A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and SparkToro, shares his journey from VC-backed to profitable 3-person startup. He discusses the shift in mindset, challenges of growth, inequities of stock options, balancing growth vs. profitability, and strategies for audience building. Fishkin emphasizes sustainable growth, transparency, and finding product-market fit.

Dylan, founder of Assembly AI, shares his journey from applying to YC past the deadline to raising $115M. He discusses the early days of building Speech AI, saw Gen AI potential, and strategic partnerships. Dylan reflects on challenges, milestones, and long-term growth goals in the AI industry.

Andrew is the founder/CEO of Enable. And he is riding a rocket ship:2020: $17M Series A2021: $45M Series B2022: $94M Series C A few months ago he raised $120M at a $1B valuation. But it took him five years from the time he started Enable in 2015 until he was able to raise his first round in 2020. Andrew was running a profitable development shop as he built the first version of Enable. He often had to chase down customers so he could make the next payroll. He had to balance serving existing customers while building an entirely new startup. Ultimately, he had to move to SF to raise a round and accelerate growth.We go through the details of how Andrew turned a 'boring' enterprise software company from the UK into one of America's hottest new unicorns.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Alex started Apt2B in 2010. He sold couches online before IKEA did. It took him over 3 years to make as much money as he used to as a furniture salesperson. But it paid off. After growing the business to $6M in revenue, he sold the company.Post-acquisition he grew the company to $40M in sales. In this episode, we dive deep into what Alex did to get started, how he closed his first few customers and what he did to grow to $1M in revenue.From landing a Super Bowl ad to selling couches at Costco, this episode is full of sales and marketing anecdotes you can steal. You don't want to miss it.Following the sale, Alex is now back at it as the founder and CEO of couch.com, a platform to help people find great furniture.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Exploring the differences between pre and post-product market fit, focusing on the value of simplicity and clarity. Case studies of Fullscript and Shopify highlight the journey towards finding true product market fit through experimentation and feedback.

Scott Stevenson shares the journey of Spellbook, a legal tech platform, from struggling for 5 years to rapid AI-driven growth. He discusses running experiments, testing product-market fit, and leveraging AI to grow 12x in one year.

Kyle Braatz is the founder of Fullscript, a $900M revenue company that started by helping health practitioners recommend supplements to their patients. It's like the Shopify for doctors, nurses and nutritionistsEven though he captured 50% of the Canadian market in one year, early-stage VCs didn't see the opportunity. So he bootstrapped his way to success. He cracked open the US market and quickly scaled from $0 in 2012 to $25M in revenue by 2016.Today, Fullscript has grown to a profitable company that makes it easy for health practitioners to prescribe and manage treatment plans for whole person health, through their market-leading tech platform.If you're struggling to raise but know you have a huge opportunity ahead of you, you won't want to miss this episode.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Partner at Felicis. He invested in Shopify's Series A in 2010 at a $25M valuation. He joins us to tell the story of how Shopify found product market fit.Shopify is now a $100B company. But as Founder & CEO Tobi Lutke said, in the early days, his goal was "to build a 20-person company". Shopify is not a story of explosive, 10x growth and massive funding rounds. Shopify is a story of consistent growth. Of doubling year after year, from 0 to over $7B in revenue and a $100B valuation.If your goal is to build a generational company,  you won't want to miss this episode.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Learn how to navigate the challenging fundraising landscape in 2024 with tips and tricks from successful founders. Discover the impact of market conditions, the power of creating a strong narrative, and leveraging relationships for successful introductions to investors. Explore strategies for securing investment, power dynamics in fundraising, and the role of transparency and storytelling in fundraising success.

The Super Bowl is the best place to get in front of customers—if you have $10M to spend. Which means for virtually all startups, it’s 100% useless. So I decided to look into some of the best campaigns early-stage startups used to drive millions of leads. Shopify used a $100K Build A Business Competition in 2010  when it was a bootstrapped business. The campaign drove 1350 new businesses and was paid back in under a month.https://shawngraham.me/blog/shopifys-kickass-build-a-business-contestDollarShaveClub launched with a YouTube video about its $1/mo razors. The video was everything a GIlette ad was not. The company was ultimately acquired for $1B.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI&t=1sPurple had the famous Raw Egg Goldilocks video that compared its mattress to others by seeing which one broke raw eggs. For less than $10K it got 200M views, more than the Super Bowl itself.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BvwpjaGZCQSend me a message to let me know what you think!