A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

For even the most successful startups, finding product-market fit is often a long journey and Klipfolio was no exception.Founders often feel that one more feature, one more UI change will get them to product-market fit. The reality is that the path to PMF is more of a step function. If your first product doesn't quite get you there, a small change is unlikely to get you the results you're hoping for. You likely need to dramatically change your product or even your market.In this episode, Allan shares the story of how Klipfolio went from consumer to enterprise and back to SMB before finally finding real product-market fit. He shares lots of clear details on what true product-market fit feels like. If you're a founder of a company that hasn't quite made it beyond PMF, you'll want to check this out.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

It’s one thing to work hard. It’s another to work hard with a well-researched destination in sight. In this episode of The Product Market Fit Show, Rob Boukine gets real about the mistakes he made in his early days as cofounder of Noibu and dives deep on how he pivoted his business. He discusses the importance of using customer discovery to ensure your products are “need to have” rather than “nice to have”. If you’re working hard but nothing is working out as expected, perhaps his advice on tracking down the right pain point will hit home. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Launching is often thought of as a huge event. Lots of noise, lots of PR. One big bang. For Ray, it's just a series of many small experiments. Ray realized that the number one value prop for a consumer was coverage: when a user opened the app, the majority of merchants that were walking distance needed to show up. So, he set up an experiment. He targeted a handful of office buildings and a dozen merchants, all located on the same block. He didn't need to onboard all the merchants in Toronto, just all the merchants on this one block.If you're about to launch a consumer product or a marketplace, check out what Ray has to say. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

"Ideas are a dime a dozen". Maybe. But executing on a mediocre idea won't get you very far. In this episode, Ray, a multi-time founder who sold his first company to Google, discusses how he came up with the idea for Ritual. It was not your typical aha-moment. Many ideas came together over a long time until the idea for a pick-up order app was born. Since then, Ritual has gone on to launch in over 40 cities and raise over $100M. If you feel you want to be a founder but are struggling to come up with a great idea, maybe Ray's story will help you out.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

If you want to validate an idea, the conventional wisdom is to build an MVP. But even an MVP takes time to build. What if you could validate not only your idea but your entire funnel, without writing a single line of code?That's what Moe did. He built a landing page, found ways to advertise and generate traffic, and went so far as to convert traffic to paying members- before having any product to sell! (Of course, he immediately refunded those early customers and added them to a waiting list.)If you have an idea and want to know if there is real demand - this is the episode for you. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

After you've had an idea and validated the problem, it's probably time to build. But how exactly do you decide what to build, how to build it, and how to get end users to actually adopt the solution?Carol is a multi-time founder and she has this process down to a science. On this episode, she shares how she built the first version of Axonify (now acquired for over US$350M). She explains how to find a champion, how to stay close to them throughout the build phase, and how to  get end users to adopt the product.If you're starting to build out a product, especially in a b2b or b2b2c context, check out this episode. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

To launch a startup you have to leave your job and spend considerable capital, with no guarantee of success. It involves considerable risk, right?Not for Mike.Mike started Rewind- a company now approaching unicorn status- fully on the side. It started off as a project, and neither Mike nor his co-founders took any salary cuts to get Rewind off the ground. Instead, they worked nights and weekends, steadily growing MRR and joined one at a time as the startup became self-sufficient.If you have an idea but aren't ready to go all in, check out this episode and learn how to start it on the side. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Why do professional athletes have coaches, but professional entrepreneurs don't?Dan thought this was odd. So many years ago, a long time before starting Koho - a company now worth over $250M- Dan started working with performance coaches. In this episode, he walks us through how to pick a coach, what exactly a coach is (hint: it's not an advisor), and how a coach can help your startup grow.  In fact, Dan is such a believer in coaching that Koho offers coaching to all of their 200+ employees.If you're interested in performance coaching, or are looking for an edge, listen to what Dan has to say. Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Ask most early-stage founders what they need most and you'll likely get the same answer: money.Especially early on, before you have much traction, raising money can be daunting. If you don't have much of a network, it's hard to even know where to start. Who are these angel investors and how do you find them? How do you get them to take a meeting? And how do you get interested investors to actually close?Marc walks us through his first fundraise at Unito. How he leveraged an accelerator to build a network, got other founders to get him investor introductions and used various tactics to build momentum and FOMO. If you're looking to raise one of your first rounds of funding, check out how Marc got it done.Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Launching a marketplace is hard. The chicken-and-egg problem often seems insurmountable. In 2021, Wattpad was acquired for over $600M. But it wasn't easy. Early on, Wattpad cofounder and CEO Allen Lau almost gave up. He discusses the virtues of starting with a small niche and allowing growth to come with time. He explains the ASSET framework he’s developed to help you launch and scale a marketplace. If you’re about to launch a marketplace or just launched one and are not seeing the traction you were hoping for, you might want to give this a listen.  Send me a message to let me know what you think!