A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders His AI Voice Startup grew to $10M ARR in 1 Year—after 3 Years Stuck at $500K | Jordan Dearsley, Founder of Vapi
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Jun 16, 2025 Jordan Dearsley, founder of Vapi and former calendar app developer, shares his transformative journey from stuck at $500K to hitting $10M ARR in just one year. He discusses the bold decision to abandon a profitable venture, revealing how identifying a '10/10 burning pain' led to explosive growth. Jordan emphasizes customer anger as a growth signal and explains why true conviction is essential in a founder's journey. Listeners gain insights on navigating rapid growth, competition, and the critical nature of product-market fit.
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Pivot and Move to SF
- Jordan Dearsley and his co-founder gave back $500,000 after realizing their calendar app lacked a big vision.
- They moved to San Francisco and pivoted while exploring real-world problems like homelessness and hunger, which were too complex to tackle with tech alone.
Building AI Therapist Bot
- Jordan built an AI therapist bot for himself to cope with pivot uncertainty and tested voice model technology.
- Early customers loved the voice platform, leading to the first paying client focused on sales roleplay training.
Early Challenges in Voice AI
- Voice AI was fragmented with slow, unoptimized pieces before his startup integrated them efficiently.
- Real-time voice interaction required significant engineering effort that no one else had solved yet.