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.
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Copyright: © 2024 A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
Tushar gave his app away for free. It spread to 200 locations. Almost nobody used it, and nobody paid a single dollar. So he started charging from day one, with a one-month pilot that rolled into a full annual contract. In Q4 2025, his team closed more revenue than in the two years before. Delightree just raised $25M.
In this episode, Tushar breaks down the three questions he used to qualify every customer, how turning a dusty ops binder into TikTok-style training became his biggest source of leads, and why his best cold email was a screenshot of the prospect's own logo.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Delightree, Tushar Mishra, franchise software, frontline employees, customer onboarding, customer qualification, outbound sales, cold email, net revenue retention, AI training
Chapters
Hermann wanted to build Stripe for phone plans. Every carrier said no and investors passed. So he plugged into an aggregator with terrible economics and sold to kids' smartwatch makers losing 30 to 40% of devices to returns. That niche paid for his seed and Series A. Then AT&T opened the door. Today Gigs powers phone plans for Revolut, Klarna, Nubank and Cash App and wins 90% of the deals it goes after.
In this episode, Hermann breaks down why a small niche with a sharp pain point beats a big market with a mild one, how a founder tells a 15-year story to investors without losing them, and why landing an enterprise customer is statesmanship, not salesmanship.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Gigs, Hermann Frank, embedded telecom, eSIM, telecom API, fintech, enterprise sales, founder led sales, niche markets, Y Combinator, Stripe for telecom, storytelling for fundraising
Chapters
Daniel Saks built AppDirect into a marketplace moving upwards of $10B a year in gross merchandise value. Now he runs Landbase, an AI go-to-market company with data on 40 million startups, and it just raised a $30M Series A. So when he talks about cold outbound, he is not guessing. He is reading what actually happens across millions of messages. He also spent two years in a windowless room building an app store for Bell Canada that launched to crickets. Harley from Shopify messaged him: the Bell business app store has less traffic than my intern's blog.
In this episode, Daniel breaks down what response rates on cold email actually look like today, how to build a living TAM map instead of paying a consulting firm a few hundred thousand for a dead one, and why three touches get you 90% of the result while five gets you flagged as spam.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Landbase, Daniel Saks, AppDirect, outbound sales, cold email, AI SDR, go-to-market, TAM mapping, agentic AI, sales development, B2B marketplaces
Chapters
Jonathan quit his job in early 2023 with no idea and no co-founder. Tim agreed to join only if he raised $3M. He lined up 75 investor meetings a month in advance. SVB crashed on day four and 40% of his meetings canceled. He closed the round anyway, then won 20 deals in a row, one of them a seven-figure deal with FIS. Baselayer just raised a $20M Series A.
In this episode, Jonathan breaks down the 20-minute reply rule he holds every employee to, why he asks buyers if they have ever wanted to be a founder and then introduces them to VCs, and what a 100-hour week actually looks like when your calendar shows 40 to 60 hours of meetings.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Baselayer, Jonathan Awad, business identity verification, KYB, fraud consortium, fintech sales, enterprise sales, top of funnel, customer support, founder-led sales, seed fundraising, SVB collapse
Chapters
Most investors told Nick not to hire a salesperson before he had product market fit. He hired the top rep in legal tech anyway and called him a product market fit finder. That rep signed a paid five-year deal in his first week, over lunch. By the time Sandstone came out of stealth, they had done hundreds of demos and had $10M+ of pipeline waiting. Sandstone just raised a $30M Series A.
In this episode, Nick breaks down why the intros he never asked for were the moment he knew PMF was real, how sitting next to customers and watching them work turned into their biggest integrations, and why they fired design partners whose problems did not match the market.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Sandstone, Nick Fleisher, legal tech, in-house legal teams, AI for legal, contract lifecycle management, enterprise sales, design partners, hiring an AE, founder-led sales, word of mouth referrals
Chapters
Dan's first app made over $1M in two months. Then Facebook sent a cease and desist and killed it. His next company, Mode Mobile, grew revenue 32,481% in three years and ranked #1 on the Deloitte Fast 500. Then his crypto advertisers went bankrupt, revenue fell from $25M to $8M, and he cut half his staff. No VC wanted a declining Series B. So he raised $5M from his own users in three months—then $75M more.
In this episode, Dan breaks down how paying people to use their phone actually makes money, why revenue concentration and not growth is what nearly killed Mode, and how to run a creator-led marketing campaign at $30 a video.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Mode Mobile, Dan Novaes, crowdfunding, Reg A, consumer apps, rewards apps, creator-led marketing, UGC creators, user acquisition, revenue concentration, Android apps
Chapters
Keith raised a $43M Series B for Tome. The product had 20 million users. But retention was terrible and nobody cared enough to complain. So he turned it off before he knew what he'd build next, went from 70 people to 7, and started over. Lightfield just closed a $47M Series A.
In this episode, Keith breaks down how he knew Tome would never grow up, why customers lighting up your Slack at 3am is the signal you actually want, and the exact playbook he used to sell an AI-native CRM to YC founders before he charged them a dollar.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Lightfield, Keith Peiris, Tome, pivoting a startup, AI native CRM, agentic system of record, cutting burn, go-to-market, selling to YC founders, launch videos, B2B SaaS
Chapters
Aaron started Vestwell in 2016. Two years in, he had $500K in ARR and an investor asking if it would ever make money. During the 2021 bull market, VCs told him 401ks were too boring—they were busy chasing crypto. Then Morgan Stanley signed. Today Vestwell has 2.5 million people saving on the platform, over $200M in ARR, and just raised $385M at a $2B valuation.
In this episode, Aaron breaks down why he white-labeled everything instead of building his own brand, how losing the JP Morgan bid as a 40-person startup still turned into one of his largest partnerships, and how a methodical cap table let him raise a Series A on a couple hundred thousand in revenue.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Vestwell, Aaron Schumm, fintech, 401k, retirement savings, enterprise sales, channel partnerships, white label software, Series A fundraising, Morgan Stanley
Chapters
Andrew spent two and a half years selling AI contract review to lawyers. It stalled at $800K. He rebuilt the company around finance teams and grew that to $10M. Then he demoed a little internal tool on the side at his own conference, and nobody wanted to talk about anything else. It did $350K in five weeks. He sold the $10M business and went all in on the side tool—Within went from zero to nearly $20M in 18 months.
In this episode, Andrew breaks down the 30-and-100 rule he uses to validate every idea, how he turned every customer conversation into a database that tells him what to build next, and why nine out of ten experiments have to fail.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Within, Klarity, Andrew Antos, enterprise AI, AI transformation, pivoting a startup, enterprise sales, legal tech, finance automation, AI agents, customer discovery, voice of customer
Chapters
AJ spent two years selling health benefits with no customers and no references. His competitors told buyers their service was free. He charged a flat fee and told the truth about where the money actually went. Two years in, at $10M ARR, a Fortune 500 company called him. Judi Health just raised $400M at a $3.25B valuation.
In this episode, AJ breaks down how he beat three Fortune 15 giants by operating 70% more efficiently, why he spent zero on marketing for two years and let customers sell for him, and the one hiring signal he refuses to ask about directly.
Why You Should Listen
Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Judi Health, Capital Rx, AJ Loiacono, pharmacy benefit management, PBM, healthcare startup, enterprise sales, transparent pricing, bootstrapping, self-insured employers, hiring for mission
Chapters
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