6 Critical Go-to-Market Lessons from Humanly’s Journey in HR Tech

Sometimes the most valuable startup insights come from watching a product evolve from personal experience to market fit. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Humanly founder Prem Kumar shared how his journey from Microsoft PM to startup founder yielded crucial go-to-market lessons for B2B tech builders.

1. Start with Deep User Research Before Building Rather than rushing to build, Prem conducted 55 detailed customer interviews, meticulously documenting insights by industry and pain points. “I have a spreadsheet that kind of broke them out by industry, by type of demographic, by pain points,” he explains. This methodical approach paid dividends: “Some of them actually turned into customers later. I can come back three months later and say, ‘hey, that thing you said you really wanted, we’ve actually built now.'”
2. Find Your Category Creation Angle Instead of trying to own the entire HR tech space, Humanly carved out a specific category around conversational AI for recruiting. “When people think conversational AI, they’re thinking chatbot,” Prem notes. “But to me, conversational AI for recruiting is about any conversations you’re having with job candidates, not just the automated ones… how do you make that more efficient and more equitable?”
3. Focus on a Specific Customer Segment Rather than targeting all hiring scenarios, Humanly zeroed in on high-volume recruiting. “We’re not helping you hire for engineers,” Prem emphasizes. “We’re very much focused on these high volume, entry level roles where there’s pain points around having to do seven phone screens a day and write seven sets of follow up emails.”
4. Build for Impact Metrics, Not Just Financial Ones Humanly’s growth strategy centers on measurable impact beyond revenue. “With the 100,000 candidate conversations, one thing that I’m really proud of is, can we turn that to a million a month?” Prem shares. “These are numbers we share with our investors, the impact metrics as well, not just the financial ones.”
5. Know What Not to Build Success in B2B tech often comes from strategic restraint. As Prem explains, “Really knowing not what to build, but what not to build was important to us… Some of the early chatbot players were basically building a SaaS company before AWS, so they were like building the cloud and then building an app on top of it.” Instead, Humanly focused on building IP on top of existing infrastructure.
6. Align Your Team Around Mission While technical challenges are important, Prem found team alignment crucial for GTM success. “While I have experience at Microsoft, a tiny pulse just when you’re a small group of five people, and then now there’s five new people and then there’s five new people really ensuring that you’re aligned around your mission vision values… you really have to be operating on all cylinders all the time.”

These lessons underscore a broader truth about successful go-to-market strategies in B2B tech: they’re built on deep customer understanding and strategic focus rather than just product features or sales tactics. As Prem notes about the HR tech market, “This isn’t a market where it’s extremely saturated in terms of market share. It’s saturated in terms of your LinkedIn inbox getting sold, a lot of different solutions.”

By focusing on specific pain points in high-volume recruiting, building measurable impact metrics, and strategically leveraging existing infrastructure, Humanly has created a differentiated position in a crowded market. Their journey offers valuable insights for founders navigating their own go-to-market challenges in B2B tech.