5 Go-to-Market Lessons from Cortex’s Journey: How Small Changes Drive Big Adoption

When your initial business model generates just $11 per day despite reaching 600,000 daily viewers, you know something needs to change. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Cortex CEO Zack Rosenberg shared crucial GTM lessons from pivoting a social sports content company into an AI-powered video monetization platform.

1. False Signals Can Mask Product-Market Misfit

Early traction doesn’t always indicate sustainable growth. Despite signing major publishers like CBS and iHeartMedia in 2019, Cortex’s initial product launch revealed deeper challenges. As Zack notes, “We thought we were running in the right direction. We thought everything was going great. We were signing up these big publishers… Then by the end of ’21, weren’t that much further ahead.”

2. Position Change as Evolution, Not Revolution

The key to driving adoption isn’t minimizing the magnitude of change, but rather how you present it. “We knew if we wanted to be successful, we had to make or convince people that we’re only making a 5% change. We’re actually making a 500% change,” Zack explains. This approach reduces friction while still enabling transformative outcomes.

3. Decisiveness Trumps Perfection

When repositioning their product in 2022, Cortex couldn’t afford analysis paralysis. “Startups don’t work on indecisiveness,” Zack emphasizes. “It’s okay to sit there for a day or two or three and usually even a little bit longer than that, but you got to pick the direction and you got to have conviction once you do.”

4. Your Grand Vision Can Wait

Using Uber as an example, Zack illustrates why starting small is crucial: “Could you imagine walking into the very first investor meeting and saying, ‘hey, we’re going to create self-driving trucks, but first we have to do these 19 things?’ That meeting would have been very short.” The lesson: you don’t need to sell your ultimate vision on day one.

5. Build for Different Time Horizons

Successful GTM strategies evolve with company maturity. Zack describes this evolution: “I often like to ask entrepreneurs, what stage of the business are you in? And when I ask that question, I mean it in hours, days, weeks, months, quarters. Very few of us get to the stage where we get to really plan out for a year or longer.”

This progression from tactical to strategic thinking shapes everything from daily operations to market positioning. As Zack notes, “Now I’m moving from month to quarterly. I have predictability. I know what I’m going to be working on next month… very different than, again, the day to day or the week to week phase.”

For founders navigating their own GTM challenges, these lessons highlight a crucial truth: sustainable growth often comes from making your revolutionary product feel evolutionary to customers. It’s about understanding your current time horizon while maintaining a clear vision of where you want to go.

The key is finding the balance between immediate market needs and long-term transformation. As Zack summarizes, “You certainly have a big vision, but you can’t necessarily sell that big vision on day one.” This approach allows companies to build trust, establish market presence, and create a foundation for more revolutionary changes down the line.

By focusing on making change digestible while maintaining a clear long-term vision, founders can drive adoption without overwhelming potential customers. The path to market leadership isn’t always about who has the most revolutionary technology—it’s about who can make that revolution feel like evolution.