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a16z Live

My First 16: Doubling Down on Founder-Led Sales with Pilot's Waseem Daher

Nov 21, 2023
Waseem Daher, Co-founder of Pilot, discusses Pilot's beginning, first customers, pricing, building a GTM team, advice for founders. They delve into their approach to targeting the right customers, founder-led sales, and the importance of shipping a product quickly.
27:58

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

  • Pilot's success was driven by their focus on providing a service-oriented solution for accounting challenges faced by startups.
  • Founder-led sales and personal outreach were key factors in winning over Pilot's initial customer base.

Deep dives

The Founding Story of Pilot and Identifying Deep Personal Problems

The podcast episode features an interview with Waseem DeHair, co-founder and CEO of Pilot, discussing the founding story of the company. Waseem and his co-founders identified deep personal problems they faced in their previous ventures related to accounting and bookkeeping. They saw an opportunity to solve these problems and provide services for high-growth startups. They believed that startups needed someone to take care of their accounting and bookkeeping needs, rather than just providing software. This led to the creation of Pilot, a tech-enabled service that offers accounting, bookkeeping, CFO, and tax services for startups.

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