A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:03:03 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
[00:03:03] S0: The opposite. The badge of honor is like, whoa, you have 20 people and you're doing all this. And so we're super proud of our team size personally. How many are you guys? We're 30 people. We lost eight figures in revenue with 20 people. Love it. [00:03:17] S1: We're going to get into all that. We have like two tactical deep dives we want to go into. Actually, we're going to talk about because you saw you still selling five figure deals and moving up to six figure deals. And you've got this like hack to deliver value to champions and get credibility with enterprise buyers. We're going to go deep into that. We're going to go deep into what you've done to grade just to generate kind of insane top of funnel and something that everybody could do. So we're going to talk about that at the end. But the first question which we always start with is tell me about the moment when you felt like you'd found true product market fit.
00:03:17 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:03:17] S1: We're going to get into all that. We have like two tactical deep dives we want to go into. Actually, we're going to talk about because you saw you still selling five figure deals and moving up to six figure deals. And you've got this like hack to deliver value to champions and get credibility with enterprise buyers. We're going to go deep into that. We're going to go deep into what you've done to grade just to generate kind of insane top of funnel and something that everybody could do. So we're going to talk about that at the end. But the first question which we always start with is tell me about the moment when you felt like you'd found true product market fit. [00:03:46] S0: Yeah, I love this question. I actually just wrote a post on the best questions to ask founders in interviews. Like when you're actually trying to interview for the company, not just like something like this. But I love when employees and future employees ask me like this particular question because it's so fun. When I felt true product market fit, it was this moment upon reflection like we just won another deal and we're going through the pipeline. We're going through HubSpot and we realized that we had just won the last 20 deals in a row. Like no matter who the competitor was, no matter the situation, the ICP, you know, the different products that we're selling, we just won back to back to back to back. [00:04:24] S1: No lost deals. No no's in 20.
00:04:24 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:04:24] S1: No lost deals. No no's in 20. [00:04:27] S0: 20 in a row. And it was one of those moments where I was just like, wait a second. I think we're on to something. I think now I'm feeling like this makes a ton of sense. And because there's a lot of things where in the early days, you can think of it as some people have a very hard time getting the first few customers and some people have actually decently easy time getting the first few customers. What do I mean by easy time? Like you kind of go to your friends, you go to people you already really know and they kind of just help you out. Like, yeah, sure. Like we'll try it out. Yeah, we'll pay for it. Yeah, sure. I could figure out some budget for this. We'll give you some feedback. I got you. Especially like the YC world, right? It's like YC buys from YC. It's very normal. It's actually a huge perk of going to YC, quite frankly. It's something I would love to do second time around, third time around. [00:05:11] S1: It's a crazy hack. I mean, it really is a crazy hack, YC. Just to go on a tangent, it's like you get crazy momentum on sales because you sell to the batch and then you get crazy momentum on fundraising because like the supply demand is so off because they throw like a thousand investors at you. So it's a nice little head start for sure.
00:05:11 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:05:11] S1: It's a crazy hack. I mean, it really is a crazy hack, YC. Just to go on a tangent, it's like you get crazy momentum on sales because you sell to the batch and then you get crazy momentum on fundraising because like the supply demand is so off because they throw like a thousand investors at you. So it's a nice little head start for sure. [00:05:26] S0: Yeah. And that head start can fade though. And so, you know, when you do 20 in a row, this was like after the first like 20, 30 deals. Like, all right, cool. Like a bunch of the early ones and we'll get into the early ones were, you know, maybe not as replicable and then just back to back to back to back. And these are big companies too. You know, we went from five figure to six figure. One of our first 50 deals was a seven figure deal. Shout out to FIS, global public company and one of the largest fintechs in America, one of the largest fintechs in the world. And it was one of our first 50 customers. So it was awesome. And that's the moment I was just like, we are here and we figured it out. You know, Tim, our co-founder, CTO, him and the engineering team, they really built something super durable, enterprise ready. And, you know, we've had really no trend. I think one customer has turned all time [00:06:14] S1: at Basel. Crazy. I normally ask follow-up questions about like, why is that PMF? But it's like 25 figure plus deals in a row, not a single one lost. It's pretty in your face. I mean, it's kind of hard to deny at that point. When was this, by the way,
00:06:14 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:06:14] S1: at Basel. Crazy. I normally ask follow-up questions about like, why is that PMF? But it's like 25 figure plus deals in a row, not a single one lost. It's pretty in your face. I mean, it's kind of hard to deny at that point. When was this, by the way, [00:06:26] S0: timeline wise? So we went live April 2024, a production live, first API customer. It was like early 25, which feels like an eternity ago. [00:06:37] S1: The world changes fast, man. It's crazy. [00:06:39] S0: But it was like, in the beginning, you know, you get a few customers here, you get a few customers there. There were a lot of deals that were kind of like pending, if that makes sense. A lot of kinks that we had to iron out and shout out to our first, you know, real few customers. Super patient with us, giving us tons of feedback, saw how fast we moved. And something that I always say is one of the reasons people love to work with us is I have an internal SLA of we need to get back to customers on Slack and email in under 20 minutes. Wow. Aggressive. When you put that tone, I mean, I'm, if I, I go for two minutes, one minute. [00:07:14] S1: Yeah, sure, sure.
00:07:14 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:07:14] S1: Yeah, sure, sure. [00:07:15] S0: Like I love to, it's just delight. It's this, whoa, did the CEO, did the CTO, did the engineer, one of the engineers just respond to me in a few minutes, but the 20 minutes is super doable and it's all about the act. I saw this on Twitter yesterday, somebody brought it up. Someone from A16Z brought it up of like, act. Are they saying acknowledged, acknowledged, or act like in disgust? But the act is a, is a classic engineering thing. Like act, acknowledge, I hear you, I'll get back to you. And there's just so much delight there. And so in our first few customers, it was all about just get back to them so fast. Yes, yes, I hear you. We see it. We're going to work on it. And then as fast as you can turn around, as, possible. And I think that's why we got so much good feedback in the beginning from all those customers. And then we were able to hit this, you know, product market fit probably like just within the year, like early the following year. I don't think you can really justifiably feel product market fit until there's this like kind of overwhelming volume of evidence. You know, some people get there even faster, [00:08:15] S1: but for us, I mean, [00:08:15] S0: it's financial services, right? So financial services, they're not going to make a one month, two month decision, two week decision. Snap decision of changing their whole compliance program, their whole risk program. You know,