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As the founder of an early-stage startup you have one goal: find product-market fit. The Product Market Fit Show is a weekly podcast about the 0 to 1 journeys of the world's most successful tech startups. We go deep with entrepreneurs & VCs to provide detailed examples you can steal. Our goal is simple. We want to understand product-market fit better than anyone on the planet.
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There is no better storyteller in the world than Matthew Dicks. He tells stories for a living. He gets paid by the world's biggest brands to create stories for them. He's won Moth StorySLAM (a storytelling competition in NYC) a record 59 times. Every founder knows storytelling is a critical skill. But 99% of founders I meet are terrible storyteller…
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5 years ago, Shubham had just graduated college and had no network. He bootstrapped to $3M in ARR, then raised $200M & grew to $85M ARR. But he started trying to sell AI for marketing to enterprises with no network. So for 2 months, he'd go to the lobby of a bank and sit there for an hour. He'd wait for the CMO to walk by, just so he could say hi. …
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Google is in talks to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23B (a 40x revenue multiple). Wiz is the company that in 2021 announced it grew from $0 to $100M ARR in just 18 months. How did this cybersecurity company grow so fast in a crowded space? How does it get a 40x revenue multiple when FAANG stocks trade at 5-15x? Who are the exceptional founders…
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Paul built a startup that was acquired for $2.2B. He worked on AI at Uber and Oculus. But when a farmer told him about some of the problems he was facing, he quit and went all-in on farming. He built a robot that attaches to the back of tractors, uses computer vision to identify weeds and lasers to shoot and kill them. He sells each robot for $1.5M…
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Elon Musk single-handedly took on the entire automotive industry. No one, including me, thought he would succeed. But he's built an $800B company. Whether sales are slowing down misses the mark: the punchline is it took well capitalized, professional automakers 15 years to catch up to a single founder. Sure, Elon Musk is special. But this goes beyo…
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Last month, Ashby raised a $30M Series C. Ashby is used by customers like Notion, Ramp and Sequoia. Benji built Ashby as an end-to-end Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that would replace several point solutions. He had to build heads down for 18 months and couldn't launch a simple MVP. Surprisingly, even though he raised $3.5M at seed, he didn't gro…
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AI startups don’t necessarily have to beat incumbents. Some will start entirely new markets instead. Like Canva to Photoshop, Shopify to Amazon or Pickleball to Tennis, many of these won’t even have to compete. They create 10x easier to use products and through that open up an entirely new space. They solve problems people didn’t even know they had…
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"I was technically homeless at the time. I was sleeping on my buddy's couch. I had declined $250,000/ year at McKinsey... I had no idea what I was doing." Now, Blake has $150M in ARR, growing 30% per year, with 80% gross margins. He's raised $400M and his startup ID.me is worth over $1B. This is the story of how pivoted for a Groupon-like model to …
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Every startup needs to compete with incumbents. But it's different with AI. AI startups need to create websites or apps from scratch and drive traffic. Incumbents can just add AI as a feature. They have distribution built in. AI is not like previous tech revolutions. Unlike mobile, the internet, or the PC revolution, AI is not a new distribution ch…
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Andrew spoke with 120+ VCs to raise a $1.5M pre-seed round. He closed $2.7M and had demand for many millions more. He devoted 90% of his time to fundraising, but only took weeks from the first meetings to close. 99% of founders I meet do not fundraise at this level. It takes them longer to close, they have fewer choices and raise less. This is a sp…
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Zoom was THE work-from-home stock. It's down 90% from peak. The same hype that fuelled work-from-home stocks is now fuelling AI. What happened to Zoom will happen to many AI companies. AI startups today need to carefully position against foundational models and incumbents. Here's how to think through it. Why you should listen: Learn why what happen…
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Chris shares the story of how he grew Refine Labs to $22M ARR, what he did to grow so fast, and also why he regrets spending so much on growth instead of focusing on profitability. He goes exceptionally deep on sales and marketing and provides tactical advice you can steal. Chris is the founder of Refine Labs & Passetto. He's also a LinkedIn Top Vo…
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Sam Altman is playing chess not checkers. He partnered with Microsoft. He partnered with Apple. He grew to $3B in ARR in 2 years. Hate him or love him, he's a strategic genius. You'll recognize a pattern: Sam has an idea, positions correctly, lets the bets play out, and goes all-in on what works. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. In unde…
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We interview Chris Slow the CTO and Founding Engineer at Reddit. Reddit is now a ~$10B company, with nearly $1B in revenue. Their 1B+ monthly active users are so powerful they can move markets. This is the story of how it all began. On this episode, we interview Chris Slowe, Reddit's current CTO and Founding Engineer. Chris was in YC's first-ever b…
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Wardah was a PhD graduate working at a biomedical imaging startup. But all it took was two different dentists giving her two totally different diagnoses for her to quit her full-time job. She was unemployed with no idea what to build. All she knew was that something was broken—and she had to fix it. Her startup Overjet is now the #1 dental AI platf…
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Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He grew the company from ~$2M in revenue to ~$15M. He's a multi-time founder with multiple exits. His current startup, Odeko, raised $227M. He takes us through his long journey as a founder of multiple companies and shares the key startup lessons he's learned. Why you should listen: - Why 7-day tri…
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His first startup was a cool idea: Uber for Valet Parking. Investors loved it. But the unit economics didn't work out. So he had to pivot. He ended up selling it, but decided to do things differently the second time around. “It’s the boring stuff that makes money. Sometimes the sexy, interesting things are really great ideas, fun to use, but aren’t…
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His travel startup crashed 90% overnight. Here’s how he used AI to grow past $2M/year—to $2M a month: For a while, Andrew was crushing it. Accelerator -> $750K pre-seed -> $2M ARR -> $2.5M seed round. Then COVID hit. He was selling to events like CES, SXSW, etc. Revenue dropped from $160K/month to under $10K... overnight. Investors from his seed ro…
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Poojan is a multi-time successful founder. He raised $60M for his first startup and exited. He just raised a $75M Series D at his current startup. But it wasn't always easy. - In his first startup, he had to hover beside conference booths for hours to land his first customer. - He gave his product away for free to the first several customers. - It …
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Arvind founded 2 billion-dollar startups—by doing everything lean startup tells you not to do. - He didn’t focus on launching an MVP. - He ignored early market feedback. - He didn’t charge beta users anything— for 2 years. And it worked. He went from $0 to $3M in revenue the year he launched publicly. He tripled to about $9M the year after. And tri…
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Snapchat got 0 downloads the day it launched. 5 months in, it had only 127 users. Today Snapchat is an $18B company with 400 million daily active users. Evan Spiegel noticed what even Zuck missed: daily communication is meant to be ephemeral, not recorded for all time. In this episode, we dive deep into how Snapchat went from idea to product-market…
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If you feel like the ‘unicorn or bust’ playbook isn’t for you, then this episode definitely will be. Rand Fishkin is a multi-time founder and published author of Lost and Founder. He founded Moz, raised $29M in VC, grew to $50M in revenue and exited for $70M. But he ultimately realized that the VC-backed life wasn’t for him. So he went on to start …
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While Voice AI is all the rage now, it wasn't a hot sector in 2017. After Dylan graduated from YC, VCs rejected him. He couldn't raise a round. They all assumed Google would do it. So he raised what he could from angels and made it work for the next 3 years. He's now built the world's most accurate Speech AI model. He's grown to 5,000 customers and…
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Andrew is the founder/CEO of Enable. And he is riding a rocket ship: 2020: $17M Series A 2021: $45M Series B 2022: $94M Series C A few months ago he raised $120M at a $1B valuation. But it took him five years from the time he started Enable in 2015 until he was able to raise his first round in 2020. Andrew was running a profitable development shop …
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Alex started Apt2B in 2010. He sold couches online before IKEA did. It took him over 3 years to make as much money as he used to as a furniture salesperson. But it paid off. After growing the business to $6M in revenue, he sold the company. Post-acquisition he grew the company to $40M in sales. In this episode, we dive deep into what Alex did to ge…
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Every founder wants to build the next $1B+ company. So it’s normal to get inspired by what companies like Apple, Shopify and Microsoft do. But it’s also a huge mistake. In this episode, we look at what Shopfiy, Fullscript and Spellbook did to find product-market fit. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what they do now, as big succesful companies. B…
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Spellbook is ChatGPT for lawyers. They've raised $30M in the last 6 months. They now have over 2,000 law firms as customers. But it wasn't a straight line-- it took Scott 6 years to get here. For the first 5 years, Scott worked on a legal tech platform called Rally. During that time, Scott along with his co-founders and their small team ran hundred…
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Kyle Braatz is the founder of Fullscript, a $900M revenue company that started by helping health practitioners recommend supplements to their patients. It's like the Shopify for doctors, nurses and nutritionists Even though he captured 50% of the Canadian market in one year, early-stage VCs didn't see the opportunity. So he bootstrapped his way to …
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Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Partner at Felicis. He invested in Shopify's Series A in 2010 at a $25M valuation. He joins us to tell the story of how Shopify found product market fit. Shopify is now a $100B company. But as Founder & CEO Tobi Lutke said, in the early days, his goal was "to build a 20-person company". Shopify is not a stor…
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If you've been struggling to raise—you're not alone. Seed funding has been falling every quarter for the last 2 years. Rounds are smaller and take longer to raise. So we decided to record an episode to help you. Here are all the mistakes, tips and tricks we’ve seen first-hand that actually work. We touch on things like What the perfect raise looks …
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The Super Bowl is the best place to get in front of customers—if you have $10M to spend. Which means for virtually all startups, it’s 100% useless. So I decided to look into some of the best campaigns early-stage startups used to drive millions of leads. Shopify used a $100K Build A Business Competition in 2010 when it was a bootstrapped business. …
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This isn’t a unicorn fairytale. It’s a story about what it really takes to build a company and get to an exit. Nazim takes us through how he nearly went bankrupt, took years to turn things around, and ultimately sold his business for $30M all cash. Send me a message to let me know what you think!Mistral.vc
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4K likes, 365 re-shares and over 1M views, without any marketing spend. For an ad promoting your product, that sounds too good to be true-- and yet that's exactly what Yoav did. He leveraged it to get tons of press, more customers than he could manage, and raise a $15M Series A in under a year after incorporating. Here's the story of how Yoav got s…
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$1B startups get all the hype. But for 99% of founders, it’s the wrong goal. You’re better off building a sustainable business with consistent growth. Raising big rounds won’t make your company big and staying lean won’t make your company small. That's just VC Myth 1. Raising round after round does not equal success. That's just VC Myth 2. Just bec…
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Over 10 years of hard work, Ilya has helped over 2000 individuals change their lives. In the meantime, he built a profitable, cash-flowing business with no outside funding. While the billion-dollar outcomes get all the hype, this is what success looks like for most founders. In this episode, we dive into how Ilya turned a resume-editing business in…
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We released The Five Steps to Product Market Fit a few weeks ago and received lots of questions on how to apply the steps. In this episode, Rob and I share more colour and more stories on each step to help you understand how to apply them, and also, when these steps might need to be broken. Send me a message to let me know what you think!…
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I know most founders today are planning for the new year, so sharing the top 3 mistakes I've seen early-stage founders make when forecasting. If you're forecasting for 2024, you don't want to miss this. Send me a message to let me know what you think!Mistral.vc
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Here are the key lessons from the past 60 episodes that we've released to date. Each of the 5 steps to Product Market Fit is based on actual case studies with real examples you can use. It's a recap of everything I've learned over the last two years- you don't want to miss it. Send me a message to let me know what you think!…
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As they say, "Experience is the teacher of all things"... and my last startup was a ruthless teacher. Today, my co-founder Lee Silverstone and ex-CEO Rob Woodbridge join me to go through some of the insane stories from Gymtrack, our last startup. From strapping a whiteboard to the roof of Lee's Civic, to going to conferences with a 3D printed "smar…
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This is the story of the emotional rollercoaster that was my last startup, Gymtrack. Hope you find it helpful as you navigate your own startup journey. You can read the article here as well: https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/i-was-supposed-to-be-a-millionaire-at-25-instead-i-went-bankrupt-ef525370e353 Send me a message to let me know what you think!…
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Phil Knight, Nike's founder, might hold the all-time record for taking punches to the face. From giving up 49% of his company to a part-time advisor; to having Prefontaine, a famous runner and Nike's main ambassador, die unexpectedly; to getting blindsided with a $25M import tax when he could not afford it. Anything that could go wrong, did. In thi…
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Nike was built backwards. Instead of building a product and taking it to market, Phil Knight first built a distribution machine for running shoes. Eight years later, he finally launched his own product (the Nike shoe) and did $3M in sales in the first year. This is not the full story of Nike. It's the story of how Phil Knight got to product-market …
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Mark (CEO GoBolt) didn't set out to build a billion-dollar company. He just solved a problem other university students were facing. And then he constantly "made the best decision possible at each moment in time". To be honest, that's how most unicorns are made. Send me a message to let me know what you think!…
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Everyone tells you that you need to start with a niche, a beachhead market, and then grow from there. But how does that actually work? What does that really look like? It looks like Mark's story starting and growing GoBolt. Mark started off storing items for students over the summer. He expanded to storing all things for all people. He now provides…
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Think of Product Market Fit as a pyramid. At the bottom you have vision, then value prop, then product and at the top is go-to-market. As you go from 0 to Product Market Fit your job is to tweak the pieces of that pyramid, from top to bottom, until things click. Send me a message to let me know what you think!…
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Founders are told to pivot when things aren't working. They're also told to never give up. So how do you know when to push through and when to completely change course? Like most things in 0 to 1, it's more art than science. And unfortunately, most founders can't figure it out until after they experience it themselves. That's why on this episode we…
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Weak customer discovery is the number one reason why most idea-stage startups fail. It usually leads to founders wasting months solving fake problems. In my case, bad customer discovery cost me even more-- I ditched a startup idea that other founders built into several companies worth $10B+. Send me a message to let me know what you think!…
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Here's a step-by-step account of how to do proper customer discovery. From how to source potential customers, conduct proper interviews and test your early product -- Ron has done it all. He shares each step with lots of details, so you can easily copy (i.e., steal) his ideas. Rushing through customer discovery is the most common mistake founders m…
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Being capital efficient is the #1 power move you can make as a founder. It gives you time, control, and a huge edge with investors. Check out this episode to understand why it matters and what you can do to get there. Send me a message to let me know what you think!Mistral.vc
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