Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast

How Oyster HR found product-market fit: Tony Jamous on leveling the global employment playing field

Sep 26, 2022

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Since the rise of COVID-19, every company has adopted remote work, and our guest's mission is to create a more equal world by making it possible for talented professionals to work from any country they choose to.

Tony Jamous is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Oyster, a global employment unicorn that helps companies hire employees and contractors anywhere in the world. Before Oyster, Tony was the founder of Nexmo (2010), a Twilio competitor that was acquired by Vonage in 2016 for $230M. In this episode, Tony takes us through the product-market fit journey of Oyster.

Join us as we discuss:

The origins of Oyster in April 2020 as world implemented lockdowns
Tony's approach to product-market fit and the milestones and key metrics that gave them confidence that they found it
The learnings that Tony took from his first company Nexmo, to help him build Oyster
The challenges of creating connection across a remote team and how Oyster uses Kona
Tony's best advice for seed stage founders just starting out on their journey

About Unusual Ventures — Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building infrastructure software and application-level companies. Unusual was founded in 2018 with the mission to reinvent the venture capital engagement model by serving entrepreneurs with an unprecedented level of hands-on services. Described as a partner versus a top-down stakeholder by its portfolio companies, Unusual is laser-focused on serving exceptional founders and teams building innovative products. With offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, and Boston, Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, Harness,  and Vivun.

About Sandhya Hegde — Sandhya is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in enterprise SaaS companies. Previously an early employee and executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sandhya) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/).