Stay ConnectedEvery founder has 1 goal: find product-market fit. We interview the world’s most successful startup founders on the 0 to 1 part of their journeys. We’ve had the founders of Reddit, Gusto, Rappi, Glean, Cohere, Huntress, ID.me and many more.
We go deep with entrepreneurs & VCs to provide detailed examples you can steal. Our goal is to understand product-market fit better than anyone on the planet.
Rated one of the world’s top startup podcasts.
Copyright: © 2024 A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
Two founders, two wildly different paths to $100M ARR: Arvind Jain, founder of Glean, walked away from a unicorn to start over—raising $15M without revenue and ignoring lean startup rules. Kyle Hanslovan, founder of Huntress, faced brutal rejection, slept in his car, maxed out credit cards, and still crushed it. This episode is packed with raw lessons on fundraising, product-market fit, and why relentless hustle alone won’t save you. If you’re a founder chasing growth, stop everything and listen.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords
product-market fit, startup fundraising, unicorn startups, founder hustle, lean startup method, scaling startups, early-stage growth, AI startups, SaaS growth, venture capital advice
Chapters
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:05) Quitting a Unicorn to Start Again
(00:05:09) From NSA Hacker to Startup Founder
(00:09:18) Ignoring the Lean Startup
(00:12:59) Knowing When to Launch
(00:16:32) Finding Product Market Fit
(00:18:01) Final Advice for Founders
Avery Pennarun raised $160M for Tailscale—without even meaning to. What started as a small, simple project exploded into an unstoppable force in network connectivity and security. This episode reveals exactly how Avery turned a tiny seed round into millions of dollars in ARR, powered by nothing more than word-of-mouth and an obsession with solving everyday developer headaches. Learn why your startup idea is probably wrong (and why that’s okay), how Tailscale found explosive product-market fit, and why the biggest opportunities are hiding in the “smallest” problems. If you’re an early-stage founder looking for practical insights, game-changing growth hacks, and lessons from someone who’s been through it all, this is the episode you can’t miss.
Why You Should Listen
Podcast Keywords
product market fit, startup growth, product-led growth, Tailscale, word-of-mouth growth, startup fundraising, developer tools, network security, B2B SaaS, early-stage founder advice
(00:00:00) How Tailscale Raised $160M Without Chasing Investors
(00:01:48) Building a Billion-Dollar Idea From Scratch
(00:05:18) How to Find Real Problems Worth Solving
(00:13:14) Landing the Critical First Customer
(00:22:25) Why Great Founders Start Small, Not Big
(00:28:33) Turning Bottom-Up Adoption into Enterprise Deals
(00:36:55) Growing from Zero to $1M+ ARR Through Word-of-Mouth
(00:46:16) When Avery Knew Tailscale Had Product Market Fit
(00:48:27) Avery’s Most Important Advice for Early-Stage Founders
Description:
Jack Kuveke returns to unpack the wildest startup news this month: from billion-dollar frauds and crypto scams, to OpenAI’s secretive $6.5 billion gadget project with Apple’s design legend Jony Ive. We dig into why big-name investors keep missing red flags, and why AI might be crushing entry-level tech jobs faster than anyone expected.
Keywords
startup scams, OpenAI Johnny Ive, Elizabeth Holmes, Builder AI scandal, tech IPO crash, AI job loss, crypto meme coin fraud, venture capital news, tech layoffs, Theranos lessons
After two pivots and nearly running out of runway, Merrill Lutsky found insane growth—scaling Graphite to tens of thousands of daily users and millions in ARR. He reveals exactly how Graphite landed its first massive enterprise customer, doubled revenue overnight by changing pricing, and turned user feedback into momentum.
Merrill shares hard-earned lessons on recognizing true product-market fit, leveraging internal tools as a market wedge, and surviving the chaos every early-stage founder faces. If you’re building, pivoting, or scaling your startup, this is a must-listen episode.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords
product market fit, developer tools, pivot, enterprise sales, startup growth, code review, pricing strategy, software startups, founder lessons, Graphite dev tool
00:00:00 Raising a seed round on Airbnb Wi‑Fi
00:10:40 Lessons from the first failed DevTool
00:16:00 Why daily‑use products win
00:24:30 Pivoting from mobile rollbacks to code review
00:31:00 Ex‑Meta engineers spark a viral wait‑list
00:40:00 Switching on pricing and racing to $1 M ARR
00:48:30 The pricing tweak that doubled revenue
00:50:00 Surviving outages, bank collapses and chaos
00:52:30 Co‑founder trust makes or breaks startups
Most early-stage founders get trapped in the chaos of endless tasks, there's always too much to do and not enough time. We go through the last 4 episodes to see what how the best founders prioritize. We also see why you can raise millions without real traction but can’t fake product-market fit, how positioning yourself for luck is as important as having a plan, why slow initial growth might be your secret weapon, and how true passion gives you staying power.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords
product-market fit, founder-market fit, startup prioritization, fundraising strategies, early-stage startups, growth strategies, startup pivot, founder lessons, bootstrapping startups, AI startups
00:00 Intro
02:58 Why Founders Need to Drop Some Balls
05:04 You Can Fake Fundraising but Not Product Market Fit
09:22 Positioning Yourself for Luck
13:33 Why Slow Initial Growth Might be OK
17:28 Why True Passion Buys Staying Power
Dax built Lightspeed into a $1B ARR public company—even though he bootstrapped for the first 7 years. In this episode, he reveals exactly how he used a 4x pricing shift to create a global reseller machine that grew him to $10M ARR. He also breaks down why obsessing over design and deep customer empathy built the foundation for success.—and how stepping away from his comfort zone as an introverted developer was the key to scale. If you’re an early-stage founder trying to nail pricing, distribution, and long-term strategic decisions, this story is your playbook.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords
product market fit, pricing strategy, bootstrapping, reseller partnerships, early-stage startups, go-to-market strategy, startup scaling, founder lessons, Lightspeed POS, profitability
00:00:00 Intro
00:07:56 Landing the First Customers Without a Product
00:11:28 The Pricing Strategy that Changed Everything
00:19:20 Growth Through Partnerships
00:26:18 Why a Business Plan Can Actually Help
00:34:33 Profitable from Day One
00:42:15 From On-Premise to the Cloud
00:46:59 Finding Product-Market Fit
00:49:15 The Truth About Early Employees and Equity
00:53:18 Reinventing Your Role as Founder Every Year
Carta just released their report for Q1 2025. Peter is Head of Insights at Carta, and the person who owns their data practice. We sit down to talk about the largest trends he saw across fundraising, industries, graduation rates and even hiring practices.
Carta data shows that graduation rates from Seed to A are as low as they've ever been. Bridge rounds make you even less likely to raise an A. And why seed-strapping might be an answer for many founders.
VCs read and understand all this data. If you want to operate on equal footing— you should too.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
venture capital, AI, fundraising, market trends, valuations, startup ecosystem, early stage, late stage, investment, venture capital, bridge rounds, seed extensions, startup growth, hiring practices, AI impact, early stage funding, market trends, valuations, exits
Kazi Ahmed took a small insight—seeing friends cash out from Amazon brands—and built Carbon6, a software roll-up startup, selling it for $210M just three years later.
But behind the quick success was a frantic scramble to survive. Aggressive acquisitions nearly ran them out of cash, forcing a brutal pivot from burning $1M per month to profitability and explosive organic growth.
This episode dives deep into Kazi’s playbook: when to ignore customer interviews, how to pivot on a dime, and why getting started immediately beats perfect planning every time.
Why You Should Listen:
Keywords:
startup growth, Amazon FBA, acquisition strategy, profitable pivot, roll-up startups, founder stories, SaaS growth, startup exits, e-commerce software, early-stage advice
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:35 How COVID Unlocked an Amazon Gold Rush
00:06:51 From Aggregating Brands to Aggregating Software
00:12:04 Funding Acquisitions with Friends and Family
00:16:18 The Art of Structuring Deals
00:21:50 Pivoting from Acquisition Spree to Profitability
00:26:35 Aggressive Cost Cutting and Cultural Reset
00:29:43 Scaling Upmarket with a Sales-Driven Approach
00:36:51 The $210 Million Acquisition by SPS Commerce
00:40:26 Reflections and Realities of a Big Exit
I break down my top insights from recent conversations with four founders who won in unconventional ways. You’ll hear how Noah turned LinkedIn posts into his primary sales channel (without ever going viral), why Dan’s startup survived a brutal 95% downround but ended up at $400M ARR two years later, how Adam turned a stagnant $3M ARR business into a $25M cash cow by solving one overlooked customer pain point. Plus, and how Cleerly used a 17 day-from- bankruptcy moment as its turning point.
Why You Should Listen
• How to turn LinkedIn into your best sales channel without going viral
• Why a 95% downround doesn’t mean your startup is over
• How near-failure experiences can lead to breakthrough growth
• The power of uncovering overlooked customer problems to drive massive profits
• Why constraints and limited resources can become your biggest advantage
Keywords
product market fit, startup growth, LinkedIn lead generation, fundraising, downround, bootstrapping, founder lessons, pivoting, scaling startups, entrepreneurship
00:00:00 Intro
00:01:01 How Stacker Leveraged LinkedIn for Explosive Growth
00:04:43 Clutch’s Wild Ride from Unicorn to Nearly Bankrupt and Back
00:07:38 Navigating Market Cycles as a Founder
00:08:32 Retention.com’s Pivot from Stagnation to Massive Profits
00:13:33 Cleerly’s Near-Death Moment with Only 17 Days of Runway
00:16:21 Why Constraints Are a Secret Weapon
Public co-founder Jannick Malling shares exactly how he grew his startup from a tiny beta to millions of users—and hundreds of millions raised. He reveals why fractional shares changed the game for user acquisition, how the company cleverly seized on the GameStop moment to explode growth, and why relentless product focus was critical to scaling quickly.
He explains the mindset shift needed to nail product-market fit multiple times and why you should only tackle timeless problems if you want your startup to last.
Why You Should Listen
• Learn how Public went from 1K beta users to millions in just 18 months by flipping the playbook.
• Discover how to capture viral growth moments like GameStop and turning them into sustained growth.
• Understand how intense product focus can drive massive results even with limited resources.
• Hear why you need to solve timeless problems, not trendy ones.
Keywords
startup growth, product market fit, fractional shares, viral growth, Public investing app, fintech startup, user acquisition, scaling startups, startup advice, founder interview
(00:00:00) How Public Went from 1K Users to Millions
(00:09:41) Jannick’s Path from Teen Designer to Fintech Founder
(00:19:03) Fractional Shares Unlock Explosive Growth
(00:26:31) Why Community was Key (and How it Actually Worked)
(00:31:36) Launch Day Metrics Go Off the Charts
(00:35:38) Unusual Strategy Behind Public’s Word-of-Mouth Success
(00:42:38) How Public Increased Average Deposits by 30x
(00:49:12) How GameStop Doubled Public’s User Base in 48 Hours
(00:53:00) Jannick’s Real Advice on Picking Problems That Matter
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