Harman went from cold-calling hotels 100 times a day to building the category-defining guest management platform for the hospitality industry. Canary built a $600M company by first solving one tiny, annoying problem: paper credit card authorization forms.
In this episode, Harman breaks down how a simple digital form became the wedge into thousands of hotels. He reveals why they stuck with outbound sales long after hitting millions in revenue, the terror of collecting physical checks during the first week of COVID, and the exact moment he knew they had hit product-market fit.
Why You Should Listen
- The "Activated Hair on Fire" framework: How to turn a latent problem into a must-have purchase.
- Why outbound sales (and cold calling) is often your top early growth channel.
- How to use a simple, "unscalable" wedge to unlock a massive market.
- Why you should celebrate the lows: A counterintuitive take on managing founder psychology.
- The story of signing 200+ customers in a single day (and finding true PMF).
Keywords
startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, vertical saas, outbound sales, cold calling strategies, early stage growth, b2b sales, hospitality tech
00:00:00 Intro
00:02:13 From Management Consulting to Hotel Tech
00:11:32 The Paper Form that Launched a Company
00:17:35 The Activated Hair on Fire Framework
00:24:26 Landing the First Customer via Cold Call
00:28:21 Applying to YC
00:32:35 Making 100 Cold Calls a Day
00:43:42 The COVID Cash Flow Panic
00:48:27 Signing 200 Customers in One Day
Send me a message to let me know what you think!
