A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Nike was built backwards. Instead of building a product and taking it to market, Phil Knight first built a distribution machine for running shoes. Eight years later, he finally launched his own product (the Nike shoe) and did $3M in sales in the first year. This is not the full story of Nike. It's the story of how Phil Knight got to product-market fit.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Mark (CEO GoBolt) didn't set out to build a billion-dollar company. He just solved a problem other university students were facing. And then he constantly "made the best decision possible at each moment in time". To be honest, that's how most unicorns are made.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Everyone tells you that you need to start with a niche, a beachhead market, and then grow from there. But how does that actually work? What does that really look like? It looks like Mark's story starting and growing GoBolt. Mark started off storing items for students over the summer. He expanded to storing all things for all people. He now provides logistics for enterprises. He's raised over $150M and has over 1,000 employees. But it wasn't pre-destined, it was 100% organic. What really matters is finding a problem that you're acutely positioned to solve and then solving that problem. If you have real demand, and you stay close to your customers, things tend to take care of themselves. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Think of Product Market Fit as a pyramid. At the bottom you have vision, then value prop, then product and at the top is go-to-market. As you go from 0 to Product Market Fit your job is to tweak the pieces of that pyramid, from top to bottom, until things click.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Founders are told to pivot when things aren't working. They're also told to never give up. So how do you know when to push through and when to completely change course?Like most things in 0 to 1, it's more art than science. And unfortunately, most founders can't figure it out until after they experience it themselves. That's why on this episode we spoke with Andrew Tai, the founder and CEO of MotoInsight.MotoInsight was acquired by Autotrader after it grew to tens of millions in revenue. But Motoinsight is the result of a major pivot. It took Andrew 3 years to realize that his initial marketplace solution  was not going to work. We dive deep into the signs he saw that drove him to pivot to enterprise software and how doing so helped him go from 0 to $10M+ in just a few yearsSend me a message to let me know what you think!

Weak customer discovery is the number one reason why most idea-stage startups fail. It usually leads to founders wasting months solving fake problems.In my case, bad customer discovery cost me even more-- I ditched a startup idea that other founders built into several companies worth $10B+.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Here's a step-by-step account of how to do proper customer discovery. From how to source potential customers, conduct proper interviews and test your early product -- Ron has done it all. He shares each step with lots of details, so you can easily copy (i.e., steal) his ideas.Rushing through customer discovery is the most common mistake founders make. Check out this episode to learn how to do it right. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Being capital efficient is the #1 power move you can make as a founder. It gives you time, control, and a huge edge with investors.  Check out this episode to understand why it matters and what you can do to get there.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Michael Hyatt founded BlueCat, which was sold for over $700M. Since then he’s shifted to the investor side and has invested in dozens of startups.Through it all, Michael has seen three financial crashes: the Dotcom boom and bust, the financial crash of 2008 and the recession we are facing today. He shares several insights on what it’s like to be a founder and investor through these storms.Founders should pay attention.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

95% of idea-stage startups fail because they don't solve an important enough problem in the first place. The most important part of customer discovery is to make sure you are solving real problems. But almost all founders do customer discovery wrong the first few times. Check out this episode to learn which mistakes you should avoid at all costs.Send me a message to let me know what you think!