Ashwin built a $1.5B company in two years. He didn't do it with a massive team or a complex 5-year roadmap. He did it by ignoring "strategy" and talking to 100+ buyers until he found a problem so painful they would pay six figures for a solution that didn't fully exist yet.
In this episode, Ashwin breaks down the exact playbook Decagon used to go from zero to unicorn. He reveals why he refused to hire anyone until $1M ARR, how to differentiate in a crowded AI market, and why your customers are the only roadmap you’ll ever need.
Why You Should Listen
- How to hit $1M ARR in 6 months with just two founders and zero employees.
- The "Willingness to Pay" test: How to know if a customer will sign a $150k check.
- Why "over-thinking" your strategy is the fastest way to kill your startup.
- How to close massive enterprise deals before you have a full product.
- Why going vertical is often the wrong move for AI startups.
Keywords
startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, B2B sales, enterprise sales, AI startup, customer discovery, pricing strategy, early stage growth
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:56 Selling His First AI Startup to Scale
00:09:11 Why Founders Over Intellectualize Strategy
00:13:48 How to Get 100 Customer Interviews
00:15:10 The 150k Willingness to Pay Test
00:21:05 Hitting 1M ARR with Zero Employees
00:25:09 Ignoring Scalability to Win Early Customers
00:31:43 Defensibility in the Gen AI Era
00:39:42 Mocking APIs to Close Enterprise Deals
00:42:58 The Moment of True Product Market Fit
Send me a message to let me know what you think!
