A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

144 Episodes

Reverse

YC said his idea "would never work". So he lived in his office for months—then raised $17M from a16z in 14 days. | Marty Kausas, founder of Pylon

2024-12-1901:07:26

Marty and his co-founders lived full-time in their office for several months. They worked on their startup 24/7. To come up with the idea, they messaged 120 potential customers every day for 3 months. Originally, when they pitched YC they were told their idea would never work. YC said they'd seen it several times and it was destined to fail. So in 2 weeks Marty landed a customer and built a product-- and YC let him in. He went on to raise a $3M seed round from General Catalyst in 6 days and l...

He built a $4B unicorn & crossed $100M ARR—here's why it took 10 years of 100-hour weeks. | Martin Basiri, Founder of Passage & Applyboard (SaaS North Keynote)

2024-12-1630:02

I interviewed Martin on the keynote stage at the SaaS North conference. Here is the audio version. Martin built Applyboard into a $4B unicorn doing $100M+ in ARR. He left and started a new startup called Passage— and raised a $40M seed round.He talks about 100-hour weeks, hiring exceptional talent, why smaller teams can outperform—and why he decided to start all over again.Why you should listen:Why great founders thrive in high-stress situations-- on "the edge of failure" as Martin calls it.H...

His sports betting app went from $0 to $10M ARR in a year—& to $150M ARR in 4. Here's how he did it. | Jon Robin, Founder of Dabble

2024-12-1244:26

Jon started a sports betting app 4 years ago-- now he does $150M in revenue and $1B in betting volume. AND he's profitable. In his first year alone , he did $10 million in revenue. He took a year to build the app and as soon as he launched it, it took off. He did $10M in revenue in his first year.Honestly, it sounds too easy. But the reason it worked is because, as he shares on the episode, he'd spent 7 years in research mode. He'd spent years building a marketing agency in the sports betting...

He grew to $90M ARR, was about to exit for $1.5B—and then, it all fell apart. | Yanni Giannaros, Co-Founder of Wyre

2024-12-0955:58

Yanni started building in crypto back in 2013, when you could buy one Bitcoin for $20. At one point, he was playing poker games and betting 1 bitcoin each round!He built an extension that let people use bitcoin to buy anything, anywhere on the internet. Then he pivoted to building the first on ramp for bitcoin. And finally, pivoted into Wyre, which was like Stripe for Crypto, a platform to let developers build Web3 apps.In a couple of years he scaled it from nothing to a $90M run rate. In lat...

How to build great products—lessons from Amazon, Facebook, Twitter & Deel. | Aaron Goldsmid, Head of Product at Deel

2024-12-0537:54

Aaron was Director of Product at Amazon, VP Product at Twilio, PM at Facebook and Twitter. Now he’s head of product at Deel where he reports directly to the CEO. Deel was founded in 2019— now, just 5 years later, it’s worth $12B and raised over $650M. We go deep on what it takes to build world-class products, how early-stage founders can balance customer feedback, vision and data, and how the best product leaders are leveraging AI today.Keywordsproductivity, AI, product development, user...

He made his first loan at 16. Now his fintech startup does $50M+ ARR—here’s how. | Tate Hackert, Co-Founder of ZayZoon

2024-12-0201:03:24

DescriptionTate started doing commercial fishing at 16. He took that money and started lending it— on Craigslist! By 23 years old, he’d lent out $250,000. Then he found out about cash advances, and decided to start ZayZoon, a platform to help employers pay their employees faster.Tate was one of the early pioneers of the entire Earned Wage Access space. By partnering with payroll companies and employers, ZayZoon lets employees access their earned wages faster.It took Tate and his co-founders 4...

After I passed, this startup grew 30x in 3 years to $10M+ ARR. Here's how he did it—& what I missed. | Francois de Kerret, Co-Founder of Zeffy

2024-11-2830:36

Zeffy is one of my biggest misses so far. I met Francois 3 years ago when he was raising his $3M seed round. But I passed.They were at ~$500K in revenue at that point. In the last 3 years, they've grown 30x. Clearly, I missed out.But it's been a long road for Francois. Before he got to the current idea, he had to make 3 pivots, including building a marketplace and selling to schools. Finally he landed on what Zeffy is today, a fundraising platform for nonprofits. The crazy thing is that...

He hit $40M ARR, exited for over $100M—& raised only $1.5M. Here's how | Ian MacKinnon, Co-Founder of Later.com

2024-11-2556:01

In 2014, Ian launched a simple product: it let social media marketers buffer Instagram posts. It was originally a hackathon project. But it quickly gained users. So he and his co-founders went all in.They raised just one small seed round. His main competitor, HootSuite, raised over $300M. In spite of that, he built a $40M ARR business that sold for well over $100M.Here's the story of how it all happened. And why there's an option besides bootstrapping and raising round after round: it's calle...

He raised $16M, hit $1M ARR—& failed. Here are the top 3 lessons he learned. | David Anderson, Founder of Tandym

2024-11-2154:13

David's startup failed. But he had everything going for him: a solid thesis, $16M in funding across 3 rounds, $1.5M in ARR. At a high-level it seemed like everything was going the right way. And yet, it didn't work out.This is what happens to 95% of startups. On thhis show, we mainly speak with the top 5%-- the ones where things went right and everything worked out. But you tend to learn more from failures than successes.On this episode, we go deep with David to see what building Tandym was l...

He sold his 1st startup for 8 figures, grew his 2nd to $3M in a year—while battling panic attacks from the pressure. | Justin Adams, Founder of Aiwyn

2024-11-1846:00

Justin sold his first bootstrapped startup for over $10M. He raised $2M out of the gate for his second and then grew from $250K to $3M ARR in one year. He raised $40M in total, including a Series B from Bessemer. And yet, just a week before recording the episode, he shared a post on LinkedIn about a recent panic attack that left him frozen for 15 minutes. It turns out, the sheer pressure of running a startup gets to him-- like it does to most founders-- and shows up in the forms of panic atta...

He raised $1.5M, hit $400K ARR in 9 months— but had to Exit Early. Here’s the top 3 lessons he learned | Rob Palumbo, Co-Founder of Outpoint

2024-11-1439:08

Rob founded Outpoint in 2020 to help marketers optimize their ad spend. He was a growth marketer and his founder a data scientist. He had team-market fit, a solid thesis, and paying customers. But when the recession hit and ad spend dropped, growth ground to a halt. Nothing he did could revitalize growth. Ultimately, he decreased expenses and exited. He was able to return some cash to investors, find a home for his team and keep the product going. You tend to hear about what happens to t...

His startup Cameo was a unicorn—until it crashed 90%. Here's how he went from near-bankrupt to profitable again. | Steven Galanis, Founder of Cameo

2024-11-1257:47

Cameo is one of the best-known recent consumer startups. You've either used it or know someone who's used it to get famous people to create personalized videos. And, for a while, they were a total rocket ship. Year 1: $300K GMVYear 2: $4MYear 3: $20MYear 4: $100MThey were backed by Jeremy Liew, the VC who seeded Snapchat in 2012. Cameo became a unicorn in 2021. But as the markets turned, revenue decreased, investor interest waned, and their valuation dropped from $1B to $100M. After the restr...

VC funding is not popping back. THIS is the new normal—here's how to adjust. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta

2024-11-0841:57

Q3 startup data just dropped. We chat with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta about valuations at pre-seed, seed and Series A. Why the current fundraising environment is the new normal and not about to get much better. We also talk about trends in founder vesting, and why some founders are choosing to vest for longer.Finally, we go through what to do if you’re stuck with some product-market fit but mediocre growth, and why more exits are happening now than anytime in the fast couple of y...

His robotics startup raised $400M, his VC fund over $4B—& he ran both at the same time. Here's how he did it.| Lior Susan, Bright Machines & Eclipse Ventures

2024-11-0442:59

Lior is the Elon Musk of VC. In just 8 years, his venture fund went from 0 to $4B under management. And while doing that, he founded Bright Machines, which to date has raised over $400M. He's both the CEO of Bright Machines and the Managing Director of Eclipse Ventures. And he's not building "easy" software startups either. Bright Machines is looking to automate the entire manufacturing process with robots. He launched it with a $179M round and a 100-person team. Lior is not n...

This 1st-time founder raised $4M, kept the team to 5 people—& just raised a $28M Series A. | Parker Gilbert, Co-Founder of Numeric

2024-10-3137:39

Parker quit his job as VP Finance at a late-stage startup in mid 2021. He raised $4M out of the gate because, well, it was 2021. But he didn't ramp up sales, he didn't hire 15 developers. He kept the team to 5 people for the first year. He worked with a dozen design partners until the value prop was perfect. He even refused to let customers pay upfront in annual contracts. He wanted monthly payments to light a fire for him and his team. This month, just 3 years after quitting his job, he clos...

In 2004, they "almost bankrupted themselves". In 2024, they hit $500M ARR & a $5B valuation. | Mike Wessinger, Co-Founder of PointClickCare

2024-10-2855:13

Mike started selling SaaS before SaaS was a thing. PointClickCare is the Salesforce of healthcare. For the first 7 years, they raised just $600K from friends and family. With that funding, they grew to $50M in ARR. Through that time, they went through the 2000 Dotcom crash and nearly went bankrupt in 2004 as they chased too many markets too soon.Since then, the company has continued to grow at over 20% compounded rate and hit $500M in ARR in 2024 and a $5B valuation. Mike shares how...

The top 3 reasons why Zuck is killing Apple in the Mixed Reality race.

2024-10-2411:27

Apple sold only 370,000 VisionPro headsets-- much fewer than it expected. Meanwhile, Meta Ray-Bans are the top-selling product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores. The outcome of their AR/VR products couldn't be more different, even though they both have as much awareness as you could possible buy.There are 3 reasons:1. Price.2. Killer feature vs cool product.3. Destination vs always-on.Check this episode out if you want to understand the where mixed reality is going and what you need to do to make sure...

His influencer marketplace hit $150M in revenue—& just exited for $500M. It all started with a party at Coachella. | Piotr Tomasik, Co-Founder of Influential

2024-10-2140:491

Piotr met his co-founders at a party in Coachella. He built them an app for influencers to post online. That simple idea evolved into one of the world's first influencer marketplaces. While so many other tried and failed, Piotr and his team targeted marketing agencies with big budgets. They grew to $150M in revenue over a 10 year period. This summer, they were acquired by Publicis Groupe for $500M. This is the story of how it all started, where the idea came from and how partnering with IBM o...

Your odds of raising a Series A just dropped from 30% to 15%—here's what to do about it:

2024-10-1712:38

New Carta data shows that 30% of seed-stage startups used to raise a Series A within 2 years of their seed. Now, only 15% do. The bar for Series As is as high as it's ever been. And the number of seed extensions that I see is going up as a result.But for founders, this is NOT a bad thing. I remember as a seed-stage founder I was obsessed with raising a Series A. But now I've seen startup after startup that raised $8-12M Series A when they didn't truly have product-market fit. Most of those st...

His 1st startup failed—but his 2nd one hit $100M ARR & a $1.6B valuation. Here's what he learned. | Liran Zvibel, Founder of WEKA

2024-10-1446:44

Liran quit a cozy job at IBM to launch Fusic, a TikTok-like app back in 2011. He raised over $10M, acquired tens of thousands of users, and failed.So he went back to what he knew: deep tech and enterprise. He launched WEKA in 2013 to improve the efficiency of GPUs. He was operating on hard mode: building deep tech and selling to large enterprise customers. It took him 5 years to build a commercially-ready product. In that time, he raised over $35M from strategic investors, since VCs didn't ge...

#box-pro-ellipsis-173489206312938{-webkit-line-clamp:2;}A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

João Melo Cabrita

A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders