A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders He burned $4M to hit $100K ARR—but with 1 big change, he grew to $4.5M ARR in just 12 months. | Guy Podjarny, Founder of Snyk & Tessl
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Oct 27, 2025 
Guy Podjarny, founder and former CEO of Snyk and current founder of Tessl, shares his journey of turning a $4M investment into a successful security company. He reveals that while thousands of developers loved Snyk, the crucial gap was in aligning with security teams, the actual buyers. By developing governance and enterprise features, he transformed Snyk’s monetization strategy, leading to skyrocketing growth. Guy also discusses his pivots to AI-native developer tools and emphasizes the importance of avoiding stagnation in entrepreneurship.
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Burned $4M Before The Buyer Problem
- Guy spent two years and burned $4M to reach $100K ARR despite thousands of users. Four months after focusing on buyers, revenue jumped to $650K and then to $4.5M a year later.
Build For The Buyer When They're Different
- Do build governance, reporting, and enterprise capabilities when the buyer is different from the user. These features let security teams justify purchasing and scale usage into paid contracts.
Design Around The Minimum Unit Of Value
- The minimum unit of value differs by buyer: single developer for dev tools, organizational breadth for security. Design your GTM and product around that minimum unit to unlock adoption and monetization.