A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:16:15 · Jonathan Awad
[00:16:15] S0: Yeah, so I was working in kind of identity broadly, fraud broadly, and that company was my most sales experience. Signed like 95 deals in eight months or something. And it was on a tear. COVID had just hit. You know, it was 2021 and there was this massive transformation in financial services where folks, when I say folks, I mean banks, lenders, payments companies, folks. Financial services before could rely on face-to-face, coming to my branch, coming to my company. I know you. I see you. I can onboard you. In COVID, 2020, they didn't do that. PPP, so many hundreds of billions of dollars was handed out in the Paycheck Protection Program. So all these businesses were applying online for the first time. All these banks were decisioning for the first real time. And no matter what any financial services company says to you, very few, even the really big ones, were doing that much digitally. And for the most part, it was really just like the top 10. Not even the top 10. Some scattering, smattering of the top 10 had a bunch of digital. Very little, actually, like half the top 10 didn't. When I say top 10 banks, lenders, payments companies, and then most of the rest was just, weren't relying on digital as much. And then they had to. And so that was this humongous moment, basically, of massive transformation in the industry. And I was at a company that was doing pretty well. And I learned a lot really fast. And there's just so many ideas that were constantly coming because they kept asking. You have that many signed deals. I'm talking to hundreds and hundreds more, obviously, right? Like, even at a 40% win rate over time, you're still dealing and juggling. I probably juggled 400 or 500 deals over the course of that, those 12 months, which sounds crazy. And it is. It was the most I ever worked besides Baselayer. It was like that and then Baselayer. And they just gave me so many ideas and they asked so many questions and they literally like, hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And so I took a bunch of them and I brought it internal and I was like, hey, like, I wrote up PRDs. I have all these customers who want it. Like, this is how we source the data and the product, et cetera. And I got a lot of no's. Hey, you're in sales. They in sales. And I was like, okay, that's kind of not good enough for me.
00:18:28 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
And then I met Tim and I love the way I met Tim. We literally met out via mutual friend. Tim went to Columbia undergrad and he was math econ. One of our mutual best friends, I met him in high school, went to Bronx High School of Science in New York. Shout out to Bronx Science. And he went to Columbia as well. Our friend Andrew, so Tim's a co-founder, Andrew. Andrew's a CS engineer and then after was an engineer for a bit, became a DJ. Like a really good one too. He's pretty popular. And we met out one night, myself, Tim, and we were just with Andrew. And then I was just like ranting and raving about some startup ideas I had in 2022. And Tim, we're in the back of a yellow cab and Tim's just asking a question, question, question. I was like, who are you? These are amazing questions. And Tim's just this awesome, super cool, like very tall, awesome guy. And he was like, oh, CTO of a machine learning company. He just sold to Snapchat two years ago. And I'm getting kind of bored. I'm getting antsy. Like I want to do something. I'm like, amazing. Let's start a company. And he looks at me. [00:19:31] S1: He's like, [00:19:31] S0: we just met. [00:19:34] S1: So what?
00:19:34 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:19:34] S1: So what? [00:19:35] S0: Who cares? Let's do it. And a year later of chasing, I was like, hey, like we hung out here. We met this VC. We talked about these prospects. We didn't have an idea necessarily, but I was like, in financial services, we're going to do something. I have all these prospects that I know will give me a shot. Like all these customers, all these relationships. He's like, no. And then I quit my job early 2023. Still with no clear idea. [00:19:58] S1: You had many ideas, but not the one yet. Literally no idea.
00:19:58 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:19:58] S1: You had many ideas, but not the one yet. Literally no idea. [00:20:02] S0: Quit in a huff. Said, no, I have to. Let's enter the void. Let's figure it out. I'll be honest. The first two to three weeks, I was like, oh no, what did I do? I had a pretty sweet gig. It's kind of killing it. I mean, every year of sales and partnerships, I was 600% my quota, 800% my quota. Like I was crushing it, but I just was, it wasn't enough. And I call him and I will never forget. He's in the Cayman Islands with his family, with his parents. And it's like a trip with his parents. And I call him like, hey, I just quit my job. Like, let's do it. Quit your job too. Like, let's go. He's like, what are we doing? No idea. What? Let's go. And he's like, no, no, let me talk to my parents. I'll let you know later. We'll talk to you later. Talk to his mom and his dad both. And then his mom was like, absolutely not. Don't do this. You barely know the guy. And then he comes back. He's like, look, no, but if you raise at least $3 million, I'll join. And I was like, wait a second. Will you join the meetings at least? Like, are you going to be involved? Like, is this your CTO? Like, we'll figure it out. He's like, I'll join the meetings. I'm CTO. Like, let's do it. But you got to raise $3 million for it. And then the story of our fundraiser is also a whole other story. I don't know if I should get into that. I think, yeah, let's do it.
00:21:12 · Pablo Srugo
[00:21:12] S1: Because you don't have at that point, I mean, you're, you have like, you know, you were a founder, you've got pedigree for sure, but it's not like super clear, easy. I mean, I'm curious to hear actually how you raise. It's not like, plus 22 is a funny time, man. 22 is, was not, uh, you're remembering correctly. Not a great time, man. Second half of 22 is deadly. No, it was horrible by the way.
00:21:32 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
[00:21:32] S0: Yeah. By my estimation, because I was still, I was at a company that raised at 150X in early 2022, right before it left. Right. So right before the boat left. And then by my estimation, about a month later, because they closed in April, my take and sales, you can feel it. Okay. I'll explain how you can feel it. In May of 2022, everything dropped, everything dropped. And the way you could really feel it in sales, particularly in, in my seat was people before in like 2021 and, and like 2020, 2021, early 2022, they were buying like crazy. They were making things fast. Every meeting, the follow-ups were easy. The decision-making, all the decision-makers joined. They're excited. They're eager. I know the summer was coming, but then all of us, I mean, I did a lot summer of 21. I did a ton of sales in summer of 21. And then all of a sudden, summer of 2022, people were really slow to respond. Everything, it was like, oh, cuts, cuts, cuts, employees being fired. Sales are dropping, volumes dropping. You really felt the difference. I totally felt the difference. And I write a, I never publicize it, but if someone wants to find it, I write a sub stack on sales. And I wrote a lot about that time of like 2022, 2023 and what it felt like and how you have to overcome it because it's, and especially the one I wrote recently, it's like, now we're in SaaS-pocalypse. There's way too much SaaS at this point. And that's confusing, but 2022 is really tough. We ended up raising in 2023. Essentially like the TLDR was, [00:23:00] S1: Tim and I,