A Product Market Fit Show

If you feel like the ‘unicorn or bust’ playbook isn’t for you, then this episode definitely will be. Rand Fishkin is a multi-time founder and published author of Lost and Founder. He founded Moz, raised $29M in VC, grew to $50M in revenue and exited for $70M. But he ultimately realized that the VC-backed life wasn’t for him. So he went on to start SparkToro, a profitable 3-

While Voice AI is all the rage now, it wasn't a hot sector in 2017. After Dylan graduated from YC, VCs rejected him. He couldn't raise a round. They all assumed Google would do it. So he raised what he could from angels and made it work for the next 3 years.He's now built the world's most accurate Speech AI model. He's grown to 5,000 customers and raised $1

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 Enab

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

Every founder wants to build the next $1B+ company. So it’s normal to get inspired by what companies like Apple, Shopify and Microsoft do. But it’s also a huge mistake. In this episode, we look at what Shopfiy, Fullscript and Spellbook did to find product-market fit. In many ways, it’s the opposite of what they do now, as big succesful companies. Big companies are operating i

Spellbook is ChatGPT for lawyers. They've raised $30M in the last 6 months. They now have over 2,000 law firms as customers. But it wasn't a straight line-- it took Scott 6 years to get here.For the first 5 years, Scott worked on a legal tech platform called Rally. During that time, Scott along with his co-founders and their small team ran hundreds of experiments, pushed

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

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,

If you've been struggling to raise—you're not alone. Seed funding has been falling every quarter for the last 2 years. Rounds are smaller and take longer to raise.So we decided to record an episode to help you. Here are all the mistakes, tips and tricks we’ve seen first-hand that actually work. We touch on things likeWhat the perfect raise looks likeWhy Post-Money SAF

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 bu