Are You a Mentor to Founder CEOs?

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Todd: One of the things I'm always curious to learn from any founder is who are the people or the mentors that you've had in your career prior to Alma could be now with Alma and what did they teach you? Harry: There's two that come to mind. The first when he was in high school, I loved jazz and I was in the jazz band at our high school and I played the tenor sax. That's been my paradigm for leadership ever since. Every single person that works on my team is significantly better at what they do than I could ever dream to be.

Todd Jackson’s back on the mic this week. (As a reminder, he’s guest hosting a few product-focused episodes this season — all about finding product-market fit.)

Today, Todd chats with Harry Ritter, founder of Alma, a membership-based network that helps independent mental health care providers accept insurance and build thriving private practices.

In our conversation, we go deep into Alma’s early days, and how they navigated the journey of finding traction and scaling.

As you’ll hear in the episode, the Alma team essentially had to find product-market fit twice as they went from physical, co-working office spaces pre-pandemic, to quickly building out their virtual care capabilities.

Here’s a preview of what Todd and Harry cover:

Approaching team building as a solo founder
Refining the idea and getting more insights from your customers through structured interviews, using the technique doctors are trained on
Rallying your team through a pivot
Staying competitor aware — not competitor obsessed
The difference between building a marketplace versus a platform.

Whether you’re in the early stages of starting a company or going through a tough pivot, there are tons of helpful tactics here.

You can follow Harry on Twitter at @harryritter1. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @tjack.