Hard Stop - B2B Go-to-Market

- The problem

Your marketing reads like a brochure.

Same category words as every competitor. Same features list. Safe, on-brand copy a buyer forgets before the next tab. Your positioning never says why you, so your sales team re-explains the company on every call.

And the one person who could make the market care, the founder who actually built the thing, stays invisible. In B2B, the companies that win are clear about what they do and led by a real person buyers recognize.

- What we do

Three pieces of a go-to-market that lands.

Positioning, sales enablement, founder-led marketing. We do all three.

Positioning

We pin down what you actually do, who it's for, and why it beats the alternative. Then we put it in words your whole company can repeat. Buyers get the message on the first read instead of the third call.

Sales enablement

We build what your team needs to close: the deck, the one-pager, the case study, the follow-up sequences, the answers to the objections that keep stalling deals. Marketing and sales finally tell the same story.

Founder-led marketing

You're the most credible person to explain what your company does. We turn your expertise into LinkedIn content that builds you into a known authority in your space, so buyers come to you. You talk it through with us, we write it, and it goes out under your name.

- Who we work with

B2B founders who refuse to sound like everyone else.

Software / Tech

B2B SaaS

Developer and data tools

AI and infrastructure

Services / Specialist

Professional services

Fintech and finance

Agencies and consultancies

- Who we are

Built by someone who's actually moved revenue.

Cory Althoff ran product marketing at CompTIA as SVP and grew a product line's revenue 5x by fixing how it was positioned and sold. Before that he sold 200K+ copies of The Self-Taught Programmer and The Self-Taught Computer Scientist in eight languages by building the audience himself.

He knows distribution because he's done it at the top end. He helped build The Really Good Podcast to over a billion views on social and #1 on Apple Podcasts. He started as a software engineer at eBay, so he speaks the language of the technical buyers most B2B founders are selling to. He's now writing The Self-Taught Marketer, a guide to founder-led marketing.

He started Hard Stop because most B2B companies take marketing advice from people who've never had to win attention. The positioning stays vague, the founder stays hidden, and the sales team papers over the gap. Hard Stop fixes all three.

Education USC Marshall School of Business, MBA

Past SVP, Product Marketing, CompTIA

Based Los Angeles, California

Breakfast Cream of wheat

- Questions

Things founders ask.

Where does this actually start?

With positioning. Before we write a single post, we get clear on what you do, who it's for, and why it beats the alternative. Everything else, sales assets and founder content, comes out of that. Skip it and you're just publishing noise faster.

Do I need a big following already?

No. We work with founders starting from wherever they are. What matters is reaching the specific people who buy what you sell, even if that's a small, niche audience.

How much of my time does this take?

A few hours a week, on the part only you can do: talking through your thinking so we can turn it into writing. We handle the positioning work, the sales assets, and the actual drafting. You review and post.

Is this coaching or do you do the work?

We do the work. This isn't a course or a coaching program. We run your positioning, build your sales assets, and write the founder content that goes out under your name. You post it and own your sales and outbound. We handle the positioning, the assets, and the writing.

Do you do outbound or run my sales?

No. We build the positioning, the sales assets, and the founder content. We don't send cold email or run your reps. You publish the content and your team runs outreach. Our job is to make sure they have a message and assets worth using.

Do I have to make videos?

No. This isn't a video shop and we don't write scripts. The founder work is written, mostly LinkedIn. If video ever makes sense for you we'll say so, but we don't build a business on getting you to perform on camera.

Do you replace my marketing team?

No. We plug into what you've got and own the parts most teams struggle with: sharp positioning, sales-ready assets, and a founder voice that actually carries. Your team keeps running everything else.

Marketing that gets early-stage B2B to the next level.

We've done this at scale. Not in theory.