A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders He killed a $100K ARR product & pivoted—then raised $375M. | Viraj Parekh, Co-Founder of Astronomer
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Dec 18, 2025 Viraj Parekh, Co-founder of Astronomer and a pivotal figure in commercializing Apache Airflow, shares his startup journey from creating a clickstream product to pivoting into a managed Airflow service. He reveals the crucial lessons learned, like how constant customer conversations and asking the right questions validated their pivot. Viraj discusses the importance of resilience, especially during their slow climb to $1M ARR, and how being outside Silicon Valley led to unique challenges and innovative solutions in fundraising and customer engagement.
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Backend Interest Revealed The Real Opportunity
- Customers cared more about the Airflow backend than the clickstream product itself.
- Viraj Parekh used that signal to recognize a deeper, untapped market for managed Airflow.
Ask If They'd Pay For An Easy Button
- Ask prospects directly if they'd pay for an "easy button" to validate demand.
- If they say yes without hesitation, that is strong evidence to build the product.
Get Rep Counts On Customer Calls
- Get raw reps on customer conversations to build resilience and avoid confirmation bias.
- Run dozens of calls so you learn to separate noise from the single important insight.