A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Shubham Mishra, Founder of Pixis, shares how he bootstrapped his AI startup to $85M ARR. He discusses starting with no network, waiting in a bank lobby for his first customer, the importance of founder-led sales, and finding true product-market fit. Mishra's journey highlights insane early efforts leading to remarkable results in scaling and fundraising.

Discover how Wiz, a cybersecurity startup, achieved a $500M ARR in 4 years and may be acquired by Google for $23B. Learn about their rapid growth, exceptional team, and strict discipline. Find out why addressing the full 'Job to be Done' is crucial for fast growth and how having an A+ team is irreplaceable. Explore the unique factors that led to this exceptional success in a competitive market.

Serial entrepreneur Paul Mikesell founded Carbon Robotics and created a farming robot using lasers to kill weeds, selling each for $1.5M. He shares insights on customer discovery, raising pre-product, and generating $150M in revenue. Learn about the challenges in hardware startups, storytelling for fundraising, and achieving product-market fit through pre-sales.

Discusses Tesla's declining EV market share and how it took traditional car manufacturers 15 years to match a single founder. Highlights the power of founders in disrupting established industries and emphasizes the importance of innovation and reacting to change in the business world.

Benjamin Encz, Founder of Ashby, raised $3.5M & kept team at 3 people, grew 10x to $2M ARR in 1 year. Discussed: keeping team small for speed, displacing point solutions, validating pain points, moving up market, product-market fit.

Discussing how startups can succeed by creating new markets instead of competing with established players. Examples include Canva, Shopify, and Pickleball. Emphasizing the importance of user-friendly products in expanding the market.

Blake Hall, Founder of ID.me, shares his journey from being homeless to building a $150M+ ARR unicorn. He discusses pivoting to an identity verification platform, raising initial funds, closing enterprise deals, and finding product-market fit. Learn about the importance of credibility, fear of failure, niche markets, and staying close to customers. ID.me doubled its user base yearly and now 40% of Americans have an account.

AI is changing the game for startups, making it harder to compete with tech giants like Google. Incumbents have the advantage with established distribution channels. Startups need to focus on getting distribution faster than competitors get their product. The podcast discusses the challenges and dynamics of the AI revolution for founders.

1st-time founder Andrew Rea raised $2.7M in weeks after meeting 120 VCs. Tips on fundraising faster by engaging more investors, creating an investment memo, warm intros to VCs, controlling investor meetings, and deciding on accepting funds. Discusses strategic approach to closing a round, attracting investors with a strong product, team, and market, managing energy during back-to-back meetings, and making dilution decisions for better partnerships.

The podcast discusses the rise and fall of Zoom stock and how AI startups can learn from it. It highlights the need for differentiation from foundational models and incumbents in the AI space. Strategic considerations for AI startups in the face of competition with industry giants are also explored.