A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:29:59 · Rahul Shivkumar, Pablo Srugo
[00:29:59] S1: Totally. And there are AI-pilled people even in super like, I'd say like, non-tech. [00:30:04] S0: Of course, because the consumer AI is so widespread. Yeah, it makes sense. And it's only getting like with Muse now, Instinct, like all these things, they're only just going to push the envelope more for people to see just what's possible, right? And then they start imagining for their business. [00:30:16] S1: Totally. And like, I wish I could go back to early 2024 and tell myself like, just lean, just lean fully into it. Like, and I think we'd have had a lot more success early on. Yeah. [00:30:25] S0: So how did things go? I mean, just getting through the story, like you launched this thing early, mid 2024. Like what was that original pull? Like how fast did kind of growth come?
00:30:25 · Pablo Srugo, Rahul Shivkumar
[00:30:25] S0: So how did things go? I mean, just getting through the story, like you launched this thing early, mid 2024. Like what was that original pull? Like how fast did kind of growth come? [00:30:33] S1: Yeah, we were lucky again that I think we have a little bit of a network where we found like our first customers. Word of mouth was super useful. People were using it and they were telling their friends. Their friends are like, hey, this is like interesting. If I remember correctly, there was a YC guide for healthcare companies. Like how to kind of like get started and like one of the infrastructure companies that were, that was recommended there was us. We were not a YC company, but I remember people telling us, oh, I found you on that whatever internal facing resource. So little things like that helped a lot. I think staying very close to your customers, building a relationship where they're actually referring you to other customers was a super useful way of growing back then. The two customers that I told you about and that sign even before we incorporated, they're still customers today. So nice. [00:31:18] S0: How quickly did you hit like a millionaire R? [00:31:20] S1: It took us about 12 months. Like it took us like an entire year to get to a millionaire R. We had a like early 2025 was when it kind of like truly took off. Like that first quarter of 2025 is where we saw like, hey, two experts. And they're like, wait, we're like a millionaire R. Yeah. [00:31:37] S0: What happened? Do you know?
00:31:37 · Pablo Srugo, Rahul Shivkumar
[00:31:37] S0: What happened? Do you know? [00:31:38] S1: Yeah. I think it was a little bit of like reputational gain. It was a big dermatology practice that signed with us. It was our biggest contract at the time. And then we kind of used that name to get a couple more dermatology practices. And we're like, oh, wait, we're this is like such a good vertical for us. Right. And that's another thing within health care. Like a lot of a lot of it is specialty based. So if we close like Mount Sinai as an example, and we went to the largest private equity backed dermatology practice, like that logo doesn't mean anything. Like Mount Sinai doesn't mean anything. They're like, oh, cool. That's like totally different. It's almost like you're it's almost like going and saying, I work in FinTech. Now I'm trying to get like a health care customer. Right. So it's very like specialty focus. And that was a big learning lesson for us. It was like, hey, every time we try to go after a new specialty, like get the first logo as quickly as possible, even if it's a small one, even if the deal terms aren't like super ideal, like that first customer like unlocks an entire like specialty for us. Yeah.
00:32:40 · Pablo Srugo
[00:32:40] S0: It's interesting to think about and I haven't figured it out, like, but what are the products where being super hyper verticalized, which is kind of what you're talking about? You're already in a vertical because you're selling to health clinics, but you're talking about hyper verticalized where it's like dermatology versus, you know, hospital versus this, versus that, where it matters and where it doesn't matter. Right. Like there's obviously many products that are very horizontal. Right. Like you look at the CRMs as an example, the old school, you know, Salesforce, HubSpot. And it's like, there's some verticalized CRMs like Surge Titan, whatever, but it's like, does it really matter? Do customers really care? It sounds like in your case, they do really care. easier than even if the product doesn't change that much, you know, if you'd had Mount Sin or whatever, as you said, but I don't know what the answer, I got, I've just, I always wonder to myself, like, because obviously we meet a lot of founders. It's like, you know, okay, yeah, you're verticalizing. Is that truly competitive edge that you're super verticalized or is actually customers don't really care? It's, you know, whatever, they'll buy whatever they need to buy.
00:33:33 · Rahul Shivkumar
[00:33:33] S1: I think it totally depends on the type of buyers, right? My guess is, you probably see this even in the companies that are selling AI to like any sort of like SMB businesses, right? Like maybe they're selling it to certain types of like retail stores and then they're selling it to, you know, like health focus retail stores on one side and then like, maybe it's like clothing brands on the other, right? Like I have a feeling that even there, the social proofing actually is becoming more like narrow. It's like, okay, you're saying this worked for a retail store, but does it work for like a clothing brand like me that has like a retail store? You know, like does it work specifically for me? I think my guess there from what we've seen in healthcare at least is what matters a lot. Each of them thinks their vertical is like extremely special, right? It's like, hey, the dermatology is so unique, right? Like orthopedics is so unique even if like a large portion of it is an overlap, like when they think of social proofing, they think of themselves in a smaller cohort.
00:34:27 · Pablo Srugo
[00:34:27] S0: Perfect. So let's move to the kind of the tactical, right? Like super high value pieces, right? So the first thing I want to talk about is two of them is on the BDR side. So on the BDR side, it got really popular for a while to do these kind of AI, you know, BDRs. They'd go out, they'd do everything, right? They'd find a list, they'd go, they'd reach out, et cetera, et cetera, and kind of like book you demos. In some cases, like, I mean, they're still, I mean, it's still a thing, by the way, and they're like, maybe they'll do the demos for you. Like, that's the next piece. You never kind of went down that way, right? You went down the full human BDR route. How did you structure it? And also, like, how did you start create it? How did it work? Why'd you do it? I mean, tell me a little bit about that.