing. The 2026-06-19 positioning direction is to sell the business outcome first — show up, get found, and sell in AI clients — with build as an on-ramp lower in the journey, not the top-level value proposition. The productized tiers are named in the goals doc — Visible / Compete / Optimize — plus a wider “wrapper” agent-services offer (~$5k–$10k/engagement); see 2026-06-15-offering-pricing-fundraise.
• Content / growth — objective: 2–3 BD-aligned, data-led formats that get traction. Pillars = build-in-public (weekly shipping cadence), data/insight posts (tag brands on score jumps = indirect BD), Codex/AI hacks on X (audience growth). The “State of Agent Discovery” data report doubles as a BD lead-gen asset (talk to whoever downloads it). Audience is a real long-term moat but not the Q2 lever — the first 5–10 customers come from direct outreach/referrals, not reach; content must not eat more than ~1hr/day of Elliot. Any research stream must be tightly structured and end as a published asset or a product input.
• BD outreach learning (2026-06-19): generic report/link DMs underperform even when connections accept. Lead with a striking, category-specific fact (“you’re ranked #7”, “Kiwi is getting 500k sessions/month”) and use public category snapshots/tagging to create notifications and curiosity before asking for a call.
• Two email lists: the daily registry/newsletter list, and a separate, opt-outable product-updates list — so product updates don’t force onto newsletter subscribers. Communicating with existing leads is critical (“too much effort goes into acquiring them to let them go dark”).
• Explainer / demo video (must-have): 15–40s, built with Remotion + Codex; for the website + outreach links; filed under a “go-to-market build” workstream, not product.
• Priority labels (Jan model — critical / must-have / nice-to-have): critical = Direct Booker proof, two-sentence offering, lead/product email; must-have = brand decision, explainer video, public product thesis (3–5 MCP-Gem-style blog posts); nice-to-have this quarter = Alpic distribution partnership, SEO automation, brand-awareness events, the 200-users target.

Open questions

• Final company name + a replacement term for “ADO” (both deferred, decided-to-decide).
• KPI numbers now sourced from the goals doc (~$52k run-rate breakdown; tracker 50→200+ daily / 58→200+ subs) — still to firm up after the service/offering pricing settles.
• Label tensions left unresolved: brand (must-have vs critical), Alpic partnership (nice-to-have vs must-have-territory), the data report (must-have vs nice-to-have).
• Vietnam dev sustainability — see quan.

Timeline

• [2026-06-23] (call — “Directbooker next steps”, Vincent + Elliot) Naming progress (still open): Elliot is iterating names in a Word doc (in the naming chat), bolding directions he likes — leaning “Elevate” and “Actra” (5–6-letter variants, working with Codex). Agreed tactic: rather than fight the free domain space, buy from a secondary domain marketplace (people hold good domains as investments) — budget ~$500 for a strong domain; Vincent to find the marketplace via Reddit. (Richer naming detail expected from the pending 06-19 brand-naming + website-messaging transcripts.)
• [2026-06-19] (internal discussion — Direct Booker/category/BD sync) Outreach lesson: ~10 direct attempts to app/company contacts were not converting; accepted connections and “send more info” replies still did not click report links. Hypothesis: recipients write it off as generic SaaS unless the connector angle is made concrete. Adjusted direction: open with one striking ranking/traffic fact, post weekly category snapshots that tag relevant apps, use email as fallback when LinkedIn stalls, and treat events/warm intros as longer-term channels.
• [2026-06-19] (internal discussion — duplicate recordings from Elliot + Vincent) Brand/website session confirmed one umbrella brand direction and created the current positioning spine: “show up and sell where your customers already are,” aimed at marketing/growth/product buyers rather than engineering-first build buyers. Naming criteria and website narrative now live in naming-and-positioning.
• [2026-06-16] (internal discussion — goals/sprint planning) All the above agreed, ~1hr before the awaze call. Strong validation: Kiwi.com ~500k Claude sessions/mo. To be split into Linear projects.