A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders His 1st startup failed. His 2nd became a unicorn in just 18 months. | Jake Stauch, Founder of Serval
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Jan 8, 2026 Jake Stauch, Founder and CEO of Serval, shares his remarkable journey from a failed startup to a $1B valuation in just 18 months. He discusses the bold decision to rebuild a full platform to replace ServiceNow, achieving an astonishing 50% close rate on sales demos. Jake reveals insights from over 100 customer discovery calls that pinpointed the real pain points in IT workflows. He highlights the importance of asking specific questions to unlock genuine customer feedback and how calculated risks in AI development played a crucial role in Serval's rapid growth.
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Early Founder Failure And What It Taught Him
- Jake dropped out of Duke to build NeuroPlus, a hardware+software startup for kids with ADHD.
- He ran it seven years before winding it down when the market proved much smaller than expected.
What Product–Market Fit Actually Feels Like
- True product-market fit can feel like everything works when executed well.
- Jake realized at Verkata that when you have PMF, good execution makes growth feel easy.
Customer Story That Sparked Serval
- A customer described thousands of Merakada devices producing ServiceNow tickets for simple offline issues.
- That story seeded the idea of diagnosing and auto-resolving tickets without manual engineering.