The Commercial Roadmap:
go-to-market planning
cross-functional roadmap design
strategic planning
I was brought in to build a go-to-market plan for a startup in a market category that barely existed, with no established playbook to follow and uncertainty around both regulatory timelines and funding scenarios.
My role was to create an execution-ready roadmap with 500+ sequenced actions that could flex across different funding and regulatory scenarios, providing the structure needed to build commercial functions from scratch and secure $10M in Series B funding.
The Problem
The client, a pre-Series A digital health startup, had received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for their mobile app and hired their first Chief Commercial Officer. They needed a comprehensive commercialization plan to secure Board approval for hiring the personnel required to execute a product launch, but their product category had no established playbook in the U.S. market. Traditional pharmaceutical launch frameworks didn't translate: there was no manufacturing or distribution to manage, but the mechanics of how doctors would prescribe an app, how insurance would reimburse it, and how patients would access it were entirely unproven. The company had no sales, marketing, or market access functions, and their Phase II trial was still enrolling. They needed a plan detailed enough to guide immediate hiring decisions yet flexible enough to adapt as regulatory milestones unfolded and funding scenarios changed.
The Solution
I built a comprehensive launch roadmap from scratch over two to three months. Using a traditional pharmaceutical launch template as a starting point, I systematically evaluated which activities applied to a digital therapeutic and which needed to be reimagined or created entirely. I designed an interactive Excel-based roadmap with over 500 action items structured by function, sequenced by timeline and dependencies, and equipped with toggle switches that allowed the client to model different funding scenarios. For critical functions like sales force sizing, I developed detailed recommendations with multiple approaches based on varying business objectives and resource constraints. The roadmap covered functions that didn't yet exist at the company, providing the structure needed to build these teams from the ground up. The company used this roadmap to secure $10M in Series B funding and executed the plan to achieve FDA authorization on April 15, 2025, making their app the first prescription digital therapeutic for its indication in the United States.
Core Skills Leveraged
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This project required imposing structure on a fundamentally undefined market category. Prescription digital therapeutics had no established commercial models, no playbooks, no precedents for provider adoption or payer reimbursement. I deconstructed traditional pharma launches and systematically evaluated each component against digital product realities. If there's no physical distribution, what replaces those workstreams? If providers are skeptical that an app can be therapeutic, what education strategy do we need? I created entirely new workstreams around the prescription-to-download patient journey, insurance verification processes, and provider education to overcome skepticism. I organized 500+ activities into a coherent roadmap with functional ownership, clear sequencing, and explicit dependencies. The interactive elements — funding scenario toggles and dependency mapping — acknowledged uncertainty while providing a clear path forward. This structure allowed a company with no commercial organization to see exactly what needed to be built, in what order, and why each piece mattered to the whole.
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I made judgment calls balancing best practices against practical constraints throughout the project. When adapting the pharmaceutical template, I decided what was necessary versus nice-to-have, what could be sequenced in parallel versus what had true dependencies, and where assumptions were reasonable given the novel market context. In sizing the sales force, I assessed multiple scenarios based on different commercial strategies, each with different resource implications and risk profiles. I made deliberate choices about detail levels: hiring timelines required granular specificity because these were immediate decisions the company needed to make, while messaging strategies could remain conceptual since those functions didn't exist yet and the exact positioning would evolve as the market developed. This judgment about where to go deep versus stay high-level kept the roadmap useful rather than overwhelming. The Excel roadmap's flexibility and scenario planning prepared the client to demonstrate to the Board and investors how the company could adapt to different regulatory outcomes and funding levels, which was critical to securing the Series B investment.
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I owned end-to-end delivery while directing a team of two analysts and integrating inputs from multiple sources. I designed the Excel structure, made critical adaptation decisions about what from traditional pharma launches applied to this novel market, and ensured every component fit into a coherent story. I directed my analysts on research, formatting, and data entry while owning quality control and integration to maintain consistency across 500+ action items. I consulted my manager for pharma launch expertise but made final calls about what applied to digital therapeutics. I drove the project through iterative client interactions with the Chief Commercial Officer, presenting drafts and adjusting based on evolving priorities and new information about the regulatory pathway. The execution challenge was maintaining coherence across hundreds of interdependent activities while adapting to a market being defined in real time. The client used our roadmap to secure funding and executed the plan to achieve FDA authorization, validating that what I built was genuinely execution-ready and not just a theoretical planning document.