A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:04:56 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:04:56] S1: And this customer that you were just talking about, when was that deployment? [00:05:00] S0: That would have been early twenty twenty four. So I think it was about March 2024. [00:05:04] S1: So that's, like, two years ago. What part of the product were they most using back then? [00:05:08] S0: That was just the simulation tool for so actually practicing conversations like AI role play for customer support, and they were using it in interview loops for new hires and then they were using it for onboarding, and that was really the kind of the pinch me moment that it was being used so heavily during this Partner Hero Academy, which was for just new hires. So to reduce that ramp time, time to proficiency or time to competency as it's often used in the the contact center world, they're ramping agents like in 50% of the time and using half the people, and we're like, okay, this is super valuable stuff. [00:05:41] S1: And you mentioned that before I mean, you started, what, a year before that? Like, twenty twenty three? [00:05:46] S0: Yeah. Incorporated the company, I think it was January 2023. [00:05:48] S1: So it'd been, like, a year or so. And you mentioned before that it was flat. Was it just that you were building, or did you change something to have that click, you know, product market fit moment?
00:05:48 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:05:48] S1: So it'd been, like, a year or so. And you mentioned before that it was flat. Was it just that you were building, or did you change something to have that click, you know, product market fit moment? [00:05:58] S0: For a big portion that I was building, so it was my cofounder Patrick building the tool. And this was, like, very early, like, GPT 3.5, first version of ChatGPT, building our own speech to text before we could use tools like VAPI and 11 Labs even when were very early to even using 11 Labs. So a lot of this stuff was like, yeah, it wasn't fit for purpose. We have some funny examples of people on pilots screaming at the recording because the AI kept interrupting them, so lots of swear words in there. So we have them, in the the archives to look back on, but it really just the product really wasn't there yet, so that was probably the first six to nine months. And then we went after the sales vertical because my background was sales. I was an early sales hire at Intercom, and we applied the tool for, like, AI role play for sales. Got some early customers there, then end up actually firing those customers because what we found was even in the customers we did close, they were like startups that really didn't have the problem. And then when we went more upmarket to larger companies, it was actually the support org that was using it more than the sales org. Our background being ex Intercom, and that's where I met my cofounder Patrick. Gotta have domain expertise in customer support and CX. Kinda ran hard and fast there after that partner here on moment.
00:07:11 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:07:11] S1: That was a big change, like, going from a sales role playing, which there's been companies that had, you know, Hyperbound or whatever that have, like, traction there. But you moved from sales role playing to customer success role playing, and that's where you saw things really hit off. [00:07:22] S0: Yeah. Exactly. [00:07:23] S1: So let's go through I mean, you just went through the story, but you kinda gave us a two minute version. Now now that we understand kind of, like, where things started to work, let's kinda work backwards. You started, as you said, 2023. Give give me a little bit of of your background before that and kind of just the Genesis origin story. Like, why why did you start this company in the first place?
00:07:23 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:07:23] S1: So let's go through I mean, you just went through the story, but you kinda gave us a two minute version. Now now that we understand kind of, like, where things started to work, let's kinda work backwards. You started, as you said, 2023. Give give me a little bit of of your background before that and kind of just the Genesis origin story. Like, why why did you start this company in the first place? [00:07:43] S0: Yeah. I suppose, like, a bit of background on myself. Like, I I would have met my cofounder actually first in university. We both studied in in Trinity College in Dublin. I studied business and economics. He studied computer science. We were both part of the Trinity Entrepreneurship Society as it was called, so we would come tinkering ideas together in university. Both Both happened to start our careers at Intercom at the same time, so that's when I would've got to know him a good bit better. He started as a product engineer, and I was a kind of BDR, kinda entry level sales position. Interesting. Patrick was working on, like, the sales use case team at Intercom. That was when Intercom was building everything from marketing, sales, and support, not just customer support. So he would, like, build things, and I'd be his guinea pig where I test new features and stuff like that before kinda getting them out of the road map. This was when, by [00:08:30] S1: the way? What what what year are
00:08:30 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:08:30] S1: the way? What what what year are [00:08:31] S0: we talking about? 2017. Yeah. So both kind of worked there for a couple of years. He then had his own his first startup, which was a a YC company in summer twenty nineteen, and I had my first business which was a company called Grad Guide which I took full time and raised 2,000,000 against that business and that was a kind of graduate recruitment platform where we would connect students and grads with a mentor a few years ahead of them on the career ladder to help them find their first role, so it was more like a mentorship platform, particularly focused on sales support roles to help people land those kind of entry level jobs. After that then, like I sold that business in late twenty twenty two and Patrick left his YC company. We'd always stayed in touch and like one thing we like, I realized that I didn't have a technical cofounder. He didn't have like a sales cofounder or someone to focus on distribution, so we always wanted to work together. So to be perfectly honest, the origin story, we have a memo about this that I can share called Mark and Patrick Inc, but it was really like Mark and Patrick wanted to work together and build a business. And then the ideation kinda came after. [00:09:31] S1: So But it was the perfect time. I mean, late twenty twenty two is probably like out of all the times when you could just be like, me and you are gonna do something, we don't know what, that's like the best time for that to happen.
00:09:31 · Pablo Srugo, Mark Hughes
[00:09:31] S1: So But it was the perfect time. I mean, late twenty twenty two is probably like out of all the times when you could just be like, me and you are gonna do something, we don't know what, that's like the best time for that to happen. [00:09:40] S0: Yeah. It was funny. Like, I sold the business in November 22 when, like, ChatGPT just launched, and I had to do like a month handover basically to the new owners. And we were kinda just like working out of a working space in Dublin. We got free access to it at a place called Dogpatch Labs. They gave us a free desk, we were just like tinkering on ideas, taking long walks around Dublin in the cold winter, and eventually then kind of landed on the first version of Solid Road and took it full time in January 23, like I said. [00:10:10] S1: What was the first idea of what you decided you wanted to build together?