7 GTM Lessons From Scaling to Six Figures of Users Without Losing a Single Customer

7 GTM Lessons From Scaling to Six Figures of Users Without Losing a Single Customer

Most founders obsess over beating competitors. Matt Pierce, CEO and Founder of Immediate, discovered something more powerful: understanding what you’re really competing against. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Matt shared how his financial wellness platform grew from zero to six figures of eligible employees by flipping conventional go-to-market wisdom on its head.

Here are seven tactical lessons from Immediate’s GTM playbook that B2B founders can apply today.

Lesson 1: Your Real Competitor Is Probably Priorities, Not Products

When Matt gets asked about competition, his answer surprises people. “I get asked a lot, who’s your biggest competitor?” he explains. “And I always say our biggest competitor is priorities.”

This insight fundamentally changed how Immediate sells. HR and payroll teams aren’t rejecting earned wage access because they prefer another solution—they’re rejecting it because they’ve been burned by “seamless” implementations that turned into nightmares.

The tactical move: Design your entire onboarding to obliterate the priority objection. Immediate created a process so simple that employees complete their first transaction within ten minutes of receiving the welcome email. “We’ve seen people in as little as ten minutes from the time they open that email, log in and start making their first transaction,” Matt notes.

When prospects say “this sounds too easy,” Immediate proves it by showing, not telling. The company uses a five-minute video for training, a two-page agreement for legal, and automated integrations for technical setup. Every friction point removed is ammunition against the priority objection.

Lesson 2: Give Yourself Permission to Not Know Your ICP at Launch

Immediate didn’t start with a vertical focus, and that was intentional. For the first year of selling, Matt’s team took any customer willing to sign. “Let’s just figure out what makes sense and let’s make sure that we’ve got a scalable platform in place,” he recalls.

This wasn’t desperation—it was disciplined market discovery. The team needed enrollment and usage data before they could identify patterns. Guessing your ICP based on assumptions often leads to targeting the wrong customers with the wrong message.

After collecting sufficient data, the signal emerged clearly. “What we started doing was evaluating the data and seeing areas, verticals and individuals and demographics that were enrolling and utilizing the platform the most,” Matt explains. Healthcare and hospitality weren’t just using the platform—they were enrolling at double or triple the rates of other industries.

The tactical move: Budget for a discovery phase where you intentionally pursue diverse customers to gather data. Set clear metrics for what “good fit” means (enrollment rates, usage frequency, implementation speed) and let the data tell you where to focus. Matt discovered that 87% of Immediate’s users earn less than $60,000 annually—a data point that now drives their entire targeting strategy.

Lesson 3: Weaponize Your Perceived Disadvantages

Operating from Birmingham, Alabama instead of Silicon Valley could have been a liability. Matt turned it into a strategic weapon through what he calls “weaponizing hospitality.”

The results speak for themselves: zero customer churn. “Hundreds and hundreds of customers, we haven’t lost a single customer,” Matt emphasizes. “Which means we’re doing a really good job of taking care of our customers and ultimately our end users.”

This wasn’t luck. “It’s taking kind of this Southern mindset, this Southern hospitality that a lot of our team brings to bear from an implementation and customer success and customer support team,” Matt explains. “I would put those teams up against anybody in the industry.”

The tactical move: Identify what makes your team or location different, then lean into it aggressively. If you’re not in a major tech hub, emphasize the attention and care you can provide. If you’re competing against larger players, make your size an advantage through responsiveness and customization. Matt’s team turned Southern hospitality into a retention moat that compounds with every customer added.

Lesson 4: Treat Macroeconomic Tailwinds as Accelerants, Not Strategies

Immediate’s growth accelerated during rising inflation and economic stress. Matt could have attributed success to timing, but he didn’t. “That’s a testament to, again, having a really great product and some macroeconomic factors that we can’t control but we can participate and be a part of,” he notes. “But also it’s a testament to the maturity of this organization.”

In the most recent quarter, Immediate closed nearly 60 deals in 100 days. The macro environment helped, but the foundation was already solid: strong product, clear ICP, efficient sales process, and zero churn retention.

The tactical move: Build your go-to-market engine for steady growth, then let favorable conditions multiply your results. Don’t build a strategy that relies on tailwinds continuing. Matt’s focus on organizational maturity, metric management, and team positioning meant Immediate could capitalize when conditions improved, rather than scrambling to catch up.

Lesson 5: Choose Investors Who Align With Mission, Not Just Milestones

Immediate raised nearly $10 million in equity primarily from high net worth individuals and family offices, not institutional investors. This was deliberate. “Our mission is to positively impact the financial well being of a million Americans by the end of 2024,” Matt states. “When we go in and we sit down with potential investors or existing investors and we talk to them about that and the track that we’re on and the path that we’re headed down, people that align with that mission and want to be a part of this are ones that we typically lean towards.”

This strategy gave Immediate flexibility to build sustainably without pressure for premature scale. Now, with proven traction and clear market position, they’re positioned for institutional funding from a position of strength.

The tactical move: If your market opportunity is large but education is required, consider non-institutional capital early. Mission-aligned investors provide runway to prove unit economics and find product-market fit without quarterly pressure. Once you’ve demonstrated the model works, institutional capital becomes available on better terms.

Lesson 6: Build Retention Into Your DNA From Day One

Zero customer churn isn’t luck—it’s the result of systematic decisions baked into company culture. Matt attributes this to their customer success and support teams working “round the clock to make sure that our users are taken care of and when issues arise that we’re there to support.”

But the retention strategy starts earlier than support. It begins with implementation. One customer reported that Immediate was “the easiest software that I’ve ever rolled out my entire career,” according to Matt. When implementation is painless, customers don’t develop buyer’s remorse. When support is exceptional, small issues don’t become churn triggers.

The tactical move: Measure time-to-first-value religiously and optimize it continuously. Track implementation satisfaction separately from product satisfaction. Invest in customer success before you think you need it. Matt’s team made these investments early, and they compounded into a retention rate that becomes more defensible as the customer base grows.

Lesson 7: Position for Category Inevitability, Not Just Market Share

Matt sees the earned wage access market differently than most founders see their opportunities. “I look at the Financial Wellness earned wage access market of what we do and it’s still less than 15% penetrated,” he observes. “There’s 180,000,000 people in the US workforce and we’re sitting here in late 2022. I believe by 2030 every company in the US is going to be offering some form of earned wage access.”

This perspective changes everything. Immediate isn’t fighting for scraps in a zero-sum game—they’re positioning to capture share in a market that’s expanding by 10x. The urgency isn’t about beating competitors; it’s about building the infrastructure and reputation to handle inevitable growth.

The tactical move: If you’re in a category that’s clearly going to grow but hasn’t yet, build for scale before you need it. Invest in retention and customer success infrastructure early because switching costs increase as the category matures. Focus on being the obvious choice when the market reaches the tipping point, rather than just being first.

The Compounding Power of Fundamentals

What’s striking about Immediate’s success isn’t any single brilliant tactic—it’s the discipline to execute fundamentals exceptionally well. Understanding that priorities beat competitors, letting data drive ICP selection, weaponizing perceived disadvantages, building for retention from day one, choosing aligned investors, and positioning for category inevitability aren’t revolutionary insights. They’re basic principles executed with unusual rigor.

The result? A company closing 60 deals in 100 days with zero churn, serving six figures of eligible employees, and positioned to capture significant share in a market moving from 15% to near-universal penetration by 2030.

For B2B founders, the lesson is clear: tactical sophistication matters less than strategic clarity and operational excellence. Identify what you’re really competing against, let data guide your decisions, build retention into everything you do, and position for where the market is going rather than where it is today. The fundamentals compound faster than any growth hack.