A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Tolga stumbled upon a problem in the security monitoring space. Motion cameras generated way too many false alerts. So he decided to solve it using AI. He raised over a million dollars and got several customers. But he always felt he was pushing a boulder up a hill. At one point, one of his large customers churned and went with a competitor. Tolga pivoted, but it was too late. Now, thinking back, he realizes that one of the main issues is he may never have been solving an important-enough problem. And in my experience that's the reason that 95%+ of startups fail. You learn a lot from the massive successes— but you can only really know what drives success if you pay attention to the failures as well. So here it is, back by popular demand. Why you should listen: * Why learning from failures is as important as celebrating successes. * Why you need to deeply validate the problem with customers before building.  * How to tell if your product isn't a top priority based on sales cycles. * Why you probably need to pivot sooner than you think. Keywords startup failure, founder stories, learning from mistakes, customer validation, market dynamics, business pivot, entrepreneurship, PromiseQ, AI technology, security solutions Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:50) What is PromiseQ (00:11:06) Working on a Non-Priority Pain Point (00:16:10) Realizing the Different Costumer Profiles too Late (00:18:23) The Business Model (00:20:52) Why you need to pivot fast (00:28:32) If Things Went Differently Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

There are a few things harder when building startups than getting your first few customers. When you're on a standstill, getting momentum is incredibly hard. Going from zero to one takes an incredible amount of effort—you have absolutely no credibility, no proof points. So to help you out I went through 24 ways of getting your first customers using 24 different examples from this show. Why you should listen: * Figure out how to land your first few customers. You are guaranteed to find at least one example that works for you. Keywords customer acquisition, startup strategies, community building, persistence, experimentation, free services Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:35) Stay22 - Pay your Customers (00:02:25) Reddit - Creating your Community (00:02:58) Rappi - Seeding Supply (00:04:04) Wattpad - Seeding Demand (00:05:05) Cameo - Finding Someone With an Audience (00:05:43) Noibu - Showcasing the Value of the Platform (00:06:41) Bridgit - Showing up in Person (00:07:24) Rewind - Attaching to an Ecosystem (00:08:36) Clio - Adding Friction to the Funnel (00:09:06) Wealthsimple - Lunch & Learn (00:09:29) Athennian - Classic Customer Discovery (00:10:00) Carbon Robotics - Presales from Customer Discovery (00:10:34) StackAdapt - Creating Custom Software (00:11:21) ApplyBoard - Identifying Power Users (00:12:27) Forma AI - Sheer Force of Will (00:15:01) Blockthrough - Starting with an Obvious Problem (00:16:25) GoBolt - Finding Problems Close to You (00:17:08) Shopify - Building a Waitlist & Showcasing the Product (00:17:43) Fullscript - Cold Emailing (00:18:30) Spellbook - Running Experiments Exceptionally Quickly (00:19:27) Legion - Finding a Design Partner (00:20:18) Knak - Consulting (00:20:54) Dabble - Building Distrobution (00:21:55) Zeffy - Making the Product Free Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

Ankit left his job as a VC to launch a Voice AI platform—back in 2018! It wasn't the voice AI of today. The first demo sounded like a robot. But still, he convinced large enterprise customers in the healthcare space to try it out. He found a highly manual, call intensive workflow in the back office and autoamted it using AI. Years later, he's raised $102M and has dozens of large $1M+ enterprise customers using the product. He talks about how he started it, how he saw the AI opportunity so early on, and how he found a way to lock in champions that pushed his product inside large enterprises. Why you should listen: * Why the search for product-market fit never stops. * How to build trust with enterprise customers. * How to get champions to fight battles for you and win enterprise deals. * Why even successful startups are never straight lines up and to the right. Keywords product-market fit, AI in healthcare, automation, conversational AI, startup challenges, scaling, founder advice, technology evolution, compliance, trust in AI Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:02:01) How it all started (00:06:29) Automating Insurance Calls (00:16:37) Landing the first customers (00:22:02) Giving your persona phone number to early users (00:27:43) Landing large enterprise customers (00:33:45) Getting Early Adopters to Believe (00:36:34) Finding Product Market Fit (00:38:04) 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]

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 Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

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. * How to make your first hire.  * Why you need to go all-in and work crazy hours to build a unicorn. * Why Martin thinks it's key to never give up, even in tough times, as cliche as it might sound. * The importance of creating a positive environment to attract good people. Keywords entrepreneurship, education, immigration, impact, startup, Passage, ApplyBoard, perseverance, business model, founder journey Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:03:54) Getting Into Coding (00:06:48) Accidentally Making Applyboard (00:10:41) Starting startup #2 (00:17:19) Raising the Biggest Seed in Canada with Only 20 Employees (00:20:07) If You Can't Outsmart Them, Outwork Them (00:23:21) Getting the First Software Developer (00:25:48) 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]