A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

He made 2 key changes —then grew to $100M ARR in 2 years & exited for $2B. | Harish Abbott, Founder of Deliverr & Augment

Harish spent 9 months building Deliver and could barely get 10 customers. The product worked. Merchants liked the fast delivery promise. But nobody was signing up. Then he made two changes—and scaled to $100M in revenue in 2 years. Shopify acquired them for over $2B. Harish says it wasn't about finding product-market fit. It was about finding product-PRICE-market fit. The product was fine. The pricing model was killing them.  This episode breaks down why pricing often isn't just a business decision—it's part of your product, how to build self-serve systems that scale to thousands of customers without talking to anyone, and why you must obsess about end users AND economic buyers if you actually want adoption. Harish is now building Augment, an AI company for logistics that just raised an $85M Series A. He shares what he learned shadow-sitting operators for 60 days and why demos mean nothing in the AI era. Why You Should Listen: * Why PMF is often not enough—you need  product-price-market fit * Why subtle changes can have huge results * Why you need both users AND buyers to love your product * How to master self-serve  Keywords: startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, pricing strategy, $2B exit, Shopify acquisition, product-price fit, logistics startup, self-serve systems, Amazon fulfillment 00:00:00 Intro 00:07:06 Starting Deliver in 2017 00:14:24 Struggling with only 10 customers after 9 months 00:19:53 The two changes that changed everything 00:23:43 Zero to $100M in 2 years and product-price-market fit 00:29:32 How the $2B+ Shopify acquisition happened 00:32:07 Starting Augment AI for logistics 00:47:35 PMF moments and top advice  Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

He built a $20B public company, left—then raised a $100M Series A. | Dheeraj Pandey, Founder of Nutanix & DevRev

Dheeraj built Nutanix into a $20B public company—then walked away to start DevRev. He just raised a $100M Series A. This episode breaks down why most founders "sell and run" (chase new logos instead of delivering value), why that strategy fails, and how Dheeraj thinks about building platforms with use cases instead of just features. He explains why the biggest opportunities come from bundling and why you need to hit 130%+ NRR to scale in B2B. Dheeraj also shares the two near-death experiences at Nutanix in the first 5 years, how they survived, and what he's building differently at DevRev in the AI-native world. If you're wondering whether you have real PMF, how to think about platforms vs features, or why your existing customers matter more than new ones—this is mandatory listening from someone who's done it twice at massive scale. Why You Should Listen: * Learn why PMF at $1M doesn't mean PMF at $10M—and why you have to find it again at every milestone * Why "sell and run" kills startups—the real work starts after you close the deal * See how platform thinking (not feature thinking) took Nutanix to $1B ARR * Understand why 30-40% of revenue from existing customers is real PMF  Keywords: startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, platform thinking, Nutanix founder, enterprise SaaS, net dollar retention, PMF milestones, fastest to $1B, second-time founder 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:58 Starting Nutanix 00:14:24 Why he left a $20B company 00:18:53 The DevRev thesis 00:27:39 Pre-AI vs post-AI product strategy and the agent shift 00:40:57 Platform vs features 00:46:25 PMF is not a destination 00:48:10 #1 Advice Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

He built a new database in his bedroom—now he powers Cursor, Notion and Anthropic. | Simon Eskildsen, Founder of turbopuffer

Simon spent 10 years at Shopify scaling databases to millions of requests per second. Then he discovered vector databases were so expensive that companies couldn't launch AI features. So he solved it.  When Cursor emailed about their crushing costs, Simon flew to San Francisco unannounced. They migrated their entire workload within a week, cutting their bill by 95%. Then came Notion. Justin pulled 24-hour coding marathons during their POC, fixing 300 milliseconds of latency in three hours. They signed on July 25th—the same day Simon's daughter was born.  Now TurboPuffer powers Cursor, Notion, and Linear while staying profitable with just 17 people. Simon shares why he turned down easy Series A money and his framework of exactly 6 legitimate reasons to ever raise capital. Why You Should Listen: * The power of making something 10-100x cheaper * Why you need to be willing to fly to early customers (how that landed Cursor) * The 6 reasons to raise money (and why you often shouldn't) * How working 24-hour sprints during POCs converted enterprise customers * Why staying profitable with 17 people beats raising $30M you don't need Keywords: startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, TurboPuffer, Simon Eskildsen, vector database, Cursor, Notion, bootstrapping, database startup, AI infrastructure 00:00:00 Intro 00:07:52 Finding the problem 00:12:25 Building alone 00:22:27 Going viral on X 00:26:18 Closing Cursor 00:40:17 Closing Notion 00:45:26 Why he didn't raise $30M when everyone expected him to Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

He burned $4M to hit $100K ARR—but with 1 big change, he grew to $4.5M ARR in just 12 months. | Guy Podjarny, Founder of Snyk & Tessl

Guy spent 2 years and $4M building Snyk to $100K ARR. Thousands of developers loved the product. They just wouldn't pay. Then he figured out the problem: he had product-user fit, but not product-buyer fit. Developers loved Snyk. Security teams (the actual buyers) didn't care about it. The distance between user and buyer was killing him. So Guy spent a year building governance features, reporting, and enterprise capabilities—all the stuff developers didn't care about but security teams needed to write checks.  Four months later, Snyk hit $650K ARR.  A year after that, $4.5M.  Then $19M.  Today it's over $300M ARR. This episode breaks down the brutal reality of PLG when your user isn't your buyer, why Guy thinks the worst outcome for a founder is getting stuck (not failing), and how he's now raising $125M for his next company Tessl. If you're building PLG, selling to enterprise, or wondering why your users love you but won't pay—this is required listening. Why You Should Listen: * Learn why thousands of users loving your product means nothing if they won't pay * Discover the difference between product-user fit and product-buyer fit * Understand why the worst outcome isn't failure—it's getting stuck in the grey zone * Master the art of anchoring in the future instead of just filling today's gaps Keywords: startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, PLG strategy, product-user fit vs product-buyer fit, developer tools, security startup, enterprise sales, bottoms-up GTM, Snyk founder Chapters: (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:37) The first start up :Blaze.io" (00:06:16) The Beginning & Concept of Skyk (00:15:27) Why use Snyk (00:23:41) The Product Led Growth for Snyk (00:33:08) Raising for Snyk (00:38:58) The Beginning & Concept of TESL (00:46:39) Raising for TESL (00:48:52) Finding PMF (00:49:26) One Piece of Advice Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

5x founder asked Ford for a contract so large—they acquired his company instead. | Amar Varma, Founder of Mantle

Amar is a 5x founder who helped birth Tinder (it was the 10th project—after the first 9 failed), then sold his next company to Ford for putting a platform in every single vehicle they make. But the wildest part? He got Ford to commit in under a year by doing something most founders would never do: he asked for SO MUCH money that only the CEO could approve it. That one move made him "part of the transformational change" instead of a vendor they could ignore. In this episode, Amar breaks down the exact pricing strategy he used to land an 8-figure deal, why founders who sell discounted pricing are sabotaging themselves, and what it actually takes to compete against billion-dollar incumbents like Carta (his current company, Mantle, is doing exactly that). If you're trying to sell to enterprise, wondering if you should bootstrap or raise, or questioning whether your market even exists—this episode will reset how you think about all of it. Amar's built companies in mobile, vehicles, security, and fintech. He knows what works. Why You Should Listen: * Learn the pricing trick that got a CEO to sign off to an 8-figure deal. * Discover why asking for MORE money (not less) is how you win enterprise deals * Why getting told "you're nuts" might mean you're dead right * Master the one metric that matters more than ARR in the early days Keywords: startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, enterprise sales, 5x founder, product market fit, pricing strategy, Tinder origin story, competing with incumbents, bootstrapping vs raising, SaaS pricing Chapters: (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:56) The Start & Finding PMF for Tinder (00:09:04) Xtreme Labs (00:12:18) Autonomic (00:17:03) The Contract Turned Acquisition (00:22:04) The origin of Mantle (00:28:56) Going into a Dominated Category (00:32:39) Raising & Pitching for Mantle (00:40:01) One Piece of Advice Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]