Explore every episode of the podcast A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
Dive into the complete episode list for A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
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Pub. Date
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This founder was hours from hiring a VP Product—turns out, he was a total fraud. Here’s what he learned.
29 Aug 2024
00:10:48
It's the first time I see a candidate BS his way through interviews with multiple people, impress each one of them, and ultimately end up being a complete fraud. But the biggest learning wasn't that you should watch out for fraud-- it was that you shouldn't trust interviews nearly as much as you'd think.
While fake candidates are rare, candidates who are 10x better at interviewing than they are at the job are quite common. In fact, the only thing you know about candidates with great logos is that they know how to interview. Otherwise, they wouldn't have worked at Google in the first place.
What you don't know is if they're truly great. Here's how to find out.
Takeaways
Don't rely solely on interviews when hiring
Hire based on referrals and conduct thorough reference checks
Former founders are often the best hires
Logos and impressive resumes don't mean as much as you think
He quit his cozy Google job & founded not 1 but 2 unicorns— then grew from $1M to $12M ARR in 2 years. | Ashutosh Garg, Founder of Eightfold AI
26 Aug 2024
00:36:22
Ashutosh is one of those rare founders who founded not just one, but two unicorns. He worked at Google for 4 years, left and started Bloomreach, which was last valued at $2.2B.
Halfway through that journey, he left to do it all over again. He started Eightfold AI which is the one we're talking about today. In 2021, he raised $220M from Softbank at a $2.1B valuation.
When he left Bloomreach, he didn't even have a clear idea of what he was going to build. He just knew he wanted to have more impact and go from 0 to 1 again.
It took him about 2 years to figure it out— then he grew from $1M ARR to $3M ARR in a year & to $12M ARR the year after that.
Why you should listen
Why founders need to validate ideas with an open mind to not have tunnel vision.
Why even unicorn founders don't get it right and often need to pivot to success.
How to address problems that are not just today problems, but likely to be problems for a long time.
Keywords
unicorn founder, Bloomreach, Eightfold, product-market fit, pivot, HR space, digital marketers, talent, hiring, market need, scaling
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:41) His first unicorn - Bloomreach (00:05:22) Starting Eightfold AI (00:08:50) Not Marrying Yourself to One Idea (00:11:55) Finding real customer problems (00:14:46) Solving Today's Problems vs Future Problems (00:16:47) Hiring From Already Rejected Candidates (00:22:50) Fundraising (00:24:40) Building a V1 (00:27:00) Pivoting and then Reverting Back (00:30:43) First Customers (00:32:59) Finding Product Market Fit (00:35:04) One Piece of Advice
99% of founders SUCK at storytelling. Here's the pro who taught Slack & Salesforce how to do it. | Matthew Dicks, professional storyteller & bestselling author of Storyworthy.
25 Jul 2024
01:17:39
There is no better storyteller in the world than Matthew Dicks. He tells stories for a living. He gets paid by the world's biggest brands to create stories for them. He's won Moth StorySLAM (a storytelling competition in NYC) a record 59 times.
Every founder knows storytelling is a critical skill. But 99% of founders I meet are terrible storytellers. They overcomplicate, they include too much information, they try to convince with data.
Like Matthew says, "Most of what people say in business is forgettable".
Whether you want to close customers, investors or employees, you need to stand out and be remembered. And the best way to do that is to tell compelling stories that resonate.
Here's how to do it.
Why you should listen
Why the key being remembered is being different
How to use stories to stand out and resonate with customers, investors and employees
Learn how to tell an effective story that is relatable, creates suspense, and includes personal connections.
How to use personal stories to sell more product.
Why you often shouldn't start a story at the beginning.
Keywords
storytelling, business, relatability, suspense, personal connection, Slack, Salesforce, communication, connection, simplicity, contrast, value proposition, trust
Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:52) A Story About Why Storytelling is Important (00:11:18) Deconstructing the Story (00:15:07) Keeping a Story in Present Tense (00:16:58) Start With Location and Action (00:20:41) When to Tell a Story Chronologically (00:28:13) The Story for Slack (00:35:33) Making a Pitch with No Data (00:41:51) It's not B2B or B2C-- it's H2H (00:47:57) The Goal is to be Remembered (00:52:23) Use Truth in Your Story for Relatability (00:55:11) Making up stories on the fly for portfolio companies
How to Find Product Market Fit | Allan Wille, Founder of Klipfolio
15 May 2022
00:33:26
For even the most successful startups, finding product-market fit is often a long journey and Klipfolio was no exception.
Founders often feel that one more feature, one more UI change will get them to product-market fit. The reality is that the path to PMF is more of a step function. If your first product doesn't quite get you there, a small change is unlikely to get you the results you're hoping for. You likely need to dramatically change your product or even your market.
In this episode, Allan shares the story of how Klipfolio went from consumer to enterprise and back to SMB before finally finding real product-market fit. He shares lots of clear details on what true product-market fit feels like.
If you're a founder of a company that hasn't quite made it beyond PMF, you'll want to check this out.
It’s one thing to work hard. It’s another to work hard with a well-researched destination in sight.
In this episode of The Product Market Fit Show, Rob Boukine gets real about the mistakes he made in his early days as cofounder of Noibu and dives deep on how he pivoted his business. He discusses the importance of using customer discovery to ensure your products are “need to have” rather than “nice to have”.
If you’re working hard but nothing is working out as expected, perhaps his advice on tracking down the right pain point will hit home.
How to Launch a Marketplace | Ray Reddy, Founder of Ritual
22 Apr 2022
00:14:47
Launching is often thought of as a huge event. Lots of noise, lots of PR. One big bang. For Ray, it's just a series of many small experiments.
Ray realized that the number one value prop for a consumer was coverage: when a user opened the app, the majority of merchants that were walking distance needed to show up. So, he set up an experiment. He targeted a handful of office buildings and a dozen merchants, all located on the same block. He didn't need to onboard all the merchants in Toronto, just all the merchants on this one block.
If you're about to launch a consumer product or a marketplace, check out what Ray has to say.
How to Come up with an Idea | Ray Reddy, Founder of Ritual
15 Apr 2022
00:23:50
"Ideas are a dime a dozen". Maybe. But executing on a mediocre idea won't get you very far.
In this episode, Ray, a multi-time founder who sold his first company to Google, discusses how he came up with the idea for Ritual. It was not your typical aha-moment. Many ideas came together over a long time until the idea for a pick-up order app was born. Since then, Ritual has gone on to launch in over 40 cities and raise over $100M.
If you feel you want to be a founder but are struggling to come up with a great idea, maybe Ray's story will help you out.
How to Validate an Idea | Moe Abbas, Founder of Acadium
01 Apr 2022
00:23:53
If you want to validate an idea, the conventional wisdom is to build an MVP. But even an MVP takes time to build. What if you could validate not only your idea but your entire funnel, without writing a single line of code?
That's what Moe did. He built a landing page, found ways to advertise and generate traffic, and went so far as to convert traffic to paying members- before having any product to sell! (Of course, he immediately refunded those early customers and added them to a waiting list.)
If you have an idea and want to know if there is real demand - this is the episode for you.
How to Build the Right Solution | Carol Leaman, Founder of Axonify
15 Mar 2022
00:26:31
After you've had an idea and validated the problem, it's probably time to build. But how exactly do you decide what to build, how to build it, and how to get end users to actually adopt the solution?
Carol is a multi-time founder and she has this process down to a science. On this episode, she shares how she built the first version of Axonify (now acquired for over US$350M). She explains how to find a champion, how to stay close to them throughout the build phase, and how to get end users to adopt the product.
If you're starting to build out a product, especially in a b2b or b2b2c context, check out this episode.
How to Start a Company on the Side | Mike Potter, Founder of Rewind
01 Mar 2022
00:22:49
To launch a startup you have to leave your job and spend considerable capital, with no guarantee of success. It involves considerable risk, right?
Not for Mike.
Mike started Rewind- a company now approaching unicorn status- fully on the side. It started off as a project, and neither Mike nor his co-founders took any salary cuts to get Rewind off the ground. Instead, they worked nights and weekends, steadily growing MRR and joined one at a time as the startup became self-sufficient.
If you have an idea but aren't ready to go all in, check out this episode and learn how to start it on the side.
Why you Need a Performance Coach | Dan Eberhard, Founder of Koho
15 Feb 2022
00:22:17
Why do professional athletes have coaches, but professional entrepreneurs don't?
Dan thought this was odd. So many years ago, a long time before starting Koho - a company now worth over $250M- Dan started working with performance coaches. In this episode, he walks us through how to pick a coach, what exactly a coach is (hint: it's not an advisor), and how a coach can help your startup grow. In fact, Dan is such a believer in coaching that Koho offers coaching to all of their 200+ employees.
If you're interested in performance coaching, or are looking for an edge, listen to what Dan has to say.
How to Raise Your First Round | Marc Boscher, Founder of Unito
31 Jan 2022
00:36:46
Ask most early-stage founders what they need most and you'll likely get the same answer: money.
Especially early on, before you have much traction, raising money can be daunting. If you don't have much of a network, it's hard to even know where to start. Who are these angel investors and how do you find them? How do you get them to take a meeting? And how do you get interested investors to actually close?
Marc walks us through his first fundraise at Unito. How he leveraged an accelerator to build a network, got other founders to get him investor introductions and used various tactics to build momentum and FOMO.
If you're looking to raise one of your first rounds of funding, check out how Marc got it done.
How to Build Hype | Solon Angel, Founder of MindBridge
03 Jan 2022
00:28:16
Many people say that hype leads nowhere, that instead you should keep your head down and focus on building. But hype- or raising the profile of your company, as Solon calls it- brings many benefits. It means more potential hires, more investors, and even more customers.
As you'll see, Solon is the master of creating hype.
Find out how Solon raised the profile of MindBridge to get a multi-time founder to join as CEO, to poach key technical talent and to raise money well ahead of building product.
In 2019, he went all-in on AI, grew to $3M ARR in 2 years—then to $85M ARR in 5. | Shubham Mishra, Founder of Pixis
22 Jul 2024
00:39:26
5 years ago, Shubham had just graduated college and had no network. He bootstrapped to $3M in ARR, then raised $200M & grew to $85M ARR.
But he started trying to sell AI for marketing to enterprises with no network.
So for 2 months, he'd go to the lobby of a bank and sit there for an hour. He'd wait for the CMO to walk by, just so he could say hi. He'd tell receptionists he was waiting for an interview.
Finally, one day the CMO had enough and asked him who he was. Shubham got his 15-minute moment. That turned into a free pilot.
That free pilot turned to $1.2M ARR.
2 years after he'd started the company, he bootstrapped to $3M ARR and was profitable— since then, the growth never stopped.
Why you should listen
How to start a startup top-down from a market vs bottoms-up from customer problems.
Why doing insane things in the early days can lead to insane results.
How Founder-led sales and tight feedback loops are the key for product development and customer success.
Keywords AI startup, product market fit, challenges, marketing, scaling, fundraising
Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:52) Origin Story of Pixis (00:07:05) Getting the First Customers (00:09:14) What is Pixis (00:11:26) Video Generation (00:14:54) Finding the Problem Going Top-Down (00:19:55) The Pitch (00:24:30) The First Pilot (00:27:08) Scaling the Team (00:31:57) Raising the First Round (00:33:59) The AI Market (00:35:54) Finding True PMF (00:37:13) One Piece of Advice
How to Launch a Marketplace | Allen Lau, Founder of Wattpad
03 Jan 2022
00:26:04
Launching a marketplace is hard. The chicken-and-egg problem often seems insurmountable.
In 2021, Wattpad was acquired for over $600M. But it wasn't easy. Early on, Wattpad cofounder and CEO Allen Lau almost gave up. He discusses the virtues of starting with a small niche and allowing growth to come with time. He explains the ASSET framework he’s developed to help you launch and scale a marketplace.
If you’re about to launch a marketplace or just launched one and are not seeing the traction you were hoping for, you might want to give this a listen.
How to Come up with an Idea | Mallorie Brodie, Founder of Bridgit
01 Jan 2022
00:29:25
Building a successful startup starts well before the first prototype is created or the first investor goes all in.
It starts with customer discovery, and Mallorie Brodie has some unique insight into what that looks like. Now the cofounder and CEO of Bridgit, she started out as a college student eagerly chasing down construction cranes and listening to complaints. Today, she tells The Product Market Fit Show the secret to finding great startup ideas.
If you think you already know your market’s pain points, you’re probably doing it wrong.
How Wiz grew to $500M ARR in 4 years—& could exit to Google for $23B (largest VC-backed exit in history)
18 Jul 2024
00:11:11
Google is in talks to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23B (a 40x revenue multiple). Wiz is the company that in 2021 announced it grew from $0 to $100M ARR in just 18 months.
How did this cybersecurity company grow so fast in a crowded space?
How does it get a 40x revenue multiple when FAANG stocks trade at 5-15x?
Who are the exceptional founders that were able to create the largest venture-backed exit in history in just 4 years?
In this episode, we dive into the 3 ingredients that made Wiz into such a success: insane growth, insane team, and insane discipline.
Why you should listen
Why addressing a full 'Job to be Done' is key to fast growth
Why having an A+ team is irreplaceable
Why you need several factors to come together to have exceptional, outlier results
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:00) Wiz's 3 Ingredients to Success (00:01:09) 1. Insane Growth (00:02:30) Jobs to be Done Framework (00:03:30) What does Wiz do? (00:05:36) 2. Insane Team (00:07:54) 3. Insane Discipline
He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before shipping a single one. | Paul Mikesell, Founder of Carbon Robotics.
15 Jul 2024
00:58:20
Paul built a startup that was acquired for $2.2B. He worked on AI at Uber and Oculus. But when a farmer told him about some of the problems he was facing, he quit and went all-in on farming.
He built a robot that attaches to the back of tractors, uses computer vision to identify weeds and lasers to shoot and kill them. He sells each robot for $1.5M. He's sold nearly 100 so far— & generated nearly $150M in revenue.
Whether you're working on a hardware startup or not, you'll want to listen to this episode to see how to do proper customer discovery, how to raise pre-product, and how to get millions of dollars in pre-sales without having to ship.
Why you should listen
Why hardware is hard-- but easier than it's ever been.
How to tell a story to raise $10M pre-revenue
How to set up milestones for fundraising
How to generate $10M in pre-orders before shipping product
How to get a sense of product market fit even before the product is fully developed
Keywords
Carbon Robotics, deep tech, AI neural nets, deep learning, weed control, farming, manual labor, lasers, research and development, funding, seed round, prototype, Series A, pre-orders, manufacturing challenges, revenue
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:09) A Background in Deep Tech (00:05:50) Problem and Solution Interest (00:07:35) Find the Passion (00:07:37) Get Behind the Mission (00:09:39) Back to Seattle (00:11:40) The Epiphany (00:16:50) A Human Affair (00:18:00) The Money Flows to the Best Storyteller (00:21:45) A Farmer's Weed Control Dilemma (00:25:56) Weed-Shooting Lasers (00:28:11) Funding the Prototype (00:30:13) Hardware is Hard But Rewarding (00:36:46) Why Laser Weeding Works (00:41:19) Series A (00:42:51) Robot Autonomy (00:45:42) Pricing (00:48:12) Telling the Story After It Happened (00:51:44) Fighting Through Disaster (00:54:50) Finding True PMF (00:55:41) One Piece of Advice
Tesla’s EV market share (finally) falls below 50%. Good news for founders— incumbents took 15 years to match 1 founder.
11 Jul 2024
00:06:58
Elon Musk single-handedly took on the entire automotive industry. No one, including me, thought he would succeed. But he's built an $800B company. Whether sales are slowing down misses the mark: the punchline is it took well capitalized, professional automakers 15 years to catch up to a single founder.
Sure, Elon Musk is special. But this goes beyond just Elon Musk. It shows that founders today have more business power than founders have ever had. They can take on the most established industries.
The reason is that the pace of innovation is faster than ever. No business model is safe.
And founders are the only ones who can react.
Keywords Tesla, EV market, car manufacturers, Elon Musk, disruptive innovation, business models, founders, rate of change
YC founder raises $3.5M, keeps team to 3 people—then grows 10x to $2M ARR in 1 year. | Benjamin Encz, Founder of Ashby
08 Jul 2024
00:34:46
Last month, Ashby raised a $30M Series C. Ashby is used by customers like Notion, Ramp and Sequoia. Benji built Ashby as an end-to-end Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that would replace several point solutions. He had to build heads down for 18 months and couldn't launch a simple MVP.
Surprisingly, even though he raised $3.5M at seed, he didn't grow his team. He built the product with just 3 people. "We could spend time recruiting or we could spend time building"-- he decided to build.
When they launched, they grew to $200K in ARR within a year and then 10x'd a year after that. Here's the story of how they found product-market fit.
Why you should listen
Why keeping your team small helps you go faster.
How to displace point solutions with an end-to-end platform
How to validate pain points.
How to move up market from startups to enterprise companies.
Keywords Ashby, all-in-one platform, recruiting, reporting, pain points, product market fit, Series A
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:29) No Website, No Problem (00:03:08) A Viral Loop (00:04:40) Origin Story of Ashby (00:05:39) The Biggest Pain Point (00:07:50) De-Risking (00:09:26) A Sticky Product and Market Evolution (00:10:50) A Hundred Conversations (00:13:09) The Main Feedback and Key Learnings (00:16:16) The Pitch (00:17:20) Bundling and Unbundling (00:20:50) Building a Great Engineering Organization (00:22:26) Letter of Intent Stage (00:24:45) Validation and Feeling Ready (00:28:18) A Little Bit of Luck (00:31:51) Finding True PMF (00:32:44) One Piece of Advice
Pickleball grew 3x in 4 years to 14M players. Not by competing with tennis— but by creating a new market instead.
04 Jul 2024
00:09:01
AI startups don’t necessarily have to beat incumbents. Some will start entirely new markets instead.
Like Canva to Photoshop, Shopify to Amazon or Pickleball to Tennis, many of these won’t even have to compete. They create 10x easier to use products and through that open up an entirely new space. They solve problems people didn’t even know they had. In many cases they expand the market for incumbents too— pickleball didn’t steal tennis players, it became a gateway and created even more.
We discuss the 3 factors a startup needs to be able to create a new market and why there is plenty of opportunity left in the AI space.
He fought Al Qaeda in Iraq, turned down $250K at McKinsey—& built a $150M+ ARR unicorn. Here’s how it happened: | Blake Hall, Founder of ID.me
01 Jul 2024
00:52:41
"I was technically homeless at the time. I was sleeping on my buddy's couch. I had declined $250,000/ year at McKinsey... I had no idea what I was doing." Now, Blake has $150M in ARR, growing 30% per year, with 80% gross margins. He's raised $400M and his startup ID.me is worth over $1B.
This is the story of how pivoted for a Groupon-like model to an identity verification platform. Blake talks about how he raised the initial round, closed the first few enterprise contracts, and why he thinks finding product-market fit is more of a science than most founders think.
After his pivot, ID.me doubled its user base every year. Now, over 40% of Americans have an ID.me account.
Why you should listen •Learn how even successful founders are often much closer to failure than you'd expect •How to get credibility as a founder and close enterprise deals. •Why fear of failure can be a powerful motivator if used constructively. •How to use a niche market to quickly find product-market fit •Why staying close to customers is the best way to pivot into the right problem/solution set.
Keywords ID.me, military, tech founder, product-market fit, startup, business model, capital raising, mentorship, scientific approach, user base, revenue growth
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:56) The Origin of ID.me (00:04:44) The Two Parts of Credibility (00:11:16) To Win Big, Start Small (00:14:53) Fear of Failure Can Be Positive (00:20:54) Paypal for Identity (00:23:59) Moving to DC and Raising 500k (00:27:53) Belief in the Person Over the Business Model (00:30:55) Pivoting to Identity Wallets (00:41:07) The first big contract: Under Armour (00:48:06) Getting to a Million (00:49:39) One Piece of Advice
Each Google/OpenAI update kills more startups. Here’s how to make sure you're not next.
27 Jun 2024
00:10:33
Every startup needs to compete with incumbents. But it's different with AI.
AI startups need to create websites or apps from scratch and drive traffic. Incumbents can just add AI as a feature. They have distribution built in.
AI is not like previous tech revolutions. Unlike mobile, the internet, or the PC revolution, AI is not a new distribution channel. Startups are at a much bigger disadvantage than they've ever been.
In this episode, we discuss the 3 key elements you need to consider to answer the most important question:
Will you get distribution faster than incumbents get product?
Keywords AI, startups, incumbents, distribution channels, technological shift, mobile, internet, PCs, sustaining innovation, disruptive innovation, product versus distribution, founders
Why you should listen
This time it's different. AI is easier for incumbents and harder for startups than previous tech revolutions.
Startups need to consider the incumbents they are up against, the power dynamics in the market, and the primary use case they are targeting.
Understand how to think through the race and what elements are most important
1st-time founder meets 120 VCs— closes $2.7M in 5 weeks, 10x oversubscribed. Here's the step-by-step guide to close a round. | Andrew Rea, Founder of Taxwire
24 Jun 2024
00:51:53
Andrew spoke with 120+ VCs to raise a $1.5M pre-seed round. He closed $2.7M and had demand for many millions more. He devoted 90% of his time to fundraising, but only took weeks from the first meetings to close.
99% of founders I meet do not fundraise at this level. It takes them longer to close, they have fewer choices and raise less.
This is a specific, detailed and tactical guide to closing a round. If you're ever going to raise, you need to listen.
Why you should listen
Why talking to more investors will help you raise 10x faster.
How to use an investment memo to articulate your thoughts and as a base to build a pitch deck
How to get warm introductions to VCs
How to take control of investor meetings and put VCs on their heels
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:02)How Taxwire Thought About Fundraising (00:04:02) The Start of Taxwire (00:06:32) Making a Memo Before a Deck (00:09:50) Reaching Out (00:16:10) Wanting to Oversubscribe (00:21:32) Keeping Control and Qualifying Investors (00:31:10) The Basic Structure of the Pitch (00:34:24) Target Close Day (00:39:01) The Timeline for Fundraising and Meetings (00:44:41) Deciding Who to Accept Funds From (00:50:18) One Piece of Advice
Q2 Early-Stage Venture Report w/ Carta’s Head of Insights: Valuations, Round Sizes, Graduation Rates & more. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta
22 Aug 2024
00:40:39
Carta is the backbone of most venture-backed startups. They have access to specific information about every single round, not just what's reported in TechCrunch.
Today, Peter Walker, Carta's Head of Insights joins us to share the findings from Carta's Q2 reports. We go deep into data from pre-seed, seed and Series A rounds. We cover median valuations, time between rounds, graduation rates between rounds, the AI and repeat-founder premiums, and much more.
VCs know most of this data. Founders need to be equally well-informed. You won't want to miss this episode.
Why you should listen:
What are the typical pre-seed, seed and Series A rounds.
Why stacking SAFEs is very dangerous.
How to minimize dilution in the early-stages
What is standard founder ownership, founder equity splits and ESOP sizes.
Why the graduation from Seed to Series A is so low and the bar for Series A so high.
Many more data points for pre-seed to Series A Venture Capital and Startup data.
Keywords
startup ecosystem, fundraising trends, total fundraising, down rounds, bridge rounds, company shutdowns, pre-seed funding, seed funding, series A funding, valuations, round sizes, dilution, founder equity, early employees, equity compensation, seed round size, series A
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:35)Findings from the Q2 Report (00:06:12)Typical Pre-Seed Round (00:07:29) Post Money Safe vs Pre-Money Safe (00:11:54) AI and Repeat Founder Premiums (00:15:03) Typical Seed Round (00:17:07) Time & Graduation Rates Between Rounds (00:22:08) Typical Series A (00:28:14) Equity Splits (00:35:02) Founder Ownership
Zoom hits an all-time low. Here's what AI startups can learn from the WFH hype cycle.
20 Jun 2024
00:11:13
Zoom was THE work-from-home stock. It's down 90% from peak. The same hype that fuelled work-from-home stocks is now fuelling AI. What happened to Zoom will happen to many AI companies.
AI startups today need to carefully position against foundational models and incumbents. Here's how to think through it.
Why you should listen:
Learn why what happened to Zoom will happen to many AI companies
How to position yourself against the two AI giants: Foundational models & incumbents.
How to think through the product vs distribution race all AI startups face.
Keywords Zoom, AI, positioning, foundational models, incumbents, use cases
He grew to $22M ARR in 4 years—but regrets spending so much on growth. | Chris Walker, Founder of Refine Labs
17 Jun 2024
00:45:23
Chris shares the story of how he grew Refine Labs to $22M ARR, what he did to grow so fast, and also why he regrets spending so much on growth instead of focusing on profitability.
He goes exceptionally deep on sales and marketing and provides tactical advice you can steal.
Chris is the founder of Refine Labs & Passetto. He's also a LinkedIn Top Voice with 150K followers.
Why you should listen:
Learn when to switch away from founder-driven sales
Why sales velocity is the key metric you need to track
How to use customer feedback to drive a consistent marketing campaign and drive organic inbound.
How to know if you have product-market fit based on customer satisfaction and retention.
Why Chris regrets not focusing more on cash flow profitability vs growth.
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:21) Starting e-commerce companies on the side (00:04:56) Going all in (00:11:30) Balancing sales and marketing (00:18:05) Focusing on Customer FeedbackLanding the first customers (00:27:19) Why you should not spend on advertising (00:37:55) His most viral marketing campaign (00:41:04) Finding Product Market Fit
ChatGPT just hit $3B in ARR—here’s why Sam Altman is a strategic genius.
13 Jun 2024
00:09:42
Sam Altman is playing chess not checkers. He partnered with Microsoft. He partnered with Apple. He grew to $3B in ARR in 2 years. Hate him or love him, he's a strategic genius.
You'll recognize a pattern: Sam has an idea, positions correctly, lets the bets play out, and goes all-in on what works.
Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
In under 2 years, he has over 10M paying subscribers.
A brand name the average 60-year-old recognizes.
And, of course, his company OpenAI has $3.4B in ARR.
Keywords ChatGPT, OpenAI, revenue growth, strategic decision-making, positioning, Sam Altman, Microsoft, Apple, AI technology,
Reddit hit 1M users in 1 year. The key was listening to users—& not doing what they said. | Reddit CTO & Founding Engineer Chris Slowe
10 Jun 2024
00:52:58
We interview Chris Slow the CTO and Founding Engineer at Reddit. Reddit is now a ~$10B company, with nearly $1B in revenue. Their 1B+ monthly active users are so powerful they can move markets. This is the story of how it all began.
On this episode, we interview Chris Slowe, Reddit's current CTO and Founding Engineer. Chris was in YC's first-ever batch with Steve and Alexis. He was their roommate. When Chris's own startup failed, he moved over and joined them to build Reddit. This was almost 20 years ago, in 2005.
It only took them a year to hit 1 million monthly active users. But it took them well over 5 years to hit $1M in revenue. Here's the story of how they hit product-market fit and built the world's most powerful online community.
Why you should listen: - Learn how Reddit got started in 2005 and why it took them many years to monetize - See how word of mouth & organic growth are the key to building a community like Reddit - Hear Chris's perspective on scaling teams and organizations, preserving culture, and signs of clear product-market fit - Why applying lessons from your first startup to your second one is not as easy as you think it might be
Keywords Reddit, Y Combinator, growth, startups, founders, acquisition, Conde Nast, community-driven platform, culture, word of mouth, Google, organic growth, Hipmunk, monetization, product-market fit, scaling, startup advice
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:55) The Start of Reddit (00:07:13) Joining Reddit (00:12:56) Building Communities (00:20:37) The First Year of Reddit (00:22:56) The Acquisition (00:26:50) Staying Lean (00:28:58) Leaving Reddit to do Hipmunk (00:37:14) Hiring for Hipmunk (00:41:08) Coming Back to Reddit (00:45:05) Making the Mobile App (00:47:13) Monetization (00:50:05) Finding True Product Market Fit (00:50:41) One Piece of Advice
She quit her job without a startup idea. Then built a $550M startup from a bad dentist appointment. I Wardah Inam, Founder of Overjet
03 Jun 2024
00:28:59
Wardah was a PhD graduate working at a biomedical imaging startup. But all it took was two different dentists giving her two totally different diagnoses for her to quit her full-time job.
She was unemployed with no idea what to build.
All she knew was that something was broken—and she had to fix it. Her startup Overjet is now the #1 dental AI platform, valued at $550M.
Why you should listen: - Why founder obsession is a key trait - Why learning speed is the main KPI early on - Why staying close to customers is how you build the right product. - How to get customers to share data with you and let you spend time in their office, watching how they work.
Keywords dental AI, startup journey, funding challenges, product-market fit, impact on dental industry, speed in startups, biases in fundraising
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:52) The Start of Overjet (00:05:05) Obsession Increases your Chances (00:08:15)A Bad Dentist Appointment (00:11:35) Surpassing Dentist's Analysis Using AI (00:15:52) Finding a Co-Founder and Fundraising (00:24:22)Finding True Product Market Fit (00:27:33) One Piece of Advice
Ex-Squarespace CEO on how to sell to SMBs, build tight feedback loops, & stay close to customers even after raising $200M+ | Dane Atkinson, Founder of Odeko
27 May 2024
00:43:31
Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He grew the company from ~$2M in revenue to ~$15M. He's a multi-time founder with multiple exits. His current startup, Odeko, raised $227M.
He takes us through his long journey as a founder of multiple companies and shares the key startup lessons he's learned.
Why you should listen: - Why 7-day trials led to higher conversion than 30-day trials at Squarespace - Why you should talk to customers every single day. - Why SMB usage doesn't always translate into revenue. - Why you need to follow customer problems over business models and TAM.
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (0:00:0:37) Before Odeko (00:06:54) Leaving Squarespace (00:07:31) SumAll (00:13:01) Conversion Rates with Free Trials (00:16:10) The Start of Odeko (00:20:05) Staying Close to Clients (00:26:36) Realizing the New Model was Working (00:31:47) Landing the First Few Customers (00:37:00) Overhiring (00:39:17) Finding Product Market Fit (00:41:32) One Piece of Advice
He built Uber for parking & exited. Then raised $100M+. Here's his formula for finding product-market fit. | Shmulik Fishman, Founder of Argyle
20 May 2024
00:38:04
His first startup was a cool idea: Uber for Valet Parking. Investors loved it. But the unit economics didn't work out. So he had to pivot. He ended up selling it, but decided to do things differently the second time around.
“It’s the boring stuff that makes money. Sometimes the sexy, interesting things are really great ideas, fun to use, but aren’t money makers. They aren’t durable businesses.”
With Argyle, he didn't start with a cool idea. He replaced a product customers already paid for. His pitch went from "Wouldn't it be cool if?" to "I'll do what they do but twice as well and for half the cost".
"Find a better mouse trap. Build a product that's just a better version of a product that already exists. It's a lot easier to sell."
Why you should listen: - How to work with design partners to build the first version of your product - How to use those partners to get credibility and make your first enterprise sale - Keeping your sales teams small and staying close to the customer for as long as possible
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:04) The Origins of Argyle (00:04:03) The Aha Moment (00:15:06) When to Charge for the Product (00:19:31)Landing the First Customer (00:21:38) Staying Close to Customers (00:25:16) From Seed to Series A (00:32:06) Delivering clear ROI (00:35:58) Finding Product Market Fit (00:36:38) One Piece of Advice
COVID nearly bankrupted him. Then with AI he grew from $0 to $25M ARR in 4 years. | Andrew Lockhead, Founder of Stay22
13 May 2024
00:41:24
His travel startup crashed 90% overnight. Here’s how he used AI to grow past $2M/year—to $2M a month:
For a while, Andrew was crushing it. Accelerator -> $750K pre-seed -> $2M ARR -> $2.5M seed round. Then COVID hit.
He was selling to events like CES, SXSW, etc. Revenue dropped from $160K/month to under $10K... overnight. Investors from his seed round refuse to wire funds.
After nearly going bankrupt, he finds a way to pivot. A year later, his business takes off.
- Andrew shares a technique to land early customers. He offered to PAY his customers to use the product. - Learn how to deal with massive swings in revenue and unpredicted events. Early-stage founders are always one deal, one employee, one fundraise away from success... or failure. - Learn why you "can never celebrate until the money is in the bank"
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:16) The Start of Stay22 (00:07:15) The Seed Round (00:11:53) Pivoting the go to Market (00:19:38) Investors Pulling out Due to Covid (00:26:56) Finding the Opportunity in the Pandemic (00:31:31) Tapping into the Blogger Market (00:37:31) Growing Back from Zero (00:38:49) Finding True Product Market Fit (00:39:35) One Piece of Advice
He raised $11M off a deck. Here's how he launched Clumio & grew 4x to over 8-figures in ARR. | Poojan Kumar, Founder of Clumio
06 May 2024
00:31:03
Poojan is a multi-time successful founder. He raised $60M for his first startup and exited. He just raised a $75M Series D at his current startup. But it wasn't always easy.
- In his first startup, he had to hover beside conference booths for hours to land his first customer. - He gave his product away for free to the first several customers. - It took him 6 years to cross $10M in ARR
Why you should listen:
- Learn exactly how a successful repeat founder thinks about team structure in the early days. Though he raised $11M, he spent only a third of it.
- Understand why sometimes giving your product away for free is the best way to get off the ground.
- Hear about specific sales tactics you may want to use to get your first customers.
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:30) Before Clumio
(00:05:53) Raising 7 Million Dollars off a Power Point
(00:09:35) Starting Clumio
(00:16:41) Starting Conversations with Customers
(00:20:08) Finding and Solving the Real Pain Points
He quit his cozy Google job & ignored lean startup advice— then grew to $3M in 1 year. | Arvind Jain, Founder of Glean
29 Apr 2024
00:29:45
Arvind founded 2 billion-dollar startups—by doing everything lean startup tells you not to do.
- He didn’t focus on launching an MVP. - He ignored early market feedback. - He didn’t charge beta users anything— for 2 years.
And it worked.
He went from $0 to $3M in revenue the year he launched publicly. He tripled to about $9M the year after. And tripled every year since.
Two months ago, Glean raised $200M at a $2B valuation.
Why you should listen: - Learn exactly how outlier founder Arvind Jain does things differently at the 0 to 1 stage. - Why he thinks conviction and persistence are the most important qualities founders need. - When you should follow playbooks and when to write your own. - Why it might not matter that most people don't "get" your idea in the early days.
Timestamps: (2:02) Leaving Google (3:39) Coming up with Glean (7:47) Building a Product in a Neglected Space (11:38) Skipping Lean Startup (14:11) Using design partners (16:13) Building for 2 years, with 0 revenue (20:13) When it's time to launch (21:12) Why AI was a key tailwind (26:25) Finding Product Market Fit on Day One (27:32) One Piece of Advice
He built in stealth with 1 customer for a year—then grew to 1M paid users across 60,000 locations. | Sanish Mondkar, Founder of Legion
19 Aug 2024
00:42:21
Last quarter, Sanish raised a $50M Series D. His company has raised over $130M. They have enterprise customers across 14 countries including Dollar General, Aldo, and CircleK.
It all started because Sanish was working out of coffee shops. He wasn't looking for a startup idea. But after a few casual conversations with employees, he noticed several problems retail workers and managers faced. He decided to build Legion to solve them.
He partnered with one local coffee chain, worked as a barista for a week, and developed the product with them for a year. He didn't sell to other customers, he stayed heads down until the local chain adopted the product across their entire organization. By the time they went to sell to other enterprises, they knew the product worked.
Why you should listen
Why listening with an open mind is a common way to identify customer problems.
Why providing clear and immediate ROI is a must-have for enterprise customers
How to perfect your product with design partners that are heavily invested
How to raise a Series A without meaningful revenue.
Keywords
Legion, workforce management, enterprise software, problem validation, value proposition, scaling, pricing model, ROI
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:35) The Origin Story of Legion (00:04:53) The Mindset of Most Frontline Workers (00:11:05) Gathering Data (00:20:00) Building an MVP (00:24:30) Insights from Customers Using V1 Products (00:30:15) Series A (00:32:13) Legions Core ROI (00:36:15) Scaling Legion (00:39:47) Finding Product Market Fit (00:41:19) One Piece of Advice
5 months in, Snapchat had only 127 users. Here's how Evan Spiegel found product market fit w/ Jeremy Liew (Partner at Lightspeed and Seed Investor in Snapchat)
22 Apr 2024
00:39:01
Snapchat got 0 downloads the day it launched. 5 months in, it had only 127 users. Today Snapchat is an $18B company with 400 million daily active users. Evan Spiegel noticed what even Zuck missed: daily communication is meant to be ephemeral, not recorded for all time.
In this episode, we dive deep into how Snapchat went from idea to product-market fit.
Our guest is Jeremy Liew, a Partner at Lightspeed and the first investor in Snapchat. He led Lightspeed's seed round in 2012 at a $5M valuation (!!).
He shares his four-part B2C framework that helped him understand why Evan and Snap were special before anyone else.
If you want to understand why Snapchat took off when so many other consumer startups fail to do so, check this episode out.
He gave up on chasing unicorns. Now he earns $500K+/year from his 3-person startup. | Rand Fishkin, Founder of Moz & SparkToro
15 Apr 2024
00:49:18
If you feel like the ‘unicorn or bust’ playbook isn’t for you, then this episode definitely will be. Rand Fishkin is a multi-time founder and published author of Lost and Founder. He founded Moz, raised $29M in VC, grew to $50M in revenue and exited for $70M.
But he ultimately realized that the VC-backed life wasn’t for him.
So he went on to start SparkToro, a profitable 3-person startup that does $2M in revenue and takes only 30 hours a week of work. For those of us in the VC-backed startup world, it’s a totally different way to play the game. It won’t make you a billionaire. But it very well may make you $10M— with less stress, less work, and less risk.
If you want a transparent account of the pros/cons of a venture-backed vs a bootstrapped startup, check this episode out.
This solo founder bet on AI 7 years ago. Now he has 5,000 customers & $115M raised. | Dylan, Founder of Assembly AI
08 Apr 2024
00:31:28
While Voice AI is all the rage now, it wasn't a hot sector in 2017. After Dylan graduated from YC, VCs rejected him. He couldn't raise a round. They all assumed Google would do it. So he raised what he could from angels and made it work for the next 3 years.
He's now built the world's most accurate Speech AI model. He's grown to 5,000 customers and raised $115M in venture capital. Last quarter, he raised a $50M Series C from Accel.
Just this week, Assembly launched Universal-1, their most powerful speech recognition model to date. Trained on over 12.5 million hours of multilingual audio data, Universal-1 is 22% more accurate than APIs from Azure/AWS/Google and has 30% fewer hallucinations than competing models.
In this episode, we go through how Dylan came up with the idea, how he saw Gen AI coming long before others, and what he did in the early days to grow to $1M in ARR.
He raised $275M in the last 3 years. His 'boring' B2B startup is now a $1B unicorn. | Andrew Butt, Founder of Enable
01 Apr 2024
00:41:42
Andrew is the founder/CEO of Enable. And he is riding a rocket ship: 2020: $17M Series A 2021: $45M Series B 2022: $94M Series C A few months ago he raised $120M at a $1B valuation.
But it took him five years from the time he started Enable in 2015 until he was able to raise his first round in 2020.
Andrew was running a profitable development shop as he built the first version of Enable. He often had to chase down customers so he could make the next payroll. He had to balance serving existing customers while building an entirely new startup. Ultimately, he had to move to SF to raise a round and accelerate growth.
We go through the details of how Andrew turned a 'boring' enterprise software company from the UK into one of America's hottest new unicorns.
Alex sold couches online before IKEA did. He grew to $40M in revenue and exited for millions. | Alex Back, Co-Founder of Apt2B
25 Mar 2024
00:38:33
Alex started Apt2B in 2010. He sold couches online before IKEA did. It took him over 3 years to make as much money as he used to as a furniture salesperson. But it paid off. After growing the business to $6M in revenue, he sold the company.
Post-acquisition he grew the company to $40M in sales. In this episode, we dive deep into what Alex did to get started, how he closed his first few customers and what he did to grow to $1M in revenue.
From landing a Super Bowl ad to selling couches at Costco, this episode is full of sales and marketing anecdotes you can steal. You don't want to miss it.
Following the sale, Alex is now back at it as the founder and CEO of couch.com, a platform to help people find great furniture.
My Last Startup Failed With 30 Employees… It Might've Worked if we'd Kept it to 5.
18 Mar 2024
00:13:01
Every founder wants to build the next $1B+ company. So it’s normal to get inspired by what companies like Apple, Shopify and Microsoft do. But it’s also a huge mistake.
In this episode, we look at what Shopfiy, Fullscript and Spellbook did to find product-market fit. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what they do now, as big succesful companies.
Big companies are operating in a post-product-market fit world. Pre-product-market fit startups are in a different world entirely.
For 5 years he struggled to get traction. Then with AI he grew 12x— in 1 year | Scott Stevenson, co-founder of Spellbook
11 Mar 2024
00:41:22
Spellbook is ChatGPT for lawyers. They've raised $30M in the last 6 months. They now have over 2,000 law firms as customers. But it wasn't a straight line-- it took Scott 6 years to get here.
For the first 5 years, Scott worked on a legal tech platform called Rally. During that time, Scott along with his co-founders and their small team ran hundreds of experiments, pushed dozens of landing pages and built a process to test feature after feature.
In this episode, Scott goes through his process to test product-market fit. It was because of this process that he was able to jump on the AI-enabled opportunity and grow 12x in one year.
Every VC Rejected Him. So He Bootstrapped From $0 to $10M in 3 years | Kyle Braatz, founder of Fullscript
04 Mar 2024
00:37:52
Kyle Braatz is the founder of Fullscript, a $900M revenue company that started by helping health practitioners recommend supplements to their patients. It's like the Shopify for doctors, nurses and nutritionists
Even though he captured 50% of the Canadian market in one year, early-stage VCs didn't see the opportunity. So he bootstrapped his way to success. He cracked open the US market and quickly scaled from $0 in 2012 to $25M in revenue by 2016.
Today, Fullscript has grown to a profitable company that makes it easy for health practitioners to prescribe and manage treatment plans for whole person health, through their market-leading tech platform.
If you're struggling to raise but know you have a huge opportunity ahead of you, you won't want to miss this episode.
How Shopify Found Product Market Fit w/ Aydin Senkut (Managing Partner at Felicis & Series A Investor in Shopify)
26 Feb 2024
00:46:18
Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Partner at Felicis. He invested in Shopify's Series A in 2010 at a $25M valuation. He joins us to tell the story of how Shopify found product market fit.
Shopify is now a $100B company. But as Founder & CEO Tobi Lutke said, in the early days, his goal was "to build a 20-person company". Shopify is not a story of explosive, 10x growth and massive funding rounds. Shopify is a story of consistent growth. Of doubling year after year, from 0 to over $7B in revenue and a $100B valuation.
If your goal is to build a generational company, you won't want to miss this episode.
How to Raise a Round in 2024 w/ Lee Silverstone (3x Founder)
20 Feb 2024
00:27:50
If you've been struggling to raise—you're not alone. Seed funding has been falling every quarter for the last 2 years. Rounds are smaller and take longer to raise.
So we decided to record an episode to help you. Here are all the mistakes, tips and tricks we’ve seen first-hand that actually work. We touch on things like
What the perfect raise looks like
Why Post-Money SAFEs are TERRIBLE for founders
The greatest power move that any founder can use when fundraising
If you’re raising or planning to raise anytime this year, in a macro environment that is not friendly, don’t miss this episode.
Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide. | Sean Ellis, creator of the PMF test & best-selling author of Hacking Growth.
15 Aug 2024
00:47:07
Sean Ellis created THE test for PMF. He led growth teams at Dropbox, Eventbrite and LogMeIn, which sold for $4.3B. He coined the term Growth Hacking and wrote the best-selling book Hacking Growth.
Today we go deep and tactical with him. He takes us through how to use the Sean Ellis test to perfectly measure and understand product market fit.
He takes us to case studies of things that he did at LogMeIn and Dropbox to dramatically increase growth. And he shares exactly what you can do to drive more referrals for your startup.
Why you should listen:
Why the Sean Ellis test is THE product-market fit test every founder should use. How to implement it today and use it to get closer to PMF.
Why a great first-time user experience is the key for growth and referrals.
How to optimize each growth levers, such as acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, and referrals.
How to build a data-driven culture that is focused on measuring and improving PMF.
Keywords product-market fit, Sean Ellis test, growth hacking, referrals, first-time user experience, optimization
Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:1:55) The Origin of the Sean Ellis Test (00:13:13) Finding Product Market Fit Using the Test (00:18:21) Focus on "Must Have" Users (00:21:38) Growth Vs Marketing (00:25:38) Old School vs New School Marketing (00:30:17) 4 steps to growth (00:36:24) Improving Sign ups to Usage (00:41:37) The impact of Referrals (0045:31) One Piece of Advice
How Shopify & DollarShaveClub got more views than the Super Bowl for under $10K
12 Feb 2024
00:22:03
The Super Bowl is the best place to get in front of customers—if you have $10M to spend. Which means for virtually all startups, it’s 100% useless. So I decided to look into some of the best campaigns early-stage startups used to drive millions of leads.
Shopify used a $100K Build A Business Competition in 2010 when it was a bootstrapped business. The campaign drove 1350 new businesses and was paid back in under a month.
DollarShaveClub launched with a YouTube video about its $1/mo razors. The video was everything a GIlette ad was not. The company was ultimately acquired for $1B.
Purple had the famous Raw Egg Goldilocks video that compared its mattress to others by seeing which one broke raw eggs. For less than $10K it got 200M views, more than the Super Bowl itself.
How a Viral Ad drove Millions in Revenue and $55M In Funding w/ Walnut CEO Yoav Vilner
29 Jan 2024
00:36:48
4K likes, 365 re-shares and over 1M views, without any marketing spend. For an ad promoting your product, that sounds too good to be true-- and yet that's exactly what Yoav did. He leveraged it to get tons of press, more customers than he could manage, and raise a $15M Series A in under a year after incorporating.
Here's the story of how Yoav got started with Walnut and how he ultimately found product-market fit. Yoav goes deep on tactics you can use to drive inbound traffic, generate leads and fundraise.