A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:39:55 · Mark Hughes
[00:39:55] S0: Yeah. I think, like, honestly, I was lucky and fortunate that we got a term sheet within six days, so and the process was actually quite quick, but I had, like, done the prep up front. Kinda did the prep over the Christmas break a bit when I had a bit of downtime, and then we went out the race first week of January and just ensured, like, leaned on first round capital to make intros, YC to make intros, had the calendar completely stacked. Like, I'm a big believer in, like, you're either fundraising or not fundraising. There's lot of, like, oh, I'm doing these coffee chats. I'm, like, hopefully, we'll get preempted from this coffee chat and all these it's like, you're fundraising. You're fundraising. So made sure it was, like, very time boxed, done the prep, deck ready to go, spoke to customers ahead of time because, like, at our stage, it's all gonna be down to, like, customer referrals and how happy customers are using the product. So, like, call them all over the Christmas break, be like, hey. Like, do you mind if I put you down as a reference? Gonna go out to try Razor series a. They were all more than happy to do so. So I just had, like, the data room ready in Doc's end. Like, our, like, head of operations and finance, like like, he's a wizard with Excel, something that I'm not the best at. So, like, he was, like, building out all the models, getting the data room ready. We kinda, like, wargamed that piece, worked their first round of their team to get the deck in a good place. They have an, like, amazing team that support there, and then ran customers over the break, and then it was, like, ready to go. Calendar was probably blocked with, like, you know, 12 meetings a day for that first week. So you did
00:41:19 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:41:19] S1: you still did probably, what, thirty, forty, 50 meetings sort of thing? [00:41:21] S0: Yep. Yeah. And considering, like, follow on meetings and stuff like that, think it was, yeah, about 40 meetings. [00:41:25] S1: And just remind me, we talked about the the million ARR. Like, when when did you hit [00:41:29] S0: a million ARR? The night before demo day at YC, which was That would have been March 25. [00:41:36] S1: Okay. So that's the other thing. Like, you're because the series a bar is only getting higher. I think median series a is, like, 3 and a half million ARR. So that's the other thing. Probably by if you you hit a million a year before, you're probably doing, you know, in that mid, like, 7 figure range or so when you go out through the series a. Perfect, man. Well, listen. I think I think we'll stop it there, dude. Like, we we got we got a lot of meat. Nice. I think if you're a founder listening, there's a lot of things you could take from here and implement tomorrow. So thanks so much, Mark, for sharing your story and, like, walking us through, you know, the details, because the details are the things that everybody knows high level what you're supposed to do. And when it comes down to executing, it's really all about the details. So thank you for sharing that with us. [00:42:14] S0: No worries. Thank you very much for having me. And then, of course, if, like, there's any founders that are listening, you can reach me directly on LinkedIn. Always happy to help.
00:42:14 · Mark Hughes, Pablo Srugo
[00:42:14] S0: No worries. Thank you very much for having me. And then, of course, if, like, there's any founders that are listening, you can reach me directly on LinkedIn. Always happy to help. [00:42:21] S1: You remember, like, the first person who told you about Bitcoin? The first person who told you about Uber? You want to be that person because being first is cool. So be a cool person and tell your founder friends. Send it to them on WhatsApp. Put it in a WhatsApp group. Put it on a Slack channel. Let people know about the show, let people know about this episode. Don't let somebody else beat you to the punch and share it with your founder friends first. Remember what Ricky Bobby said, if you ain't first, you're last.