Why Most Medtech Founders Hire the Wrong Go-to-Market Strategy Consultant

August 13, 2026

Table of contents

The go-to-market strategy consultant conversation I keep having with medtech founders is the same one, and it starts with the same question. A founder tells me they hired a go-to-market strategy consultant, spent six figures on a deliverable, and eighteen months later the pipeline still isn't there.

What went wrong?

The wrong go-to-market strategy consultant produces a plan. The right one builds the network, the advisory board, and the strategic relationships that eventually produce the pipeline. Those are completely different services under the same job title.

Across 400+ episodes of State of MedTech, the medtech founders who exited well hired for the second category, not the first.

Kevin Rocco at BioRez, Ray Cohen at Axonics, and Mark McKenna at Prometheus each described the same discipline in different words. The go-to-market work happened years before it was recognized as go-to-market work.

Takeaways

The go-to-market strategy consultant medtech founders should hire is not a launch-plan writer. The founders who exited well hired operators who built physician networks, ran advisory boards, and cultivated strategics years before commercial launch.
Kevin Rocco engineered BioRez to a $250M exit by starting the surgeon advisory board years before commercial launch. That is what right-time GTM consulting looks like.
Rocco also hired a VP of sales with a real network instead of paying for a strategic playbook. Right-role hiring beats right-title hiring.
The founders I've watched compound category authority overestimate how familiar their target market is with the product. Every early-stage medtech founder makes the same misread.
FDA clearance is the starting line, not the finish line. Clinical validation ≠ commercial traction. The right go-to-market strategy consultant closes the traction gap through years of network cultivation, not slide-deck production.

The GTM Work That Closes Exits Starts Years Before Commercial Launch

A single ornate brass key hovering over a lock whose shape does not match against a dark navy-to-blue gradient representing the pharma or SaaS playbook that does not fit medtech commercialization.

I interviewed Kevin Rocco on an episode about the $250M BioRez exit. He described the specific market engineering move most medtech founders skip:

"you have to get started way way way before you go commercial so you know years before we were commercial. We had put together a surgeon advisory board that participated in design development, and the testing of it the animal studies the results so you know not only did that allow us to get their valuable input on the process understanding what the market really wanted but it also created trust in the data and in the product so that we had some Champions you know when we did launch"

Read that as the actual scope a real go-to-market strategy consultant should deliver.

The wrong consultant asks the founder for target personas, competitive positioning, and launch messaging. The right consultant asks the founder which physicians they need co-authoring publications two years from now, and starts making those introductions today.

Rocco's Advisory board was operating during design development, animal studies, and clinical validation. By the time BioRez launched, the surgeons who would decide whether to adopt the product were already co-invested in it. That is what a real GTM consulting engagement produces.

The consulting engagements that fail produce a launch playbook the founder reads once and files away. The engagements that work produce a physician network the founder actively operates for the entire pre-commercial window.

Right-Role Hiring Beats Right-Title Hiring

A single polished glass slide propped on a wooden easel under a spotlight in an otherwise empty theater stage against a dark navy-to-blue gradient representing deck polish standing alone without the ecosystem beneath it.

Rocco went on to describe the specific hire he made to run commercial:

"I was a first-time CEO first-time founder, no commercial experience in sports medicine so I brought in David Hook, who did a very nice job as our vice president of sales who had a very good network. He was formerly with rotation medical"

That is the right way to think about GTM staffing at a medtech Series A stage.

Rocco didn't hire a "go-to-market strategy consultant" for the commercial motion. He hired a VP of sales who came from an adjacent category (Rotation Medical, another sports medicine company) with an existing network of surgeon relationships. The network is the strategy.

Most first-time medtech CEOs get this wrong.

They hire consultants who write commercial plans, because that is what "go-to-market strategy consultant" listings on LinkedIn advertise. What they need is an operator with a live physician network in the specific category the company is entering.

The market-product fit test at the GTM hiring layer is direct.

Does the person you're paying already have relationships with the physicians who will decide adoption? If yes, they add value from week one. If no, they are learning the category on the founder's time and budget.

Every Early-Stage Founder Overestimates Market Familiarity

A single tall wooden hourglass balanced on the edge of a small stone platform with sand nearly drained against a dark navy-to-blue gradient representing timing that has been left too late.

That exact insight came up in an episode about using LinkedIn ads to attract early-adopter surgeons:

"every early stage Market I talk to overestimates the familiarity that a given group of people have with their product... if I were to start in an early stage company and we just went commercial I would really push hard to do a you know a two to three webinars per quarter"

That is the specific failure mode the wrong GTM consultant reinforces.

Most GTM consulting decks assume the market already understands the category. They optimize for conversion within a known audience. But medtech categories at Series A stage are almost always undefined in the physician's mental model.

The founder is not converting a warm audience. The founder is building the audience.

The right GTM consultant runs monthly education programs: webinars, physician round tables, KOL-authored publications, podcast appearances. The wrong one runs pipeline reports on an audience that doesn't yet exist.

Founders who spend the pre-Series-A window building physician familiarity arrive at commercial launch with a category that recognizes them. Founders who spend the same window on demand-capture campaigns arrive at launch with a beautiful funnel and no top-of-funnel volume.

Clinical validation ≠ commercial traction. FDA clearance is the starting line, not the finish line. The physician familiarity work is what closes the traction gap between the two, and the consulting engagement has to be structured around producing that familiarity.

Why the Compounding Effect of Getting GTM Right Shows Up as Axonics Did

A single antique gold pocket watch resting face-up on a dark surface with a visibly cracked crystal glass covering the face watch hands frozen against a dark navy-to-blue gradient representing the framework consultant whose value runs out by month four.

I covered the Axonics playbook on an episode about 7 lessons from $17B in medtech exits:

"It takes years. In my experience, you spend years cultivating relationships with strategics... By the time that Boston Scientific had moved, their internal familiarity with Axonics was already distributed across the CFO, the R&D, commercial, and legal team."

That is the compounding effect a real go-to-market strategy consultant should be building toward.

The Boston Scientific acquisition of Axonics wasn't a deal that came together in the diligence window. It was the tail of years of Ray Cohen and his team compounding familiarity with the acquirer across every function that eventually had to sign off.

The wrong GTM consultant treats strategic acquirers as an outbound target for the M&A phase. The right one treats them as a market engineering audience from Series A onward. Every physician panel invitation the strategic's CMO gets.

Every podcast episode the strategic's business unit lead hears. Every LinkedIn post the strategic's corporate development team scrolls past. All of it is the same underlying compounding work.

Great companies don't wait for markets to form. They engineer them. Great GTM consultants don't wait for the exit window to build acquirer familiarity. They build it across the years of engagement that precede any deal conversation.

What a Real GTM Add Looks Like When It Gets Priced

Same episode, different quote:

"he was able to add more value in six months of negotiation than the company had been able to do in the previous 3 years... 20 consecutive commercial quarters of beating analysts expectations... you got to go out and really light up the scoreboard. Repetition is deliberate."

Read that as the value a right-fit GTM operator can generate at the deal layer.

The person who added more value in six months than the company had in three years wasn't a consultant with a slide deck. That person was an operator with specific negotiation experience, strategic buyer relationships, and the credibility to price the company against real market comparables.

The 20 consecutive commercial quarters of beating analyst expectations were the compounding output of the market narrative the founder had already engineered into the acquirer's read of the category. The person who negotiated the deal was the person who priced the compounding. Both are outputs of the same underlying discipline.

Founders who evaluate go-to-market strategy consultants against "will they add value at the deal layer" get better hires than founders who evaluate against "will they produce a commercial plan we can present to the board." The two evaluation criteria surface completely different people.

Why Consultant Selection at Series A Compounds Through the Life of the Company

The wrong go-to-market strategy consultant hire at Series A doesn't just cost the founder a bad twelve months. It compounds for the entire life of the company.

Every physician relationship not built during pre-clearance has to be built during commercial launch, when the team is trying to close pipeline instead of build audience.

Every strategic acquirer not tracked from Series A onward starts diligence from cold context at the exit window, which shortens the acquirer's willingness to price optionality into the deal.

Every commercial playbook written by a consultant with no live network in the category starts from generic frameworks that the sales team then has to rebuild once they realize the frameworks don't map to the specific physicians they're really calling.

The operators who compound category authority through Series B and Series C almost always trace back to a specific pre-Series-A hire or consulting engagement that produced compounding assets. The teams that stall trace back to the same layer, just with a different outcome, plans on shelves instead of relationships in the field.

That is why the go-to-market strategy consultant conversation matters at the strategic level, not just the tactical one. Right Series A choices compound over years while wrong Series A choices compound in the opposite direction for the same duration, and by the time the founder recognizes the miss, they have already paid for the wrong compounding curve twice.

What This Means for Medtech Founders Hiring GTM Consulting

The go-to-market strategy consultant conversation medtech founders should be having is a hiring conversation, not a plan-purchase conversation.

That hiring conversation runs through the same sequencing described in a real medical device go-to-market strategy: network and advisory-board work start at Series A, not at commercial launch.

Real GTM consulting engagement scope: run the advisory board for the pre-commercial window. Compound physician familiarity across quarters. Cultivate strategic relationships across years. Structure the commercial hire around a live network, not a title. Price the compounding output at the eventual deal.

Wrong engagement scope: produce a launch plan document. Deliver a competitive landscape deck. Write ICP definitions the sales team files and never opens. Charge for output volume instead of network compounding.

This is the same discipline behind why hiring a healthcare marketing agency before defining your category burns 12 months of medtech runway. The commercialization system has to be built and operating before clearance, not designed after.

MarketCraft was built to run this operating discipline alongside the medtech founders we work with.

The go-to-market strategy consultant question, for us, is the wrong question. The right question is which operating partner will run the market engineering work across the pre-commercial window and into the compounding commercial phase.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Should a Medtech Go-to-Market Strategy Consultant Really Deliver?

Advisory board recruitment and operation. Physician network compounding across quarters. Strategic relationship cultivation across years. Commercial hire sourcing from operators with live networks. The plan document is a downstream artifact of that work, not the primary deliverable.

How Long Before Commercial Launch Should GTM Consulting Start?

Years before commercial launch. Kevin Rocco's BioRez advisory board operated during design development and animal studies. Ray Cohen was cultivating Boston Scientific relationships years before the acquisition. Medtech GTM work that starts at commercial launch is late by the length of the pre-commercial window.

How Do Founders Evaluate a Go-to-Market Strategy Consultant?

Ask which physicians and strategic contacts the consultant will personally introduce in the first six months. Ask what advisory board they will help build. Ask which commercial hires they will personally source. If the answers are "we'll produce a plan and hand it off to you," the engagement is wrong-fit.

Why Do Founders Overestimate Their Target Market's Familiarity With Their Product?

Founders live inside their category twenty-four hours a day. Physicians, health system executives, and payers see thousands of vendor pitches a year and remember almost none of them. The right GTM consultant runs the monthly education work that shifts that familiarity gap. The wrong one assumes the audience already knows the founder's category.

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About the Author

Omar Khateeb is the founder of MarketCraft and host of The State of MedTech, a leading podcast in the medtech industry.

He works with medtech founders and commercial leaders on market engineering, commercialization strategy, and revenue growth. Visit marketcraft.ai or subscribe to The State of MedTech for weekly conversations with the people building the future of medical devices.