Welcome to the Gildre May Founder Newsletter: Go-To-Market Best Practices

This month, we’re unpacking what it really means to take something to market with clarity and precision by looking at Go-To-Market Practices. From defining your audience and sharpening your message to building channels that actually convert. It’s about how founders create traction that’s not just exciting, but repeatable - and the thinking behind turning a great product or service into real, scalable growth.

GTM Excellence: Snyk’s "Developer-First" Revolution

How to Win a Market by Ignoring Traditional Buyers

Most cybersecurity companies fail because they try to sell to the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer), who then forces tools onto developers that they end up hating. Snyk executed a Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy that flipped the script, leading to a multi-billion dollar valuation by focusing on the people actually writing the code.

1. The Product as a Trojan Horse (Product-Led Growth)

Snyk’s GTM excellence didn't start with sales decks; it started with invisible integration. They built tools that plug directly into GitHub or the IDE (where the programmer actually lives).

• The Tactic: Instead of just generating a "vulnerability report" (which just adds more work), Snyk generates an automatic Pull Request. It doesn't just tell you what’s broken; it hands you the fix.

• The Result: Developers became the tool’s primary advocates because it saved them time rather than acting as a roadblock.

2. Content as an Authority Engine

Snyk created the Snyk Vulnerability Database. Instead of hiding their data behind a paywall, they made it public and free. This created a massive SEO moat. When a developer Googles a security flaw, the first result is almost always Snyk. The sale happens long after the value has been delivered.

3. Scaling "Bottom-Up" to "Top-Down"

Their GTM brilliance was allowing small teams to adopt the tool for free. Once Snyk was embedded in 20% of a large corporation’s microservices, the sales team would contact the CISO with real data: "Your developers are already using this and have fixed 500 vulnerabilities this month. Do you want the Enterprise version for full visibility?" At that point, the sale is a formality.

Snyk’s execution is a masterclass in what Eric Ries has championed for decades. For GTM excellence to work, it must be rooted in Validated Learning—building based on observed user behavior rather than boardroom assumptions.

As Eric Ries will discuss in our upcoming exclusive event, the success of companies like Snyk isn't an accident; it’s the result of applying Lean principles to long-term governance.

While Snyk dominates its market through organic adoption, Eric Ries will teach us how to scale that kind of innovation without "corrupting" the company's original mission.

Founders’ Toolkit – Working with Attorneys in the Age of AI

By: Matt Savare and Bryan Sterba

In our first installment of the Founders’ Toolkit, we examined the practical considerations you should evaluate when choosing an AI tool.  In this edition, we will discuss how the increased availability and usage of AI have changed how founders should think about working with their attorneys.  For founders, the goal should not be to hastily replace lawyers and blindly rely on AI.  Rather, founders should work with their attorneys to use AI thoughtfully and efficiently, so your legal spend goes further, your decisions are better informed, and your company stays protected as it scales.

Here are some factors to consider when establishing and refining the relationship with your legal team.

1. Nature of the Relationship

Your attorney is not your bottleneck.  Your attorney is your risk manager, strategist, and translator between fast-moving technologies and slow-moving law.  AI accelerates and automates legal workflows, but it does not eliminate human judgment, accountability, or liability.  Founders who get into trouble usually are not moving too slowly.  Instead, they are moving too fast without a proper legal framework or guardrails.  The best founder-attorney relationships treat AI as a force multiplier.  Founders are able to move faster, and attorneys help ensure they are not running off a cliff.

2. Using AI to Control Cost

Legal costs are a real concern for early-stage companies, and AI can meaningfully reduce your legal spend if used correctly.  Founders should feel comfortable using AI tools to:

• Organize facts and timelines;

• Summarize business terms or prior agreements;

• Generate first-pass questions or issue lists; and

• Prepare background memos before engaging counsel.

Using AI to prepare such materials enables your attorney to spend more time on what actually matters: identifying risks, negotiating on your behalf, and making judgment calls that AI cannot reliably make.

Where founders often go wrong is using AI to replace legal advice rather than to prepare for it.  For example, sending an AI-drafted contract to the other side without legal review may feel efficient, but doing so almost always results in more back-and-forth negotiations, greater risk and exposure, and increased legal fees.  Similarly, using AI to draft your form agreements usually results in either inferior work product or, frequently, more time-consuming work for your attorneys to correct the AI.

Founders should be skeptical of AI “legal conclusions,” especially in areas like IP ownership, data rights, employment classification, securities law, and regulatory compliance.  These are precisely the areas where startups face existential risk.  Your attorneys’ value is not the documents they draft; it is the judgment behind their work.  As a practical rule of thumb, use AI to reduce attorney hours spent on information gathering, not on decision making. 

3. Establish Clear, Efficient Processes With Your Attorneys

Efficiency is not just about speed.  Rather, it is about reducing misalignment and the resulting back-and-forth between you and your attorneys and you and counterparties.  Founders extract the most value from AI tools and their counsel when they:

• Clearly define their business objective before legal work commences;

• Flag which issues are “must-have” versus “nice-to-have;”

• Share AI-generated summaries as background, not as final answers; 

• Create reusable templates from contracts reviewed and approved by counsel;

• Ask for playbooks or risk-tiered advice (e.g., “safe,” “acceptable,” “high risk”) in response to counterparty markups;

• Build compliance into product design early;

• Revisit risk assumptions as the company grows; and

• Use AI to spot issues proactively, not after problems arise.

In the age of AI, founders have the tools to be well prepared before working with their attorneys.  Founders can use AI tools to assist in such organization and preparation, which can help reduce legal fees and lead to better outcomes.  Equally important, ask your attorneys how they plan on using AI to increase their efficiency.

4. Attorney-Client Privilege

The attorney-client privilege generally protects confidential communications between clients and their attorneys for the purpose of seeking legal advice.  Once privileged information is disclosed to a third party, that privilege may be waived (sometimes permanently).  

In a recent ruling, a federal judge held that a client’s independent use of a public AI tool to assess his legal exposure was not protected by the attorney-client privilege or the work product doctrine even when those materials were created in anticipation of discussion with counsel.  In light of this ruling, founders should:

• Never input privileged communications into public AI systems;

• Ask their attorneys which AI tools are approved for legal workflows and use the tools only as directed by counsel;

• Treat AI outputs as internal drafts, not legal advice; and

• Keep legal strategy discussions confined to counsel and key decision-makers within the company.

The Bottom Line

AI has changed the pace of building companies, but it has not changed the fundamentals of risk, trust, or accountability.  Founders who succeed in the age of AI are not the ones who avoid lawyers.  They are the ones who know how to work with them smarter.  Use AI to move faster.  Use your attorney to move safely. The combination is where the real benefits reside.

About Lowenstein Sandler 

Lowenstein Sandler LLP is a national law firm with over 400 lawyers based in New York, Palo Alto, Roseland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C, and Wilmington. We represent clients in virtually every sector of the global economy, with particular strength in the areas of technology, life sciences, and investment funds. Authors Matt Savare and Bryan Sterba advise founders, growing companies, and established global corporations on the deals, agreements, and strategic decisions that define their trajectory. From commercial contracts and IP transactions to AI and emerging technology, Matt and Bryan bring a practical, business-first approach to startup legal work.  

Matt Savare Bio / Matt Savare LinkedIn

Bryan Sterba Bio / Bryan Sterba LinkedIn

At the core, what ties all of these ideas together is the same tension: scaling quickly without losing clarity on why you’re building what you’re building. The strongest teams don’t just optimize distribution or adoption—they deeply understand their users and turn that understanding into long-term decision-making. That combination of execution and purpose is what ultimately defines the companies that endure.

If you want to go deeper into how these kinds of systems are built and join conversations with founders who are shaping this path, we’ll see you at the Executive Workshop.

And, if you’re in that stage of growth and want to go deeper into how to build with more intention you can book a conversation to learn more with Managing Partner, Taiga Gamell, here.

Cheers to the month ahead,
Eliana