Navigating Product Market Fit in Startups

Kevin Hale is a Partner at YC. Before working at YC he cofounded Wufoo.

Kevin’s on the podcast today to do some Office Hours and talk about this year’s edition of Startup School.

If you’d like to sign up or learn more, check out https://StartupSchool.org.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon.

Y Combinator invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups (recently 200), twice a year.

Learn more about YC and apply for funding here: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/

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Topics

00:00 - Intro

00:51 - Stats from Startup School 2018

2:11 - Updates for Startup School 2019

8:41 - Sign up at StartupSchool.org

9:16 - Sean Maina asks - In the early days of Wufoo, how did you give a great customer experience?

11:56 - Design affordances

14:11 - Sunil Tej asks - How was Wufoo 10x better than the market when they just got started?

18:11 - Building an audience before a product

20:41 - Wufoo's growth

23:56 - Coming up with the idea for Wufoo

27:56 - Companies pivoting during YC

29:26 - Building a product in an unsexy space

32:56 - Sivaraj Ghanesh asks - How do you know if you've achieved product market fit? Or if your product just isn't noticed yet?

43:56 - Sivaraj Ghanesh asks - How do you gauge the size of a market?

46:26 - Tips for Startup School success

50:41 - Advice on vetting cofounders

54:11 - Sign up at StartupSchool.org