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
Description
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 later a $17M Series A from a16z in 14 days.
We go deep into how to come up with massive ideas, how to get to product-market fit, and how to quickly fundraise from tier 1 VCs.
Why you should listen
- Why all 3 founders living in the office was the best decision they ever made.
- How to raise a seed round in 6 days and a Series A in 14-- all from tier 1 VCs.
- How to leverage LinkedIn to get exposure and lots of leads.
- How to get more mindshare from your employees.
- Why Pylon has almost no meetings.
- How to come up with an idea using both top-down and bottoms-up processes.
Keywords
founders, startup, customer support, Pylon, co-founders, omnichannel, B2B, venture capital, product market fit, entrepreneurship, startup, Y Combinator, fundraising, product development, market trends, customer support, AI integration, team dynamics, venture capital, entrepreneurship
Timestamps
(00:00:00 ) Intro
(00:01:35 ) Why he chose to sleep in the office
(00:07:11 ) Project Management instead of People Management
(00:11:24 ) How it all started
(00:23:33 ) Cold Messaging Potential customers
(00:28:02 ) Finding the Trend
(00:35:49 ) Building V1
(00:38:32 ) Getting into YC as ChatGPT Comes Out
(00:42:37 ) Why fundraising is a "social game"
(01:01:21 ) Raising Series A from A16
United States
