Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast

6sense is an AI-powered ABM platform that is focused on arming revenue teams with the right information to engage with the right accounts. It aggregates buying signals like website visits, email opens, and product review hits. It then leverages machine learning to help revenue teams automate their workflows.  In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with 6Sense’s CEO Jason Zintak about their path to product-market fit. Join us as we discuss: (1:26) Jason’s background and he made the decision to join 6sense (5:32) How early customer conversations informed the 6Sense product strategy (8:15) 6sense’s early GTM strategy that got them to $5M ARR (9:11) Jason’s first 90 days at 6sense as a new CEO (10:56) 6sense’s early product-market fit signals (16:12) How the advent of generative AI has impacted the product (18:22) How 6Sense is thinking about building self-serve experiences (24:06) How the recessionary macro-environment impacts the company’s GTM strategy  Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and  Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Jason Zintak is the CEO of 6sense. Previously, Jason was the CEO and president at Platfora.  Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: What is a self-serve PLG experience? https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/nail-your-self-serve-product Defining a GTM framework https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/define-a-gtm-framework-early Building a product roadmap: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/building-a-product-roadmap

Hex is a data platform that allows teams to streamline their entire workflow using collaborative notebooks, BI, and docs. Hex offers data scientists the ability to work together to deliver their insights and empowers both business users and data analysts to quickly find the answers they need to do their jobs. Today, the company has over 500 enterprise customers.  In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Hex’s co-founder and CEO Barry McCardel about their path to product-market fit.  Join us as we discuss: (1:51) How Barry and his co-founders came up with the idea for Hex  (5:37) Why Hex’s co-founders saw the need for a collaborative data platform (7:42) How the early team picked a beachhead around sharing and communicating work (12:01) How “commitment engineering” became key to validating Hex’s early assumptions (16:03) How the team identified early users and personas (20:41) How early users informed Hex’s product roadmap (28:34) Hex’s approach to early team-building (32:33) How Hex sees its user profile evolving, and its impact on their product roadmap (38:39) Hex’s AI strategy to empower people to do creative work with data (43:29) Advice to founders thinking about building data startups Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and  Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Barry McCardel is the co-founder and CEO of Hex Technologies. Prior to starting Hex, Barry worked at Palantir and TrialSpark. Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Identifying early adopters: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/segmenting-early-markets Building a product roadmap: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/building-a-product-roadmap Hiring an early-stage team: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/three-traits-in-early-stage-hires

The space of enterprise search and knowledge management is on the cusp of being dramatically transformed by AI-native tools that can find, analyze and synthesize information instantly for knowledge workers. An emerging leader in this category is Glean. Valued at $1B and serving over a hundred enterprise customers today, Glean leverages an enterprise-grade knowledge graph and LLMs (large language models) to help companies find and use their institutional knowledge across hundreds of internal tools and SaaS applications.   In this episode, Sandhya Hegde (GP at Unusual Ventures) interviews Glean CEO and co-founder Arvind Jain on their path to product-market fit. Join us as we cover: (1:49) The technological shifts Arvind has observed throughout his career (5:11) How Modern AI is forcing us to rethink how we build products (8:00) Arvind’s inspiration for starting Glean (17:10) How Glean pinpointed their early “desperate” customer and built their MVP (20:14) The difference between consumer search and enterprise search (24:45) How Glean uses LLMs within its core product (30:40) The impact of AI on knowledge management systems  (34:41) How Glean’s solves for “hallucination” by constraining their model with the right knowledge (38:41) How Glean is scaling its go-to-market strategy using an enterprise sales model (40:51) Advice for founders about navigating the shift to AI Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and  Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Arvind Jain is the CEO of Glean. Prior to Glean, Arvind co-founded Rubrik, one the fastest growing companies in cloud data management, and worked at Google, where he spent over a decade leading various teams in Search, Maps, and YouTube. Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Starting the sales process: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/qualification-before-discovery How founders can shape the future of Generative AI: https://www.unusual.vc/post/how-startup-founders-can-shape-the-future-of-generative-ai

Vercel is an open-source platform that helps front-end developers build and ship dynamic web applications leveraging Jamstack (https://jamstack.org/). Last valued at $2.5B, Vercel was founded in 2015 by CEO Guillermo Rauch and now serves over 30,000 companies.  In this episode, guest host Wei Lien Dang (General Partner at Unusual Ventures) interviews Vercel CEO and Founder Guillermo Rauch about their path to product-market fit. Join us as we cover: (1:24) How Guillermo came up with idea for creating Vercel (7:31) How Guillermo identified the opportunity for dynamic front-end development by analyzing gaps within the existing technology and infrastructure (12:43) Why he decided to pursue the open source path for Vercel (17:16) How Vercel drove adoption and built an early enthusiastic user base  (24:25) The use cases and aha! moments for early adopters using Vercel (30:18) How Vercel built a go-to-market strategy aimed at developers (33:31) Vercel’s content marketing strategy for developers which includes details about how their technology works (34:56) Guillermo’s perspective on the current open source ecosystem and market (36:45) How to build a commercially viable business using open source technologies Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and  Twitter: https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in open source software, developer tools and cybersecurity. Previously the co-founder of Stackrox, Wei can be reached at wei@unusual.vc and  Twitter: https://twitter.com/weiliendang  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weiliendang/ Guillermo Rauch is the CEO and founder of Vercel. He was the CTO and co-founder of LearnBoost and Cloudup, acquired by Automattic in 2013. He's the creator of several popular Node.JS open-source libraries like socket.io, mongoose and slackin.  Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Starting an open-source company: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/start-an-open-source-software-company Developing open-source customers: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/developing-open-source-customers Building open-source GTM: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/open-source-gtm

Amplitude is the world’s #1 product analytics platform, currently trading at $1.6B. Launched in 2014, Amplitude started out as a mobile analytics tool, and eventually expanded to include all digital analytics, experimentation and personalization. The company now serves over 1900 customers. In this episode, CTO Curtis Liu shares the story of how Amplitude was created after he and his co-founder, Spenser Skates, decided to pivot when their initial product idea didn’t find traction. They explored several options before landing on mobile analytics. Curtis walks us through their early prototyping and discovery process, as well as his approach to company-building as a technical leader and founder. Join us as we discuss: 1:06: How Curtis and Spenser arrived at their first startup idea, Sonalight 4: 01: How they came to the conclusion that they need to pivot 6: 15: How they explored different options before landing on mobile analytics 9: 17: Their prototyping process which included doing interviews and creating mockups 15: 44: What Curtis’s learning process looked like as he was building Amplitude 22: 23: Curtis’s approach to doing research through both self-directed exploration and reaching out to experts 25: 15: How he approached his role as a founder and technical leader 36: 12: Amplitude’s core values and how the founders thought about creating a positive culture 38: 01: How Amplitude is expanding it’s product suite to support different types of datasets 41: 10: Curtis’s advice to new founders who are trying to find problems to solve Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Customer validation: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/customer-validation-going-from-idea-to-sellable-product Tracking the user/buyer journeyhttps://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/self-serve-user-buyer-journey CEO/founder prioritization:https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/ceo-founder-prioritization

In this highlights episode, host Sandhya Hegde shares her framework for the three modes of product-led growth and how some iconic companies pursuing PLG found product-market fit: Snyk, Webflow and Nextdoor. Join us as we discuss: 3.02: The three modes of PLG—fast-working (Snyk),  paradigm-shifting (Webflow), and habit-forming (Nextdoor) 6: 30: How Snyk challenged the way security products were traditionally adopted by focusing on developers 14: 47: How Nextdoor executed early interviews with users to build their first prototype 19: 05: How Webflow built for its initial beachhead persona and differentiated itself from other existing website builders 23:13: How Snyk added specific capabilities to their product to enable CISO buyers to embrace their dev-first solutions 27: 51: How Nextdoor recruited founding members who would become evangelists for the platform within their neighborhoods 31: 41: How Webflow engaged with customer feedback to build a first-of-its kind visual CMS 37: 33: How Webflow’s CTO led growth engineering to build organic and viral awareness for their product 41: 18: Lessons from how Nextdoor leveraged and cultivated community, and how to build successful communities organically 45: 30: How the Snyk team was oriented around growth and evolved with their product offerings Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: -Introduction to Product-Led Growth: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/introduction-to-plg -Nail your self-serve product: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/nail-your-self-serve-product -Free plan vs. free trial in PLG https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/free-plan-vs-trial-plan

Harness is an emerging leader in the CICD (continuous development) space. Last valued at $3.7B in a 2022 fundraise, this is Jyoti Bansal’s second enterprise software unicorn. His first startup Appdynamics was acquired by Cisco the night before their IPO in 2017. In this episode, Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal and Unusual founder John Vrionis take us back 15 years to when Appdynamics first got started. They walk us through their learnings around customer discovery and the journey from having a unique product insight to finding product market fit. With stories from the early days of Harness, we cover: (1:45) How Jyoti arrived at his original insight for Harness (3:27) John and Jyoti on the Unusual Method — a rigorous playbook that they co-teach at Unusual Ventures to help founders find product-market fit (6:33) Why cold outreach - and not friendly conversations - is the best way to validate early assumptions (12:11) How Jyoti looked for early adopters outside Silicon Valley during the customer discovery phase (14:08) Why doing your own cold outreach as a founder is an irreplaceable activity (19:40) How to articulate the business value of your solution so prospects have a reason to buy (23:28) Iterating on your messaging and ICP If you are not seeing similar patterns around the pain (24:42) How Jyoti constructs messaging and defines the “minimum sellable product” (29:15) The surprises Jyoti encountered during customer discovery for Harness (31:55) Why and how exactly founders should focus on efficiency during an economic downturn Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/ Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. Further reading from the Startup Field Guide: Customer Discovery: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/outreach-playbook Early customer outreach: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/outreach-playbook What are design partners?: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/what-are-design-partners

LaunchDarkly is a pioneer in the feature management space. Founded in 2014, while the agile and cloud movements were still relatively nascent, LaunchDarkly was ahead of its time. They have now scaled to a $3 billion company, serving over 4,000 customers. In this episode, LaunchDarkly Co-Founder and CEO Edith Harbaugh takes us back to her initial insight as an engineering manager and product leader at TripIt, deeply versed in the value of systematic feature flagging, and keenly aware of how underutilized it was by many other dev teams. She shares the conviction required to build a product that most buyers in Silicon Valley weren’t yet looking for, and how she engaged her network to gain initial design partners for the product that would come to define the feature management space. Join us as we discuss: Honing a founder insight and being early vs late to an emerging sector Hypothesis testing and building with design partners Community-building and marketing a movement Fundraising when VCs are skeptical of a new sector About Unusual Ventures — Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building infrastructure software and application-level companies. Unusual was founded in 2018 with the mission to reinvent the venture capital engagement model by serving entrepreneurs with an unprecedented level of hands-on services. Described as a partner versus a top-down stakeholder by its portfolio companies, Unusual is laser-focused on serving exceptional founders and teams building innovative products. With offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, and Boston, Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, Harness, and Vivun. About Sandhya Hegde — Sandhya is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in enterprise SaaS companies. Previously an early employee and executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sandhya) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/). Further reading: Identifying initial customers — https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/ideal-customer-profile-and-personas Early-stage pricing — https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/pricing-your-product TOOL: Founder prioritization heatmap — https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/ceo-founder-prioritization Building a self-serve motion  — https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/self-serve-user-buyer-journey

Jasper is a leading AI-driven content platform with over 80,000 customers. Going from launch to unicorn status in 18 months, they have been one of the fastest companies to cross $1M in MRR with a new product. In this episode, Jasper Co-Founder Dave Rogenmoser shares his story of persistence, pivots, and market validation as he and his co-founders went from building a digital marketing agency to a hypergrowth AI unicorn. Join us as we discuss: External and internal signals that it’s time to pivot Validating startup ideas and how to let the user shape product decisions Product-led GTM and getting users to buy a product before it exists Building AI products and how to partner with foundation AI companies About Unusual Ventures — Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building infrastructure software and application-level companies. Unusual was founded in 2018 with the mission to reinvent the venture capital engagement model by serving entrepreneurs with an unprecedented level of hands-on services. Described as a partner versus a top-down stakeholder by its portfolio companies, Unusual is laser-focused on serving exceptional founders and teams building innovative products. With offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, and Boston, Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, Harness, and Vivun. About Sandhya Hegde — Sandhya is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in enterprise SaaS companies. Previously an early employee and executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc and on Twitter (https://twitter.com/sandhya) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/).

Chris Hopper, Co-founder and CEO of Aurora Solar, shares his journey from installing solar panels to leading a $4B climate tech unicorn. He discusses how Aurora identified and built a product around overlooked customer needs, emphasizing the importance of feedback from industry players. The conversation delves into their strategy for bootstrapping growth with small businesses and making a significant shift towards enterprise customers, showcasing the intricate balance between passion, resilience, and understanding customer workflows in the startup landscape.