Founders Versus Co-Founders: How to Validate the Initial Idea

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The most important thing to understand is regardless of whether it's founders, co-founders, or early team members, you need to know who you are. The way that I approached it was in as quantitative a way as possible. You really have to get close to your customer in the beginning and spend time with them. And then make sure that you are collecting feedback from that customer in a way that you can step back and analyze absent your own bias on the subject.

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.