Most marketing frameworks start with the same three questions.
- Who is it for?
- What is it for?
- How do we grow it?
They are not wrong. They are incomplete.
The mistake is not the questions. It is the assumption that the order never changes.
In practice, the order of these questions is a function of maturity. Treating a pre revenue MVP like a $20M ARR company is not just inefficient. It actively destroys signal. It forces premature certainty, locks teams into the wrong abstractions, and burns capital in search of answers that only time and traction can reveal.
Syntropy is about restoring order. This is one of those moments where order matters.
The primacy of Who, What, and How shifts as a company moves from MVP to PMF to T2D3. Not acknowledging that shift is one of the quiet reasons most SaaS marketing feels busy and ineffective at the same time.
Here is how the order actually works.
The MVP stage. Start with What.
At MVP, the company does not yet deserve a Who.
There is not enough evidence. Not enough behavior. Not enough truth.
Founders often feel pressure to define ICPs early. Boards ask for them. Advisors push for them. Marketing teams demand them. This pressure creates false precision. Personas without gravity. Segments without pull.
At MVP, the job is simpler and harder at the same time.
What is this for.
What problem does it remove.
What friction does it reduce.
What job does it actually do when nobody is watching.
The goal at this stage is not scale. It is signal.
A product must be useful and usable enough for real humans to spend time with it. Time is the currency that precedes money. People vote with attention before they vote with wallets.
When the What is clear enough, the Who starts to reveal itself. Not as a hypothesis, but as a pattern. A cluster of users who lean in harder than others. A beachhead forms not because you chose it, but because it chose you.
This is why founder led discovery matters here. Not because founders are better marketers, but because they are closest to the original problem. They can hear weak signals others would dismiss. They can recognize resonance before it shows up in dashboards.
MVP marketing is not demand generation. It is sense making.
The PMF stage. Pivot to Who.
Product market fit is not a feeling. It is behavior that repeats.
Customers pay.
They stay.
They tell others without being asked.
When that happens, the center of gravity shifts.
Now the most important question is Who is it for.
Not aspirationally. Empirically.
The mistake at PMF is continuing to market to everyone who shows interest. That spreads entropy. It increases churn. It bloats CAC. It creates a product roadmap that bends in too many directions at once.
PMF is the moment to narrow, not expand.
Look at your best customers. The ones with the highest retention. The cleanest implementations. The lowest support burden. The strongest referrals. Extract the common attributes. Firmographic. Behavioral. Situational.
This is not segmentation as a marketing exercise. It is segmentation as a survival mechanism.
Once the Who is clear, the What must be refined again. Language matters now. The words your best customers use are better than anything your copywriters invent. Pain, claim, gain needs to be reset based on lived experience, not design intent.
This is the move from signal detection to signal amplification.
You are no longer asking if this works. You are deciding who it works best for, and having the discipline to say no to the rest.
The T2D3 stage. Obsess over How.
By the time a company enters T2D3 territory, the Who and the What should be boringly clear.
If they are not, scale will punish the ambiguity.
At this stage the strategic question is How do we grow without breaking the economics.
Growth now has three simultaneous vectors.
Generate demand at scale.
Retain what you win.
Expand value per customer.
This is not sequential. It is parallel.
Marketing stops being about discovery and becomes about orchestration. Channels diversify. ABM becomes viable because the ICP is precise enough to hunt, not gather. Funnel velocity matters more than raw volume. Unit economics replace anecdotes as the primary source of truth.
The danger here is reverting to activity. More campaigns. More channels. More noise. The syntropic move is the opposite.
Fewer plays.
Clear ownership.
Relentless measurement.
Growth is no longer about pushing the rocket. It is about guiding it while it is already moving fast.
A simple metaphor that holds.
Think of this journey like baseball.
At MVP, you are in the batter’s box. The only thing that matters is contact. The What. You need to hit the ball. No strategy matters until that happens.
At PMF, you are rounding the bases. The Who matters. You read the field. You learn where you can advance safely. You stop guessing and start choosing.
At T2D3, you are scoring runs. The How dominates. You play small ball. You optimize every move. Speed, coordination, and efficiency compound.
Trying to steal second before first is how startups get thrown out.
The syntropic takeaway.
Who, What, and How are not a checklist. They are a sequence that evolves.
MVP demands humility. Start with What.
PMF demands focus. Obsess over Who.
T2D3 demands discipline. Master How.
Most marketing dysfunction comes from answering the right question at the wrong time.
Syntropy is about restoring the right order. When you do, clarity compounds, waste collapses, and growth stops feeling like force.
Sources and further reading:
https://www.t2d3.pro
https://www.kalungi.com/blog/syntropy
https://www.kalungi.com/blog/product-market-fit
https://www.kalungi.com/blog/account-based-marketing-for-saas
