6
min read
Marketing that wins in a bull market
AI's biggest funding rounds are creating a perception race for category leadership. When everyone goes big, go small.
Sofya Leonova
Co-founder + Marketing Director
Sometime this year, if it hasn't happened already, a competitor will announce a funding round large enough to change the mood of your next board meeting. Your instinct will be to respond in kind: go broader, go louder, go faster. If they're everywhere, you should be everywhere too.
I've heard some version of this from founders more times than I can count. It’s a deeply human reaction. But, counterintuitively, the more money your competitor raises, the narrower you should become.
Capital is buying the perception of leadership
Let's look at what all this capital is actually buying.
AI captured roughly three quarters of global venture funding in the first half of 2026 and reached a record $510 billion. OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for 43% of it. The next 10 largest AI companies accounted for the next 20%. Not because the market has already decided they're the only winners but because capital flows toward whoever looks most likely to win.
In a normal market, capital is the constraint. Companies grow as fast as their economics allow. In a bull market, perception becomes the constraint. Investors, customers, recruits, and partners all want to back the company they believe will define the category. The perception of leadership starts attracting the resources that make leadership real.
That's why every AI company is racing to become the name associated with its category before the category itself is settled.
One consequence is that brand matters much earlier than it used to.
Ten years ago, most software companies didn't invest seriously in brand until Series B or C. They didn't have to. Categories matured slowly, and buyers formed opinions over years.
Today's AI market is different. The land grab is happening now. That's why companies emerge from stealth with identities that rival mature enterprise businesses. They're not polishing the brand after they've won. They're using it to help win in the first place. When capital is chasing perceived leaders, looking like the category leader sits upstream of the funding, the hiring, the partnerships, and often the customers themselves.
Why loud and broad fails
Land-grab markets push every company toward the same strategy: louder, broader, faster.
Louder, because share of voice feels like the scoreboard. Broader, because everyone wants to own the entire category. Faster, because the things that compound — founder reputation, category point of view, community, customer stories, AEO visibility — all reward time in market.
The pressure is even greater because you're marketing to three audiences at once. Customers deciding what to buy. Investors deciding who the category leader will be. And senior hires deciding whose equity is worth betting on.
The problem is that a Series A company usually can't win that game.
If a competitor raises $100 million and decides to buy visibility, they'll outspend you across every channel where money matters. Trying to match them play for play doesn't close the gap, it just costs you runway.
None of this replaces product advantage. In infrastructure, developer tools, or security software, the best product often wins eventually. But first people have to notice that advantage, and focus helps make it visible.
The answer is old marketing
The answer isn't a new channel. It's old marketing. Unpopular, I know.
When you can't win a spending war, don't fight one.
Instead, own a territory so completely that you're the default choice for one specific buyer. A vertical. A persona. A use case. A point of view. Pick a piece of the map small enough that when someone inside it asks, "Who's the company for this?" they hear your name first. Only then do you expand.
Geoffrey Moore called this winning the beachhead in Crossing the Chasm. Three decades later, it's more relevant than ever.
Ironically, nine-figure funding rounds make this strategy stronger, not weaker. Companies that raise that much capital have to justify valuations built on owning the entire category. Breadth becomes an obligation. And obligated breadth leaves the beachheads under-defended.
What that looks like when it works
Granola is one of my favorite examples.
By 2024, AI meeting notes had stopped being a product and become a feature. Zoom, Google, Microsoft, and countless startups were all generating meeting notes, often bundled into software customers already paid for.
Granola didn't try to win the category by going big. From the start, they focused on one buyer: venture capitalists.
It's hard to imagine a better beachhead. A few thousand people. Meeting-heavy jobs. Dense networks. High trust. CEO Chris Pedregal reportedly sat alongside 150 early users, building a bot-less meeting notetaker around the way VCs actually worked.
When Granola emerged from stealth in October 2024, it announced a $20 million Series A alongside 5,000 weekly active users. That number only sounds small if you ignore the quality of the 5,000 users.
As Granola grew, it expanded naturally into adjacent territory: the VCs' own portfolio companies, including Cursor, Lovable, and Mistral. By March 2026, Granola had raised $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation after growing revenue 250% in a single quarter.
Granola still has far fewer users than Otter, and free alternatives reach millions more. But Granola became the default answer for one clearly defined buyer. In today's market, that's worth more than having the largest user base.
How to pick your territory
Granola’s founder had a focused strategy from the beginning. He’s also done this once or twice before. But you don't need to get it right on day one. You can always narrow your focus. Here's how.
Start with your unfair advantage. What is your product genuinely the best at? More importantly, why does that matter? Identify the value you create that nobody else does.
Find the buyers who value that advantage most. Look for the customers who buy immediately because your product solves a problem they care deeply about, not the ones who need three sales calls to be convinced. Choose a group you can actually identify and reach. The best segments are defined by observable characteristics, not attitudes. "Developers who care about craft" isn't a segment you can target. "CTOs at US-based, AI-native Series B startups" is.
Make sure the incumbents leave them wanting. Ask yourself what these customers would do if your company didn't exist. If the honest answer is "use a general-purpose tool that only half solves the problem" or "keep living with the pain," you've found an opening.
Keep the territory smaller than feels comfortable. Your goal isn't to own a huge market. It's to become the default choice for a specific one. It should be small enough that you can realistically become the default within a year, but large enough to meet your revenue goals until your next funding round. When in doubt, go narrower.
Make sure there's somewhere to expand next. A beachhead only matters if it leads somewhere. Once you've become the default in one territory, you can use that credibility to move into the adjacent one.
Make your territory unmistakable. Then own it completely. Being somewhat known in three territories is worth less than being the default answer in one. Your homepage should make it obvious. Your founder should become synonymous with its point of view. Your customer stories, partnerships, events, community, outbound, hiring, and the answers buyers get from AI should all point to the same conclusion. If someone asks, "Who's the company for this?" your name should be the obvious answer.
Big rounds don't eliminate opportunities. They change where the opportunities are. The more your competitors are forced to optimize for breadth, the more valuable depth becomes. So when the next nine-figure announcement lands in your inbox, resist the urge to follow it. Find a piece of the map they can't afford to care about yet, become the default there, and expand from a position of strength.
