A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Chris Walker, Founder of Refine Labs, shares his journey to $22M in revenue, regrets focusing on growth over profitability, insights on founder-driven sales, customer feedback importance, viral marketing campaigns, and finding product-market fit. Key topics include starting e-commerce, sales-marketing balance, customer feedback, and avoiding unnecessary advertising.

Meet Sam Altman, the strategic genius behind $3B in ARR in 2 years, partnering with tech giants like Microsoft and Apple. His key to success? Positioning correctly, letting bets play out, and going all-in on what works. With over 10M paying subscribers and recognition as a brand name, his company OpenAI is soaring.

We interview Chris Slow the CTO and Founding Engineer at Reddit. Reddit is now a ~$10B company, with nearly $1B in revenue. Their 1B+ monthly active users are so powerful they can move markets.  This is the story of how it all began.On this episode, we interview Chris Slowe, Reddit's current CTO and Founding Engineer. Chris was in YC's first-ever batch with Steve and Alexis. He was their roommate. When Chris's own startup failed, he moved over and joined them to build Reddit. This was almost 20 years ago, in 2005.It only took them a year to hit 1 million monthly active users. But it took them well over 5 years to hit $1M in revenue. Here's the story of how they hit product-market fit and built the world's most powerful online community. Why you should listen:- Learn how Reddit got started in 2005 and why it took them many years to monetize- See how word of mouth & organic growth are the key to building a community like Reddit- Hear Chris's perspective on scaling teams and organizations, preserving culture, and signs of clear product-market fit - Why applying lessons from your first startup to your second one is not as easy as you think it might be KeywordsReddit, Y Combinator, growth, startups, founders, acquisition, Conde Nast, community-driven platform, culture, word of mouth, Google, organic growth, Hipmunk, monetization, product-market fit, scaling, startup adviceTimestamps:(00:00:00) Intro(00:01:55) The Start of Reddit(00:07:13) Joining Reddit(00:12:56) Building Communities(00:20:37) The First Year of Reddit(00:22:56) The Acquisition(00:26:50) Staying Lean(00:28:58) Leaving Reddit to do Hipmunk(00:37:14) Hiring for Hipmunk(00:41:08) Coming Back to Reddit(00:45:05) Making the Mobile App(00:47:13) Monetization(00:50:05) Finding True Product Market Fit(00:50:41) One Piece of AdviceSend me a message to let me know what you think!

Wardah Inam, Founder of Overjet, shares how a bad dentist appointment led to creating a $550M dental AI platform. She discusses founder obsession, learning speed, customer focus, fundraising, and true product market fit. The podcast explores the journey from a biomedical imaging startup to revolutionizing dentistry with AI technology.

Former Squarespace CEO, Dane Atkinson, discusses key startup lessons learned, like the power of 7-day trials over 30-day ones, talking to customers daily, and prioritizing customer problems. He shares insights on SMB monetization challenges, staying close to clients, landing initial customers, overhiring, and finding product-market fit. His journey emphasizes the importance of genuine motivation and staying true to the original startup purpose.

Shmulik Fishman, Founder of Argyle, shares his journey of creating a product market fit by improving existing products. He emphasizes building a better version of a product that already exists, working closely with design partners, and keeping the sales team small. The podcast explores the importance of sustainability, transitioning to charging for a product, and staying close to customers for success.

Andrew Lockhead, Founder of Stay22, shares his journey from near bankruptcy to $2M/month using AI post-COVID. He reveals offering to pay early customers, dealing with revenue swings, and finding true product-market fit. His story includes investor struggles, pandemic opportunities, and tapping into the blogger market. A tale of resilience and growth in the face of adversity.

Poojan Kumar, a successful repeat founder, shares insights on raising funds and growing Clumio. He reveals how he landed his first customer by hovering at booths, gave his product away for free, and achieved $10M+ in ARR after 6 years. Poojan discusses team structure, giving products for free for traction, and specific sales tactics. He raised $75M in Series D this year and grew 4x to over 8-figures in ARR.

Arvind Jain, Founder of Glean, defied lean startup advice and grew the company to $3M in revenue in just 1 year. He didn't follow traditional MVP, ignored market feedback, and didn't charge beta users for 2 years. With conviction and persistence, Arvind tripled revenue each year, reaching $200M funding at a $2B valuation. His advice for founders is to know when to follow the playbook and when to write your own.

Snapchat got 0 downloads the day it launched. 5 months in, it had only 127 users. Today Snapchat is an $18B company with 400 million daily active users. Evan Spiegel noticed what even Zuck missed: daily communication is meant to be ephemeral, not recorded for all time.In this episode, we dive deep into how Snapchat went from idea to product-market fit. Our guest is Jeremy Liew, a Partner at Lightspeed and the first investor in Snapchat. He led Lightspeed's seed round in 2012 at a $5M valuation (!!). He shares his four-part B2C framework that helped him understand why Evan and Snap were special before anyone else. If you want to understand why Snapchat took off when so many other consumer startups fail to do so, check this episode out. Send me a message to let me know what you think!