Contributors:
Amol Ghemud Published: February 22, 2026
Summary
Series B GTM is about establishing market dominance in your category. You’ve scaled one motion and won your beachhead market. Now you expand by adding complementary products, entering adjacent markets, or going upmarket to enterprise. Your focus shifts from growth rate to unit economics, efficiency, and net dollar retention (NDR).
Build a world-class GTM leadership team with separate heads for sales, marketing, and customer success. Establish category leadership through thought leadership and analyst relations. Plan for geographic expansion and segment-specific motions (enterprise vs. SMB). Build defensible moats through product integrations, switching costs, and land-and-expand strategies. The best Series B companies are not the fastest growing. They’re the most efficient growers. A company growing 15% month-over-month with 50% net dollar retention is more valuable than a company growing 30% month-over-month with 0% NDR.
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Series B GTM is about establishing market dominance in your category. Learn how to expand into adjacent markets, build world-class GTM leadership, and become the obvious category leader
At Series A, you’re proving a single motion works. At Series B, you’re proving it scales to become a category leader. This requires a fundamental shift in strategy from “grow fast” to “build a defensible business.”
Your metrics change, too. Series A cares about growth rate and CAC payback. Series B cares about net dollar retention and operating leverage.
Building your GTM leadership Team
At Series A, a single leader (often the founder) managed all GTM. At Series B, you need specialized leaders.
The modern GTM org structure
A healthy Series B company has separate leadership for:
Sales (VP Sales or Chief Revenue Officer).
Marketing (VP Marketing or CMO).
Customer Success (VP Customer Success).
Product (VP Product, which influences go-to-market).
These should all report to the CEO or a Chief Revenue Officer.
The temptation is to hire one “revenue leader” who owns it all. Don’t. This creates silos and bottlenecks. You need specialists.
What to look for in GTM leadership
At Series B, you need leaders with track records of scaling. They should have experience at a company that grew from $1M to $10M+ ARR and succeeded.
Key qualities:
They should understand your market and have battle scars from the battles you’re about to fight.
They should be comfortable operating in a growing, changing environment.
Avoid hiring leaders who’ve only worked at late-stage companies. Their playbooks won’t work in your environment. Early growth comes from speed and scrappiness. Late-stage execution is won through process and scale.
Multi-product and multi-segment GTM
At Series A, you dominated a single segment with a single product. At Series B, you expand through multiple products or segments.
1. Land-and-expand strategy
Instead of building separate sales motions for each product, use a land-and-expand approach. You land a customer with your primary product (usually at a lower price point targeting lower-cost buyers). Then you expand their use across other products as needed.
Example:
You sell a marketing analytics platform to marketers. Once they’re a customer, you sell to their finance team (budget optimization) and to their data team (data warehouse). The same customer pays 3x more because they’re using 3 products.
This strategy requires two things:
Product integration.
Adoption playbooks.
Your products need to work well together. And you need a customer success team that can identify expansion opportunities and help customers adopt new products.
2. Enterprise vs. SMB segment strategies
Most Series B companies find they’re stronger in one segment (enterprise or SMB). Rather than trying to serve both equally, double down on your strength and build separate motions for the other segment.
Enterprise and SMB require different GTM:
Enterprise needs AE-based sales, custom solutions, and long contracts.
SMB needs self-service or inside sales, standard solutions, and flexibility.
Trying to do both with the same sales team dilutes focus and results in losing to specialists in each segment.
Build an enterprise-focused team with long deal cycles and high ACV. Build an SMB-focused team with short sales cycles and high volume. Let each team optimize for their segment.
3. Vertical expansion strategy
You’ve dominated one vertical (say, SaaS). At Series B, expand to adjacent verticals: fintech, healthtech, edtech.
Each vertical may have unique needs, buyer personas, and competitive dynamics. But you can create vertical-specific sales teams and marketing messages without rebuilding your entire GTM.
Hire vertical-specific AEs and marketers who understand the industry language, buying process, and competitive landscape. Give them autonomy within your core playbook.
Operating Efficiency and Unit Economics
At Series B, the business begins to show signs of whether it can be profitable. Unit economics become critical.
CAC payback and expansion revenue
Your CAC should decrease as you scale (better leverage of marketing spend, higher sales productivity). Your target for Series B is CAC payback of less than 12 months, ideally less than 9 months.
But CAC payback is only part of the picture. What matters more at Series B is expansion revenue and NDR.
NDR (net dollar retention) is the percentage of revenue from a cohort of customers at the start of a period that remains in a later period, including expansion.
Example:
You had $100K ARR from customers in Jan 2025. By Jan 2026, those same customers have $130K ARR (you lost some to churn, but others expanded). Your NDR is 130%, which is very healthy.
High NDR (120%+) means your product is sticky, and customers want to expand. This is more valuable than pure growth rate.
Building leverage into your GTM
At Series A, every dollar spent on GTM returned 2-3x in year-one revenue. At Series B, efficiency compounds. You should target 3-5x return on year-one GTM spend.
Inbound efficiency (content and brand driving leads at low cost).
These improvements compound. A 20% improvement in each of these four areas means a 100%+ improvement in overall GTM efficiency.
Geographic and international expansion
At Series B, you may expand internationally or to new geographies within your country.
When to expand geographically
Only expand to a new geography after you’ve achieved market dominance at home. Most Series B companies make the mistake of going international too early.
Dominate North America first, then expand to Europe, and finally to Asia. This sequential approach works better than trying to be everywhere at once.
Geographic expansion becomes strategically important at Series B because customers in different regions have different needs, regulations, and competitive dynamics.
Building a regional go-to-market
Each geography needs a localized GTM. In Europe, you might need separate sales leadership and marketing teams because regulations, sales culture, and buyer behaviors differ.
Localize your GTM without reinventing it. Keep core messaging and product strategy consistent. Localize sales teams, customer success, and marketing to regional norms.
Building category leadership and defensibility
The ultimate goal of Series B GTM is to become the obvious category leader. This requires more than product and sales.
Analyst relations and thought leadership
At Series B, invest in analyst relations. Get coverage from Gartner, Forrester, or industry-specific analysts.
Being in the leader quadrant on a Magic Quadrant is worth millions in marketing value and sales acceleration. Analysts influence buying decisions, especially for enterprise deals.
Build your founders and leaders as thought leaders in the category. Write books, speak at conferences, and appear on podcasts.
Product integrations and switching costs
Build integrations with tools your customers use. If your competitors can’t integrate with the same ecosystem, you have a moat.
Design your product to become more valuable the longer customers use it (switching costs). This might be through data accumulation, customizations, or integrations that would be expensive to rebuild elsewhere.
Category: education and demand creation
At Series B, you can influence the entire category conversation.
Strategies:
Sponsor industry awards.
Create standards.
Host conferences.
Educate buyers about the problem space and position your solution as the obvious answer.
This shifts demand generation from “win deals” to “create demand.”
Series B Metrics That Matter
Shift your focus from growth rate to these more important metrics:
Net Dollar Retention (NDR): 120%+ is excellent. This means existing customers are expanding. This is your most important metric at Series B.
CAC Efficiency: CAC should decrease or remain flat as you scale. Payback should be below 12 months.
Gross Margin: Should be 70%+ for software. If it’s below 60%, you have a product cost or delivery problem.
Magic Number: (Quarter-over-Quarter Growth in ARR) divided by (Sales and Marketing Spend in the previous quarter). Should be 0.7 or above.
Expansion Revenue: What percentage of new revenue comes from existing customers? 30%+ is very healthy.
Customer Concentration: No single customer should be more than 10-15% of revenue. Over-concentration creates risk.
Rule of 40: Growth rate plus operating margin should equal 40+. This balances growth with efficiency.
Common Series B mistakes
Mistake 1: Hiring executives too fast
The pressure to scale after raising capital is intense. Most Series B companies hire 3-5 new executives in the first 6 months. Most of these don’t work out.
Hire slower. Each executive should be proven with your team before promoting or replacing them.
Mistake 2: Expanding products too aggressively
You have capital and resources. The urge to build 3 new products is strong.
Most Series B companies would be better off doubling down on their core product and expanding it adjacent to existing customers rather than building entirely new products.
Mistake 3: Losing focus on efficient growth
At Series A, growth rate is more important than efficiency. At Series B, efficiency becomes more important.
Still grow fast, but not at the cost of unit economics.
Mistake 4: Ignoring customer success during sales push
Series B often means aggressive hiring of sales teams. If you don’t hire customer success at the same pace, churn spikes and your unit economics collapse.
Always hire 1 CS person for every 2-3 salespeople added.
Mistake 5: Building new GTM motions without proof
You want to sell upmarket or enter a new vertical. Before building a full team, prove the motion works with 2-3 pilot customers.
Too many Series B companies hire 5-person enterprise teams that close zero deals in year one.
Series B builds market leadership
Series B is where startups become companies. You shift from startup metrics (growth rate) to business metrics (unit economics, NDR, efficiency). Build a world-class GTM leadership team with separate heads for sales, marketing, and customer success.
Expand strategically through land-and-expand with existing customers, vertical expansion, and enterprise upmarket motion. Focus obsessively on NDR and expansion revenue. Build category leadership through thought leadership, analyst relations, and product integrations.
upGrowth helps scaling companies build market-leading GTM strategies, expand into new segments and geographies, and optimize for efficient profitable growth. Our go-to-market strategy services specialize in Series B and Series C companies transitioning from startup to business metrics.
Target: 9-12 months. Acceptable: 12-15 months. Problematic: 18+ months. This is a critical metric because it determines how profitable your customer lifetime is.
2. What’s a good NDR target at Series B?
A value below 100% means you’re losing money on retention. 100% means you’re treading water. 110-120% is healthy. 130%+ is exceptional. Most Series B companies aim for 110-120% NDR as they scale.
3. When should I expand internationally?
When you’ve achieved dominance in your home market (top 3 player in your category or segment). This usually happens when you reach $ 10M–$50 M in ARR, depending on the market size.
4. How do I build land-and-expand if my products are separate?
Make them connected. Build APIs and integrations to enable data flow between products. Create a unified onboarding and billing process. Make it easy for existing customers to add new products.
5. Should I focus on SMB or enterprise at Series B?
Focus on whichever Series A traction you’re targeting. If you’ve already won in SMB, double down there and build efficiency. Then expand to enterprise as a secondary motion.
6. How do I know when I’m ready for Series C?
When you’ve achieved: clear category leadership position, predictable GTM with 2-3 proven channels, NDR above 110%, rule of 40 health, $10M+ ARR run rate, strong GTM leadership team, and expansion into at least one new adjacent segment or geography.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
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