Claim OwnershipA Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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Every 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.
262 Episodes
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Chaz has founded 3 companies. The first sold for over $40M. The second sold to GoPuff for even more. Now, he’s on his third act with Model ML, having just raised $75M Series A <2 years in. In this episode, Chaz breaks down the playbook behind his successes. He reveals how he raised his first million by pitching strangers on LinkedIn, why his delivery startup was just a text message system on the backend, and why speed is the only defensive moat left. Why You Should Listen How to pitch stra...
Jay was running a respectable AI startup with $3M ARR. But he knew it wasn't a venture-scale rocket ship. So, he decided to fire all his customers, pivot the entire company, and bet everything on a new vertical: legal AI for plaintiff attorneys. Eve went from zero to unicorn status in under two years, raising $100M at a $1B valuation. In this episode, Jay breaks down the brutal reality of pivoting a revenue-generating company, how to achieve "demo shock" in an antiquated industry, and w...
Bassem took Briq from a failed data idea to a Series B leader in construction financial automation.But the path wasn't linear. In this episode, Bassem reveals how he pivoted to RPA bots, why he killed a high-growth fintech product to survive the 2023 cash crunch, and how he uses a relentless "Go-to-Market" strategy. He breaks down his exact ABM playbook, why he hates trade shows, and why he believes AI orchestration is a bigger shift than the cloud. Why You Should Listen How to identify...
Max went from a YC rejection to building a $1.8B company in less than two years. His company, Legora, is the fastest YC-backed company to become a unicorn in history. His path to insane growth was not standard: after raising a massive Series A, Max told his board he was pausing all new sales for six months to rebuild the product infrastructure. In this episode, Max breaks down the "burn the boats" mentality that drove their growth, the specific demo tactics that convert 55% of prospects...
Russell went from working in private equity to hand-delivering dog food on the NYC subway at 5 a.m. He didn't start with a VC check; he started with a studio apartment kitchen and a belief that dog food was broken. In this episode, Russell breaks down how he turned a side hustle into Spot & Tango, a direct-to-consumer giant doing over $100M in revenue. He reveals the gritty reality of early-stage CPG, why he vertically integrated his own factory when everyone else outsourced, and ho...
Harman went from cold-calling hotels 100 times a day to building the category-defining guest management platform for the hospitality industry. Canary built a $600M company by first solving one tiny, annoying problem: paper credit card authorization forms. In this episode, Harman breaks down how a simple digital form became the wedge into thousands of hotels. He reveals why they stuck with outbound sales long after hitting millions in revenue, the terror of collecting physical checks during th...
In this episode, Rich breaks down the wild story of Fathom's launch. He reveals how they secured a prime spot on the Zoom Marketplace and generated 100,000 signups in 30 days—only to realize 99.9% of them were useless. He discusses the pivot to monetization when the market crashed, how to design a product for viral loops, and why staying in private beta for 10 months was the best decision he ever made. Why You Should Listen Why getting 100,000 signups in a single month nearly killed the...
Bob is a serial entrepreneur who founded MobileIron, grew it to $150M in revenue, and took it public. Now, he's back with his fourth startup, BlueRock, tackling the next massive wave: agentic AI security. In this episode, Bob breaks down the distinct difference between finding Product-Market Fit and finding Go-To-Market Fit—and why confusing the two can kill your company. He shares the exact questions he asked early customers to pivot from a generic mobile idea to a billion-dollar enter...
In less than 12 months, Shahar went from an idea to a $30M Series A and a team of 40. He didn't sell another AI tool—he built an AI-first service that replaced expensive human consultants in the massive pen-testing market. In this episode, Shahar breaks down the "Service-as-Software" playbook that allowed him to hit $1M ARR in just three months. He reveals how to convert design partners into paying customers before the product is finished, why he refuses to sell to service providers, and how ...
Ashwin built a $1.5B company in two years. He didn't do it with a massive team or a complex 5-year roadmap. He did it by ignoring "strategy" and talking to 100+ buyers until he found a problem so painful they would pay six figures for a solution that didn't fully exist yet. In this episode, Ashwin breaks down the exact playbook Decagon used to go from zero to unicorn. He reveals why he refused to hire anyone until $1M ARR, how to differentiate in a crowded AI market, and why your customers ar...
Siqi was the CEO of a hot startup doing $20M a year. Then COVID hit. Overnight, revenue went to zero. He had to lay off 95% of his staff. In the chaos of trying to save the company using broken spreadsheets, he found his next big idea: Runway. But the path wasn't a straight line. Siqi spent four years building the product before fully launching. In this episode, he breaks down why product taste matters more than A/B testing, and the insane viral launch strategy that overwhelmed his sale...
Jake founded Serval in April 2024— by Dec 2025 he'd raised a $75M Series B from Sequoia at a $1B valuation. He didn't look for a "wedge" or a "niche." He looked at ServiceNow—a $160B, 20+ year-old incumbent that everyone IT team relies on—and rebuilt it from the ground up in a YEAR. In this episode, Jake reveals the audacity behind building a full-platform replacement from Day 1, why he spent months building in the dark with zero revenue, and how he achieved a 50% demo-to-close rate on ...
The startup game has completely changed. If you are still building with the 2018-2022 B2B SaaS playbook, you are already behind. In this episode, we break down exactly how the GenAI shift has altered value creation, competition, and business models forever. This isn’t just about adding AI to your product—it’s about rethinking your entire reason to exist. If you want to know where the massive, uncrowded opportunities are right now (and why Service-as-Software is the next gold rush)...
For the holiday break we are resurfacing some of our best episodes so far. Here is the best episode of season 3. Kyle left his job as a hacker at the NSA to launch Huntress. He bootstrapped for 3 years and burned all his savings. One of his co-founders quit. He got into an accelerator program, but had to sleep in his car for 16 weeks because he couldn't afford a hotel. Finally, 3 years in he'd hit $1.5M ARR. So he pitched 60 VCs for a Series A—and got 60 'no's. He was forced to raise a smal...
They were building a Segment competitor. It was working—customers were paying. But every sales call, prospects kept asking about the backend tech instead of the product. So they killed the roadmap and pivoted. It took them 18 months to hit $1M ARR. Then they started growing. And so far, they've raised $350M. Viraj walks through exactly how he validated the pivot, landed the first 10 customers, and why being outside Silicon Valley forced him to show more traction than everyone else...
For the holiday break we are resurfacing some of our best episodes so far. Here is the best episode of season 2. Here are the key lessons from the past 60 episodes that we've released to date. Each of the 5 steps to Product Market Fit is based on actual case studies with real examples you can use. It's a recap of everything I've learned over the last two years- you don't want to miss it. Chapters: (00:00:45) Mistakes Are Unavoidable But Avoidable Mistakes Are Unaffordable (00:04:41) ...
David had a consumer app with 50,000 users and viral traction—and he shut it down. The retention metrics weren't as good as what he'd seen at Snapchat. That difficult decision cleared the path for Juicebox, AI for recruiting that grew to $10M ARR in 2 years. In this episode, David reveals how he pivoted to AI recruiting, generated millions of views with a simple LinkedIn demo, and ground through months of brutal churn to unlock 10x growth. If you want to know how to execute a flawless P...
Jennifer went from VC to founder and immediately broke every rule in the book. When she pivoted Scribe from an automation tool to a documentation platform, her investors told her she had just killed the company. She ignored them. Instead of polishing her product, she launched a "janky" offline MVP on Product Hunt to test for real market pull. Scribe is now used by 95% of the Fortune 500. In this episode, Jennifer reveals the brutal truth about ignoring "smart" money, why you shoul...
Eric spent 30 years in cybersecurity. Built and sold an MSSP to private equity for hundreds of millions. Then he started Tenex and hit $43 million in revenue in ONE YEAR. This isn't theory. This is a founder who's done it multiple times breaking down exactly how AI-native companies are about to eat every services industry alive. If you're building anything that touches AI, services, or enterprise sales, this is the episode. Why You Should Listen Why selling outcomes beats selling produc...
Carta's Peter Walker is back with the freshest data on what's actually happening at the early stage—and it's not what you're reading on X. While headlines scream about record-breaking rounds, the reality on the ground tells a different story. Seed deals are down. Time between rounds is stretching. And there's a brutal divide between the companies getting all the attention and everyone else. We dig into the exact valuations, graduation rates, team sizes and revenue you need for See...
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this is a great podcast. in my journey as an early entrepreneur, such fundamental concepts and viewpoints shine a light at the end of those dark corners you will encounter. keep going!