A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

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]

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 space. He not only understand the market, the customers and the product, he'd also built a distribution machine and knew exactly how to get in front of users. Here's how it happened. Why you should listen - Why distribution is the difference between success and failure - How spending a long time in research mode can make go-to-market much faster - Why simple product difference can lead to huge differences in outcomes Keywords sports betting, Dabble, entrepreneurship, product-market fit, startup journey, social betting, technology, marketing, revenue growth, challenges Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:49) Getting Into Sports Betting (00:04:22) Before Dabble (00:08:08) Starting Dabble & First Steps (00:10:55) The Initial Vision (00:17:55) How Sports Betting Works (00:24:26) Nearly Going Bankrupt (00:27:53) Building the App (00:31:23) Launching (00:35:47) Revenue Timeline (00:38:28) Finding Product Market Fit (00:41:48) 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]

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 late 2021, he started working on an exit with Bolt. By mid 2022 the deal was signed. The company was to be sold for $1.5B. Yanni would make hundreds of millions of dollars himself. And then, at the absolute last minute, the world changed. Stocks fell, crypto plummeted— and the deal fell apart. Startups are often one call, one customer or, in this case, one day away from complete success—or total failure. That’s the game you’re playing.  And there are few stories better than the one you’re about to hear. Why you should listen - Why if you want to be a founder you can't avoid taking punches to the face - How Yanni found Bitcoin just a couple of years after it was started - Why it often takes multiple twists and pivots to find real PMF - How acquisitions tend to happen and why they can always fall apart  Keywords startup, acquisition, Bitcoin, Web3, entrepreneurship, crypto, payment processing, innovation, technology, business, crypto, infrastructure, product-market fit, Web3, acquisition, startup challenges, fintech, business growth, developer support, market downturn Timestamps (00:00:00) Intro (00:01:50) Buying Bitcoin in 2013 (00:04:48) Creating a Hacker House in San Francisco (00:19:08) Creating Crypto Wallets (00:26:41) Becoming Wyre (00:33:56) Making the Decision to Go All In on Crypto (00:41:18) The Acquisition that Didn't Happen (00:47:33) Learning from All the Mistakes (00:52:03) Some People are Builders Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]

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. Keywords productivity, AI, product development, user experience, product management, customer feedback, product market fit, technology, innovation, startups Why you should listen * Why you’re better off trying to enhance than replace with AI— at least today. * Why you need to deeply understand your users to build products they truly love.  * How to avoid the customer feedback trap and only build features that move the needle. * How and when to hire your first product manager.  * What makes a product truly great  Timestamps: (00:00:00) Intro (00:10:25) AI Solves the Informational Retrieval Problem (00:14:54) AI Agents Aren't Real Yet (00:18:12) Signals that Could Lead Towards to PMF (00:23:04) Finding the Customers Need (00:25:17) Hiring Product Managers (00:28:00) Difference Between an excellent Product vs an Okay One (00:34:17) Prioritizing Bug Fixing vs Feature Requests from Existing Users Send me a message to let me know what you think! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/1889238/open_sms]