I got a message from a friend, he’s a builder, a technical person, a very smart human, and he’s just built a new thing. He pinged me with this:

"Read your Kickstart checklist article just now, and while it was interesting, I'm wondering how to apply it to a company with just one or two people with a product they've built that they want to get out."

Two-person startup. Real product. Paying customers. And a completely reasonable question.

My PMM Kickstart Checklist assumes some infrastructure. A team to hand things off to. A rough division of labor between product, marketing, and sales. None of that applies when it’s just you (and maybe a small group of people) trying to get your thing out into the world.

So this one’s for him, and for every founder who’s ever thought “I know I need to do marketing stuff… I just don’t know what ‘marketing stuff’ actually means in practice.”

Here’s the good news: you don’t need a PMM just yet. You need a process, some honest thinking, and the use of AI to do some of the heavy lifting on execution. Let’s get into it.

First, a mindset shift

In this scenario, you ARE the PMM. You know the product, the customer, the pain point. You’ve had dozens if not hundreds of conversations that no hired PMM will ever have. You have the raw material.

What you don’t have is time, infrastructure, or the muscle memory of “I’ve done this before.” That’s where AI comes in. Think of it in terms of the Humans + AI model: you bring the context and judgment, AI brings the execution horsepower.

That said, AI is a vibe engine. It’s incredible at generating the shape of things, positioning statements, email drafts, press releases, pitch decks. But it can’t feel whether your messaging actually resonates. That’s your job. You sign off on emotional resonance. AI writes the first draft.

Step 1: Do You Have a PRD?

A Product Requirements Document (PRD) or any kind of product spec isn’t just an engineering artifact. It’s a foundational input into a marketing plan in disguise.

The PRD/spec contains what the product does, what problem it solves, who it’s for, and what “success” looks like. That’s your positioning waiting to be unlocked.

Now feed it to your AI of choice and ask it to extract:

If you don’t have one, write a rough version now. It doesn’t need to be a formal document. It just needs to capture: what it does, who it’s for, and why it matters. Two pages is fine.

Note: this document becomes the source of truth you feed into everything else. Every AI-generated piece of content downstream should be anchored to it.

You will need to iterate this, so take the output, edit it, adjust it, give it back to the AI and tell it you made edits and to review again, note the differences and suggest any further uplifts.

Step 2: Write a Fake Press Release

Seriously, do this. Amazon made this famous. Before they build anything, they write the press release first. If you can’t articulate the announcement in press release form, you don’t know what you’re actually launching.

This is called a PRFAQ (Press Release / Frequently Asked Questions), and there are a dozen solid templates on the internet. Search “Amazon PRFAQ template” and grab one, or have your AI generate a template.

Here’s why this matters: the exercise forces you to answer the questions your customers and press will actually ask.

AI can draft this for you using your PRD as input. Your job is to read it, feel it, and rewrite the parts that sound fake. (You’ll know them when you see them. They’ll sound like a press release.)

The PRFAQ also gives you something else: the FAQ section forces you to anticipate objections before they hit you in real conversations. Pre-work the objections. This is another excellent use of AI. Ask it to play the role of a dubious customer and look for holes in your narrative and value prop and do its best to dismiss you. You will hate the process, but what you get out of that will make your launch better.

Step 3: Figure Out How You’re Getting the Word Out

This is where a lot of founders stall. They build the thing. They write the words. And then… they have no way to reach anyone.

You need an amplification strategy. Not a complex one. Just a real answer to: “How will people actually hear about this?”

A few honest options, depending on where you live online:

AI can help you draft the outreach, personalize it at scale, and write the LinkedIn posts. But the strategy, who to talk to and why, is yours to decide. That’s the 20% only you can do.

Step 4: Get Some (very) Basic Marketing Infrastructure in Place

You don’t need a marketing stack. You need four things: a way for people to find you, a place where they can contact you, a way to send emails, and a way to be present on LinkedIn.

Search: Ensure that you have set up Google SEO and analytics for your site. (AIEO is worth a thought too, AI-powered search engines are surfacing content differently than Google, and that gap is only growing.). This has some lead time to get indexed, and you should do some homework on whether you fund the algorithm at this stage. Paid search may not be worthwhile just yet.

Landing Page: You need a basic landing page on your website. This might be actually hosted on something like Marketo, or just a simple page on your website stack. All it needs is the same summary info and a basic contact form that sends you a notification to where you are tracking opportunities. If you have a CRM you may also be able to either host the page there, or route the inbounds into that queue.

Email: Tools like Mailchimp, Beehiiv, or ConvertKit let you build a basic list and send professional campaigns. Pick one, set it up, and create a simple welcome sequence for anyone who signs up from your website. If you don’t have a form on your site collecting emails yet, fix that today.

AI can draft your welcome email, your launch announcement, and a 3-email nurture sequence in under an hour. Feed it your PRFAQ and your PRD and ask for them explicitly.

LinkedIn: This is where B2B buyers spend time. You don’t need a content agency. You need a posting cadence. Even once a week, get into the communication pattern where you share something real. What you’ve learned. What your customers are telling you. What problem you’re obsessed with solving. Demo snips. Examples.

AI can generate 10 LinkedIn post drafts from a single conversation. Your job is to pick the ones that sound like you, not like a brand.

Zero-trust rule applies: anything AI writes about your product’s capabilities, market position, or customer results, verify it before you publish it. AI hallucinates. You can’t.

Step 5: Build a Customer Showcase

Even if it’s one customer, nothing drives confidence like proof that someone else made the bet and it paid off.

You have paying customers. That’s real. Even one good story, told well, changes the dynamic when you’re talking to a prospect.

Reach out to your happiest customer. Ask them for 15 minutes. Ask:

Record it (with permission), or just take notes. Then ask AI to shape it into a short case study: a paragraph or two that follows the before/after arc. Add a quote if they’ll give you one.

Post it on your website. Reference it in outreach. Share it on LinkedIn. A real story told simply will outperform a boring polished testimonial every time.

Step 6: A Datasheet and a Pitch Deck

You need two core documents that do the explaining when you’re not in the room.

The datasheet is a one-pager that answers: what is it, who is it for, what does it do, how does it work, and what do I do next. It lives on your website as a PDF download, goes into email outreach, and gets shared in Slack DMs. It is not a brochure. It is a decision-support document.

AI can draft this in minutes. Feed it the PRFAQ. Tell it: “Write a one-page product datasheet for a B2B SaaS product. Feature/benefit format. Include a ‘how it works’ section and a clear call to action.” Then edit for accuracy and your voice.

The pitch deck is for live conversations … demo calls, investor conversations, partner pitches. 8-12 slides MAXIMUM. Problem, solution, how it works, customer evidence, why now, who we are, what we’re asking for. AI drafts it; you pressure-test every claim.

Both of these are living documents. Don’t make them perfect. Make them accurate and clear, then ship them.

The Sequence Matters

If I were your PMM consultant, I’d tell you to do these in order:

  1. Anchor everything to a source of truth (PRD or spec doc)
  2. Write the PRFAQ to crystallize the narrative
  3. Decide how you’re getting to market before you write anything else
  4. Set up the minimum tooling (email + LinkedIn would be my start point)
  5. Get one customer story on paper
  6. Build the datasheet and deck

That’s not a six-month roadmap. With AI doing the execution, you can have first drafts of all of this in a day or two. Not polished. Not perfect. But real.

The bottleneck isn’t content. It’s clarity. Every piece of content above breaks down if you haven’t done the thinking behind it. The PRFAQ especially. Spend 20 minutes on a fake press release and realize for the first time what you’re actually building. Worth every minute.

One Last Thing

You don’t need a PMM, yet. You need to BE the PMM, temporarily, with AI as your very fast intern who never sleeps and occasionally makes things up.

The Kickstart Checklist is still the destination, it maps the full function you’ll want to build as you grow. This post is the on-ramp for when it’s just you, a product, and a burning desire to get it in front of people.

I know this feels like a lot. You already know more than you think. Just start.

Adam