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
Nathan has interviewed 100s of founders on how they raised their first few rounds. In this interview, we go through some of the most compelling stories he's heard. We go through step-by-step what you should do to raise a round, how to get meetings, how to tell stories, and every other piece of the fundraising puzzle.
If you're planning to raise a round anytime this year-- check this episode out.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
fundraising, startup, venture capital, investor relations, fundraising process, founder stories, capital raising, startup funding, investor introductions, fundraising strategies
A few years into building Flashfood, Josh was $35K in debt with no money in his account. Just a few months earlier, he'd lost both the pilot customers he'd worked so hard to lock in. He'd worked for months to land them and had delivered what he promised.
But both retailers told him the problem he was solving was not important enough.
And then, he met Loblaws-- one of Canada's largest retailers. They loved the case studies he had. They tested it out and quickly launched it across 100% of their locations.
"I was going to shut down the company." That's how close it came to failing completely. Instead, a year after meeting Loblaws he was doing $1.5M ARR and had raised a $3M seed round. Now, he does 10s of millions in revenue and will soon be profitable.
Here's the story.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
food waste, grocery stores, app development, early stage founders, product market fit, sustainability, entrepreneurship, discount food, consumer behavior, environmental impact, enterprise sales, customer priorities, stakeholder buy-in, corporate culture, product-market fit, revenue growth, grocery industry, startup challenges, business strategy, environmental impact
Darius started an EdTech startup to help users of online courses collaborate with each other. It blew up during COVID when everyone felt isolated. It gained thousands of users. They were engaged. They came back to use the platform. And, most importantly, they dramatically improved completion rates for online courses.
Darius thought he had it. But it turned out universities didn't want to pay. What users cared about was not what universities (the buyers) cared about.
His biggest lessons is that he should've pivoted much sooner. Here's why.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
startup challenges, entrepreneurship, online learning, EdTech, market dynamics, product development, business strategy, lessons learned, networking, pivoting
Zach was burned out after a decade of working at top roles in Coinbase, Square and Brex. He quit with no startup idea-- and then, he went right back in. Given their background, Zach and his co-founder quickly raised an $8M seed round to build an NFT-related product in Web3.
One month later, they completely abandoned their idea. They realized it was never going to work. Then, the floor fell from underneath them. FTX went bankrupt. SVB fell apart. They took punches to the face for the first 6 months straight.
But, when everyone was paying attention to Gen AI in late 2022, Zach kept going deep in Web3. He noticed stablecoins were growing but there was no platform for developers to build with. So he built Bridge, a Stripe-like API for stablecoins.
The first months post-launch were underwhelming-- until they landed a fast-growing customer. From then on, the next year was exceptional 10x+ growth. Then Stripe noticed them.
In Oct 2024, they were acquired for $1.1B. Just 2.5 years after he started.
Here's the story of how it all happened.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
startup, billion-dollar exit, stablecoins, investor relations, crypto, fintech, market dynamics, entrepreneurship, pivot, challenges, stable coins, startup journey, acquisition, fintech, market resilience, product market fit, Pablo Srugo, Bridge, Stripe, entrepreneurship
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:2:46) Starting at the Worst Time
(00:8:56) The Emotions on Pivoting a Month After Raising
(00:11:44) Pivoting
(00:18:24) Leaving Brex
(00:20:36) Working on Something Out of Trend
(00:28:34) The Core Beliefs of Bridge
(00:32:56) Launching & First Customer
(00:38:57) Sometimes you Can't Think Too Much
(00:42:29) Series A
(00:44:24) The Acquisition
(00:49:05) The Feeling of Exiting for a Billion
(00:52:24) One Piece of Advice
We took examples from the last 100 episodes and built a clear, 5 step path to finding product market fit:
1.Before Startup Mode, There’s Research Mode —> Become an expert to find problems worth solving.
2.Only the Insanely Focused Survive —> Focus all your resources to do more with less.
3.You have to be in the market to win the market —> Use niche markets to discover unique insights.
4.Forget Growth. Find Value. —> Optimize for value delivery and growth will follow.
5.Pivot Harder, Faster —> As soon as you realize you’re not solving a #1 problem, pivot.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
startups, product market fit, entrepreneurship, research mode, focus, hustle, validation, customer experience, growth, business strategy, Wattpad, user-generated content, agility, iteration, product market fit, startup growth, pivots, entrepreneurship, value creation, founder stories
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:47) Who is Chris Saad?
(00:02:30) Pablo's Story
(00:05:53) The Core to Early Stage is PMF
(00:09:07) Step 1: Research Mode
(00:16:44) Step 2: Only the Insanely Focused Survive
(00:23:46) Step 3: Be in the Market to Win the Market
(00:32:57) Step 4: Forget Growth, Find Value
(00:37:59) Step 5: Pivot Harder and Faster
(00:45:45) Recap
Gusto is a $9.5B startup that does $500M ARR. Josh built an absolute monster of a company-- and it all started with payroll software for SMBs. Not just that, he started by servicing only new tech startups that were based in California. It was exceptionally niche, and it worked.
After YC, he raised a $6M seed round from tier 1 angels, back when large seed rounds were not at all common. But, unlike others, he didn't spend the money. He kept his team small as they iterated on the product. By the time they raised their $20M Series A, they were only 10-15 people.
Here's the story of how they got started, gained initial traction, and took off.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
Gusto, Josh Reeves, entrepreneurship, startup, payroll, small business, Y Combinator, business model, innovation, technology, fundraising, startup, product-market fit, team building, customer satisfaction, growth strategy, small business, Gusto, entrepreneurship, SaaS
We go through the top 5 product-market fit lessons I've learned from speaking to well over 100+ founders on this show over the last 3 years.
These are the top 5 things you should keep top of mind going into 2025.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
product market fit, startup strategies, fundraising, small teams, value creation, entrepreneurship, founder insights, business growth, early stage startups, team dynamics
Tolga stumbled upon a problem in the security monitoring space. Motion cameras generated way too many false alerts. So he decided to solve it using AI. He raised over a million dollars and got several customers.
But he always felt he was pushing a boulder up a hill. At one point, one of his large customers churned and went with a competitor. Tolga pivoted, but it was too late.
Now, thinking back, he realizes that one of the main issues is he may never have been solving an important-enough problem. And in my experience that's the reason that 95%+ of startups fail.
You learn a lot from the massive successes— but you can only really know what drives success if you pay attention to the failures as well. So here it is, back by popular demand.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
startup failure, founder stories, learning from mistakes, customer validation, market dynamics, business pivot, entrepreneurship, PromiseQ, AI technology, security solutions
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:50) What is PromiseQ
(00:11:06) Working on a Non-Priority Pain Point
(00:16:10) Realizing the Different Costumer Profiles too Late
(00:18:23) The Business Model
(00:20:52) Why you need to pivot fast
(00:28:32) If Things Went Differently
There are a few things harder when building startups than getting your first few customers. When you're on a standstill, getting momentum is incredibly hard. Going from zero to one takes an incredible amount of effort—you have absolutely no credibility, no proof points.
So to help you out I went through 24 ways of getting your first customers using 24 different examples from this show.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
customer acquisition, startup strategies, community building, persistence, experimentation, free services
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:35) Stay22 - Pay your Customers
(00:02:25) Reddit - Creating your Community
(00:02:58) Rappi - Seeding Supply
(00:04:04) Wattpad - Seeding Demand
(00:05:05) Cameo - Finding Someone With an Audience
(00:05:43) Noibu - Showcasing the Value of the Platform
(00:06:41) Bridgit - Showing up in Person
(00:07:24) Rewind - Attaching to an Ecosystem
(00:08:36) Clio - Adding Friction to the Funnel
(00:09:06) Wealthsimple - Lunch & Learn
(00:09:29) Athennian - Classic Customer Discovery
(00:10:00) Carbon Robotics - Presales from Customer Discovery
(00:10:34) StackAdapt - Creating Custom Software
(00:11:21) ApplyBoard - Identifying Power Users
(00:12:27) Forma AI - Sheer Force of Will
(00:15:01) Blockthrough - Starting with an Obvious Problem
(00:16:25) GoBolt - Finding Problems Close to You
(00:17:08) Shopify - Building a Waitlist & Showcasing the Product
(00:17:43) Fullscript - Cold Emailing
(00:18:30) Spellbook - Running Experiments Exceptionally Quickly
(00:19:27) Legion - Finding a Design Partner
(00:20:18) Knak - Consulting
(00:20:54) Dabble - Building Distrobution
(00:21:55) Zeffy - Making the Product Free
Ankit left his job as a VC to launch a Voice AI platform—back in 2018! It wasn't the voice AI of today. The first demo sounded like a robot. But still, he convinced large enterprise customers in the healthcare space to try it out. He found a highly manual, call intensive workflow in the back office and autoamted it using AI.
Years later, he's raised $102M and has dozens of large $1M+ enterprise customers using the product. He talks about how he started it, how he saw the AI opportunity so early on, and how he found a way to lock in champions that pushed his product inside large enterprises.
Why you should listen:
Keywords
product-market fit, AI in healthcare, automation, conversational AI, startup challenges, scaling, founder advice, technology evolution, compliance, trust in AI
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:01) How it all started
(00:06:29) Automating Insurance Calls
(00:16:37) Landing the first customers
(00:22:02) Giving your persona phone number to early users
(00:27:43) Landing large enterprise customers
(00:33:45) Getting Early Adopters to Believe
(00:36:34) Finding Product Market Fit
(00:38:04) One Piece of Advice
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