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From Failed Email Campaigns to $4M ARR: How Govly Built a Winning GTM Strategy in Government Tech

Most B2B startups default to email campaigns for customer acquisition. But when Govly, a public sector procurement platform, saw their expensive email outreach efforts fail spectacularly, they didn’t just pivot – they completely flipped the conventional B2B playbook.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Govly founder Mike Weiland revealed how rejecting common startup wisdom led them to build a $4M ARR business in the government contracting space.

The traditional path wasn’t working. “After four months even he declared our outbound email campaign as an abject failure, which was a special, very expensive, special lesson that we learned,” Mike shared about their experience with a highly-recommended email marketing expert.

Instead of trying to optimize their way out of the problem, Govly made a bold choice: they doubled down on cold calling. But not just any cold calling – they built a systematic approach that turned an often-derided tactic into a scalable growth engine.

The key was finding the right people. “I think the BDR role is one of the most underappreciated roles, at least for us. These guys are magicians,” Mike emphasized. “Our team is, they are magical in what they do, in the quantity of meetings that they land for us and set up our AE’s is just amazing.”

This wasn’t just about having good salespeople. Govly’s success came from recognizing a fundamental truth about their market: government contractors don’t respond to cold emails, but they do pick up the phone.

The insight came from deep market understanding. “There’s all of these primes and a prime is just someone who has direct access to one of those contract vehicles,” Mike explained. “Because if you don’t have access to that contract vehicle, you can’t see those opportunities.”

This knowledge led to a crucial realization: in government contracting, relationships and direct communication matter more than automated outreach. The team leveraged this by building a product that addressed a critical pain point – managing private government contracting opportunities that aren’t visible on public platforms.

The results speak for themselves. Govly grew from $360,000 in ARR at the end of 2022 to $1.3M in 2023, with projections of $4M by the end of 2024. But perhaps more telling is what Mike says about their product adoption: “We’ve become not necessarily a nice to have product, we’ve become a business critical product. People depend on us every day.”

For B2B founders, Govly’s journey offers several key lessons. First, market understanding trumps best practices. While most startups follow the same email-centric playbook, Govly succeeded by adapting their approach to their market’s actual behavior.

Second, when something isn’t working, don’t just iterate – be willing to completely change direction. Govly could have spent months optimizing email campaigns, but instead, they recognized the fundamental mismatch between their approach and their market.

Finally, product-market fit often comes from solving problems you’ve experienced firsthand. “Govly grew out of that company because we needed software to help manage our own internal operations,” Mike shared. This deep understanding of the problem space allowed them to build something their customers now consider indispensable.

As Govly continues to scale, their story serves as a reminder that sometimes the best GTM strategy is the one that breaks all the rules – as long as it truly serves your market’s needs.