A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

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.

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!