Go-to-Market

The first version of Scriptase was deliberately simple. The first customers were Harbor Cardiology and a few other practices I had worked with directly. They signed up after I demoed the product in their offices, and I designed the early features and workflows around the feedback they gave me.

Marketing to physicians is expensive. Online channels and direct mail produce little for products in this segment, so the early motion was traditional sales: in-person calls and demos until word of mouth caught on. Once inbound calls started coming in, we layered a 7-day trial and a customer referral program, and most subsequent sign-ups came in through those two channels.

The recurring revenue model and high cost of acquisition meant retention was the actual mission, not a lagging metric. I organized fulfillment, support, and roadmap around that.

We launched Let’s in 2017. The first push was grassroots. I worked with local organizations and interest groups to get the app into the hands of people likely to use it for real-life meetups, and I showed up regularly at local meetups myself. Alongside the grassroots push, I created the launch media and ran paid Facebook campaigns to amplify reach.

Installs grew to around 4,000. Engagement and retention told the same flat story. The GTM put the app in front of a willing audience, but the audience didn’t come back. The product didn’t address an immediate pain, and network effects would only kick in once we had enough people using it consistently.

Fresh fish in the U.S. has a 48-hour window from harvest to retail shelf. Beyond that the product spoils. When Zalo Fresh entered the category in 2023, the retail GTM had to be built around that window.

I started with Walmart. I worked through their procurement firm to secure a 30-shipment pilot. We built the tracking system in parallel: cargo booking, transfer points, cold storage backups along the route, and frozen container fallback if the timing went wrong. Every shipment ran through standard operating procedures from harvest to delivery.

The 30 shipments cleared on quality. After the pilot we bid on full retail contracts. We made the final round with Kroger and started supplying to HEB, Texas’s largest grocery chain. The line did $600K in its first four months.