A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:30:00 · Damien Lewke
[00:30:00] S0: Oh my God. Yeah, absolutely. I mentioned this earlier, the architecture, I was so wrong. I thought we were going to plug into this one system called the SIM and we were going to pull all this data from it. So off base, we ended up needing to plug into an entirely different tech stack. The other thing is I wanted to build this new system that would run in their environment and I learned that that would add zero value. But if I had operated, and this is a personal suggestion but as a founder, yes, you have conviction. You want to be obsessed with the problem. You have conviction in your idea, but you do need to check your assumptions. Because if I hadn't, if I had not done this customer discovery, if I had not learned how they run operations and how and where we would fit. We would have built the wrong solution. We absolutely would have and we would have had to hard pivot, burn money, make some tough choices versus case the market, get a flavor for what that actually is. So, yeah, no, I had core assumptions that were very wrong. I'm very glad that I did the discovery because it got me to the right place.
00:31:00 · Pablo Srugo
[00:31:00] S2: The other thing you mentioned is, you know, you asked just about everybody at the end if they could introduce you to somebody else in the network. Which, you know, you mentioned obviously just gets you more calls, it gets you more connected. It also, by the way, plays into this psychological bias, which is you're actually more likely to do a favor for someone that you've previously done a favor for, which is a really weird thing. You think favors kind of are reciprocal like if I do you a favour you, you owe me one sort of thing. Which there’s an element of that but actually if you ask me for something small like at the end of a positive call, hey do you know anybody else that would what to talk to? Just as a small favour? It's like, hey, you know, I actually do, here you go, here's an into. I’ve actually just escalated that relationship to one where I’ve already done something for you then you asked me for a second call or you ask me for, you know, hey, let's discuss maybe a design partnership or something like that. It's just, I'm actually just more likely to respond favorably to that. So that, I don't know if you experienced that at all. I'm curious what maybe the outcome was of all these calls.
00:31:52 · Damien Lewke, Pablo Srugo
[00:31:52] S0: A thousand percent is the answer, Pablo, right? People are more likely to help as you build a relationship and really what I ended up doing, especially if it was a really good one. We did some deeper dives with the ninety and ninety or about fifteen companies that I had two, three, four sessions with. Where we do an hour and we got into some more of the tactics. And that's how we found our first design partners. One suggestion for founders. It served me well to get out of this chair and get out there. I did bike, Uber, train, fly to meet these people and it was really, really helpful. Because, especially in today's distributed world, those in person connections, look, you need to be genuine, right? But, if you genuinely go out there and make the time and effort, people will respond to that positively. [00:32:44] S2: Was this for the first meetings or you did it only for the second meetings? How did you make this happen?
00:32:44 · Pablo Srugo, Damien Lewke
[00:32:44] S2: Was this for the first meetings or you did it only for the second meetings? How did you make this happen? [00:32:48] S0: It varies. So one of the key things that I benefited from was there was a core industry conference about two months into the ninety and ninety called Black Hat that happened for us, and I just, on my own dime. Flew out to Black Hat, got myself a hotel room, paid for my Ubers and I just walked the floor. I walked up to strangers and I was like, hey, I'm Damien. Can I get you a coffee? But it was putting myself in those positions to be successful. So it was for plenty of first meetings and yes, definitely for second meetings. We had a bunch of folks, I'm based in Boston, Massachusetts. We had a bunch of folks in Boston and it was like, hey, this was great. Hey, do you want to go for a run? You want to grab a coffee? And then I'd get out there and meet them where they were in their respective city. [00:33:28] S2: After these ninety days, first of all, is it just you? Do you raise money? Do you have customers? What's the outcome? [00:33:34] S0: Yeah, so I ended up raising money during the ninety and ninety. [00:33:34] S2: How much did you raise?
00:33:34 · Pablo Srugo, Damien Lewke
[00:33:34] S2: How much did you raise? [00:33:34] S0: Yeah, so we raised a pre-seed to start. This is a $2.4 million pre seed led by Decibel, which is an AI and cyber VC. They're our day one investor. Back to obsession with a problem. I guess ours was a slightly different experience. I did not write a pitch deck. I wrote a manifesto is what I call it, but a thirty page document on why this company needs to exist, why the market is broken and starting to get early customer feedback into that. I'm kind of right place, right time. An investor came along and was like, oh, this is great. Let's do this. [00:34:09] S2: You published this or they just came inbound and you sent it to them? [00:34:12] S0: They came inbound. [00:34:14] S2: Okay. [00:34:14] S0: And we talked it out, yeah. They kind of found me right place, right time and, you know, what ended up happening, of course, as we raised the pre-seed. I brought in my first three hires and, you know, then we started cooking, right? The ninety and ninety had finished. We had a general idea. [00:34:29] S2: And timeline wise, by the way. This pre-seed is what? End of '24? [00:34:32] S0: No, like July, August '24. [00:34:35] S2: Okay, mid 24. Okay, got it. [00:34:37] S0: Mid '24, and then along the way, you know, we did the ninety and ninety, we start building and then we were fortunate to have Bain Capital Ventures come in and preempt our seed round as well. [00:34:48] S2: Which was when? [00:34:49] S0: End of '24. [00:34:49] S2: And that was another what? Like, $4 million?
00:34:49 · Pablo Srugo, Damien Lewke
[00:34:49] S2: And that was another what? Like, $4 million? [00:34:51] S0: $6.1 million. So we were $8.5 million raised, yeah, so. [00:34:54] S2: Where were you at customer wise in that second half of '24? [00:34:59] S0: So we signed our first design partner when we had one employee, which was cool. It was actually at Black Hat. I can't share their name, but they are a paying customer now, and I'm very grateful for their early partnership. And actually it was really helpful, right? Before you even can deploy, cause the product was so early. You know, I pitched it as an architecture partnership. Hey, do you just want to give feedback while we start poking around and building this? It was so valuable. We had a few key early architecture partners back then and it made such a difference, Pablo. Because, yeah, we've done the ninety-ninety, we had the roadmap, but to keep getting feedback continuously, right? Just allowed us to, not just in terms of how the system worked, but customer experience, build right from the outset, which was really, really awesome to see.