Is There a Market for Software Development?

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Selling software is our business model, basically, in Silicon Valley. That's it. If you actually zoom out and look at sort of most companies in the world, most companies are not software companies. Every year they spend $400 million building internal tools. And so that gives you a sense like sort of the market for internal software is ginormously large.

Todd Jackson is back on the mic to guest host another product-focused episode this week. He chats with David Hsu, founder and CEO of Retool, a low-code platform for developers building custom internal tools.

Today, Retool is valued at over $3 billion and has some of the biggest companies in the world building apps on its platform. But in this conversation, David rewinds the clock to Retool’s early days. He discusses why plenty of smart folks thought the idea for Retool would fail and that the product’s developer focus would sink the company.

We explore why David had such strong conviction in his target customer, even in the face of doubters, and his early lessons on finding language-market fit. David also explains how Retool nabbed its earliest customers (which includes Brex, DoorDash and a Fortune 500 BigCo) and shares his playbook for creating incredibly tight feedback cycles with these early evangelists.

On the surface, Retool’s path to product-market fit seems incredibly smooth. But as David tells it, there were plenty of bumps in the road — and he’s got tons of advice for early-stage founders that are finding their footing.