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A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
Every founder has 1 goal: find product-market fit. We interview the world's most successful startup founders on the 0 to 1 part of their journeys. We've had the founders of Reddit, Rappi, Cohere, Glean, Huntress, ID.me and many more.
We go deep with entrepreneurs & VCs to provide detailed examples you can steal. Our goal is to understand product-market fit better than anyone on the planet.
Rated one of the world's top Startup Podcasts.
Episodes
144 episodes
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
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 th...
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Season 3
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Episode 79
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1:07:26
He built a $4B unicorn & crossed $100M ARR—here's why it took 10 years of 100-hour weeks. | Martin Basiri, Founder of Passage & Applyboard (SaaS North Keynote)
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.
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Season 3
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Episode 78
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30:02
His sports betting app went from $0 to $10M ARR in a year—& to $150M ARR in 4. Here's how he did it. | Jon Robin, Founder of Dabble
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 launc...
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Season 3
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Episode 77
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44:26
He grew to $90M ARR, was about to exit for $1.5B—and then, it all fell apart. | Yanni Giannaros, Co-Founder of Wyre
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 ...
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Season 3
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Episode 76
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55:58
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How to build great products—lessons from Amazon, Facebook, Twitter & Deel. | Aaron Goldsmid, Head of Product at Deel
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...
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Season 3
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Episode 75
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37:54
He made his first loan at 16. Now his fintech startup does $50M+ ARR—here’s how. | Tate Hackert, Co-Founder of ZayZoon
DescriptionTate started doing commercial fishing at 16. He took that money and started lending it— on Craigslist! By 23 years old, he’d lent out $250,000. Then he found out about cash advances, and decided to start ZayZoon, a platform to...
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Season 3
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Episode 74
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1:03:24
After I passed, this startup grew 30x in 3 years to $10M+ ARR. Here's how he did it—& what I missed. | Francois de Kerret, Co-Founder of Zeffy
Zeffy is one of my biggest misses so far. I met Francois 3 years ago when he was raising his $3M seed round. But I passed.They were at ~$500K in revenue at that point. In the last 3 years, they've grown 30x. Clearly, I missed out.
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Season 3
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Episode 73
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30:36
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He hit $40M ARR, exited for over $100M—& raised only $1.5M. Here's how | Ian MacKinnon, Co-Founder of Later.com
In 2014, Ian launched a simple product: it let social media marketers buffer Instagram posts. It was originally a hackathon project. But it quickly gained users. So he and his co-founders went all in.They raised just one small seed roun...
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Season 3
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Episode 72
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56:01
He raised $16M, hit $1M ARR—& failed. Here are the top 3 lessons he learned. | David Anderson, Founder of Tandym
David's startup failed. But he had everything going for him: a solid thesis, $16M in funding across 3 rounds, $1.5M in ARR. At a high-level it seemed like everything was going the right way. And yet, it didn't work out.This is what happ...
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Season 3
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Episode 71
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54:13
He sold his 1st startup for 8 figures, grew his 2nd to $3M in a year—while battling panic attacks from the pressure. | Justin Adams, Founder of Aiwyn
Justin sold his first bootstrapped startup for over $10M. He raised $2M out of the gate for his second and then grew from $250K to $3M ARR in one year. He raised $40M in total, including a Series B from Bessemer. And yet, just a week be...
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Season 3
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Episode 70
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46:00
He raised $1.5M, hit $400K ARR in 9 months— but had to Exit Early. Here’s the top 3 lessons he learned | Rob Palumbo, Co-Founder of Outpoint
Rob founded Outpoint in 2020 to help marketers optimize their ad spend. He was a growth marketer and his founder a data scientist. He had team-market fit, a solid thesis, and paying customers. But when the recession hit and ad spend dropped, gr...
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Season 3
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Episode 69
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39:08
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His startup Cameo was a unicorn—until it crashed 90%. Here's how he went from near-bankrupt to profitable again. | Steven Galanis, Founder of Cameo
Cameo is one of the best-known recent consumer startups. You've either used it or know someone who's used it to get famous people to create personalized videos. And, for a while, they were a total rocket ship. Year 1: $300K GMVYear ...
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Season 3
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Episode 68
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57:47
VC funding is not popping back. THIS is the new normal—here's how to adjust. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta
Q3 startup data just dropped. We chat with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta about valuations at pre-seed, seed and Series A. Why the current fundraising environment is the new normal and not about to get much better. We also talk about t...
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Season 3
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Episode 67
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41:57
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His robotics startup raised $400M, his VC fund over $4B—& he ran both at the same time. Here's how he did it.| Lior Susan, Bright Machines & Eclipse Ventures
Lior is the Elon Musk of VC. In just 8 years, his venture fund went from 0 to $4B under management. And while doing that, he founded Bright Machines, which to date has raised over $400M. He's both the CEO of Bright Machines and the Managing Dir...
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Season 3
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Episode 66
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42:59
This 1st-time founder raised $4M, kept the team to 5 people—& just raised a $28M Series A. | Parker Gilbert, Co-Founder of Numeric
Parker quit his job as VP Finance at a late-stage startup in mid 2021. He raised $4M out of the gate because, well, it was 2021. But he didn't ramp up sales, he didn't hire 15 developers. He kept the team to 5 people for the first year.
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Season 3
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Episode 65
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37:39
In 2004, they "almost bankrupted themselves". In 2024, they hit $500M ARR & a $5B valuation. | Mike Wessinger, Co-Founder of PointClickCare
Mike started selling SaaS before SaaS was a thing. PointClickCare is the Salesforce of healthcare. For the first 7 years, they raised just $600K from friends and family. With that funding, they grew to $50M in ARR. Through that time...
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Season 3
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Episode 64
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55:13
The top 3 reasons why Zuck is killing Apple in the Mixed Reality race.
Apple sold only 370,000 VisionPro headsets-- much fewer than it expected. Meanwhile, Meta Ray-Bans are the top-selling product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores. The outcome of their AR/VR products couldn't be more different, even though they both have ...
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Season 3
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Episode 63
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11:27
His influencer marketplace hit $150M in revenue—& just exited for $500M. It all started with a party at Coachella. | Piotr Tomasik, Co-Founder of Influential
Piotr met his co-founders at a party in Coachella. He built them an app for influencers to post online. That simple idea evolved into one of the world's first influencer marketplaces. While so many other tried and failed, Piotr and his ...
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Season 3
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Episode 62
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40:49
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Your odds of raising a Series A just dropped from 30% to 15%—here's what to do about it:
New Carta data shows that 30% of seed-stage startups used to raise a Series A within 2 years of their seed. Now, only 15% do. The bar for Series As is as high as it's ever been. And the number of seed extensions that I see is going up as a resu...
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Season 3
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Episode 61
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12:38
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His 1st startup failed—but his 2nd one hit $100M ARR & a $1.6B valuation. Here's what he learned. | Liran Zvibel, Founder of WEKA
Liran quit a cozy job at IBM to launch Fusic, a TikTok-like app back in 2011. He raised over $10M, acquired tens of thousands of users, and failed.So he went back to what he knew: deep tech and enterprise. He launched WEKA in 2013 to im...
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Season 3
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Episode 60
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46:44
He quit Google with no startup idea, raised $50M from Sequoia with no revenue— & grew to 8 figures in ARR. | Dan Lorenc, Founder of Chainguard
This episode is going to piss you off. Most founders struggle to raise their first few million. Many have to bootstrap for years. Even once there's revenue, many get rejected because they're "too early". Dan had dozens of VCs asking to ...
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Season 3
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Episode 59
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31:48
He founded a banking app for kids 10 years ago, grew to 2M customers & exited—in one of the biggest fintech M&A deals ever. | Dean Brauer, Founder of GoHenry
It was “really slow in the first couple of years...really, really slow.” GoHenry was an app and debit card for kids to help parents teach their kids about money. Dean started over a decade ago in 2012, when mobile was just truly taking off.&nbs...
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Season 3
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Episode 58
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52:52
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1st-time AI founder grows from $0 to $1.3M ARR in 8 months. Here's exactly how he did it. | Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Founder of Artisan
Jaspar graduated YC & closed a $11.5M seed round this week. He launched Artisan just 8 months ago. And this is the first venture-backed startup he's ever ran. He started with product-led-growth but struggled. In May, he moved to a s...
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Season 3
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Episode 57
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31:43
He launched an Uber competitor with just $3,000—& grew to $20M in revenue in 7 years. | Cody Ruberto, Founder of Uride
Cody started a ride-share business in 2017 with no capital. He focused exclusively on small towns (population <100K) where Uber/Lyft weren't available. I know as a VC I would've passed if he'd pitched me when he started—and I would've been d...
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Season 3
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Episode 56
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40:53
The ONLY guaranteed way to attract & retain A-players.
I tried to pay my employees as little as possible. I thought I was being resourceful—& it seemed to work. Until it totally backfired. I learned my lesson the hard way.No founder wants to hire B-level or C-level talent. Everyone is l...
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Season 3
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Episode 55
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11:11