A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Doug Scott and the Ethic team spent years building technology before landing real customers. While other startups were growing fast, Ethic was focused on building, and after two years had only a modest amount of AUM. Until he and his team found a way to help his customers help them WIN new clients they couldn't land before.

That shift took them to ~$250M AUM in one year. He reveals why he left investment banking in Australia, sold everything, and moved to the Bay Area within three weeks with no idea what company to start. 

He pitched over 100 investors to raise early rounds, survived years of building with no traction, and discovered the enterprise sales playbook that unlocked distribution in wealth management. Today Ethic manages $7 Billion and has raised over $160 Million in funding.

"If I knew how difficult it would be, maybe I wouldn't have done it." This is the reality of building a decade-long overnight success.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why helping customers win new business is the killer ROI
• How to survive a 3-year build phase when everyone else is growing fast
• Why you should pitch 100+ investors even if only 5 will say yes
• How to figure out distribution and go-to-market
• Why the best value-add investors never pitch their value-add

Keywords:

startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, Ethic, Douglas Scott, wealth management, ESG investing, fintech, B2B2C, Series A, distribution strategy

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:47 What Ethic does

00:08:15 Leaving Australia for Bay Area with no plan

00:17:06 The breakthrough for 5x YoY growth 

00:29:42 Three years building with no traction

00:38:36 Distribution partnerships unlock growth

00:42:44 Finding product-market fit

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Arnold Schwarzenegger mastered three completely different fields—bodybuilding, acting, and politics—with one simple philosophy: reps, reps, reps. This solo episode reveals why speed of execution is the only real moat for early-stage founders. 

One founder takes an idea from conception to signed customers in three weeks. Another takes six months. They both had equally good ideas, but one got 100 reps in a year while the other got 10. Even Twitter, an established app, became top 5 in the App Store not through one or two big changes but 300 small iterations. 

Teams naturally slow down over time. You used to ship in days, now it takes months. You have more engineers but move slower. This episode breaks down why this happens and how to maintain that day-one velocity even at $10M ARR. 

Why You Should Listen:

• Why speed is the only moat early-stage founders actually have
• How to get 100 reps while your competitor gets 10
• Why MVPs shouldn't stop after you have a product in market
• How Twitter went top 5 in the App Store with 300 tiny changes
• Why teams naturally slow down and how to fight it

Keywords:

startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, startup speed, MVP strategy, iteration cycles, product development, founder mode, execution velocity, startup growth, early-stage strategy

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:32 Arnold Schwarzenegger and reps, reps, reps

00:02:18 Speed as the only moat for early-stage founders

00:03:48 Why founders lose MVP mentality after launch

00:09:22 How to stay in Jeff Bezos' day one 

Retry

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Aviv spent months walking construction sites carrying tools for managers just to understand their problems—speaking to customers is "bullsh*t"—you need to work beside them to see reality. 

His company Buildots had a working AI product that tracked construction progress perfectly, but 90% of users got zero value from it. Until he made one key change that took them from barely surviving to 3-4X yearly growth. 

He reveals why his first customers had negative margins, how he accidentally underpriced by 10X, and why you should never build a feature until you've proven the value manually in Excel first. After nearly dying, today Buildots does tens of millions in revenue.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why you need to stop talking to customers and start working alongside them.
• Why one simple change can transform usage and value creation.
• Why you should prove value without product before writing a single line of code.
• How to price when you have no idea.

Keywords:
startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, Buildots, Aviv Leibovici, construction tech, customer development, product-market fit, B2B SaaS, computer vision,

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:41 From Israeli intelligence to construction tech

00:05:03 Working alongside construction managers

00:10:20 Understanding the problem

00:21:41 First customer deployment disaster

00:30:29 COVID and nearly failing

00:39:04 The pivot that changed everything

00:45:16 Finding product-market fit

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Shensi cold messaged 50,000 engineers to build Merge. She worked 9am-9pm every day, gave her first customers two months free to prove herself, and refused to hire anyone remote—even during peak COVID. 

She purposefully didn't collect a single dollar of revenue until she knew she could hit $1M in a months. "Startups are all about momentum." 

She lost their biggest deal to a competitor who copied them, then won that customer back years later. She outbounded her way from zero to $10M through sheer force of will, doing demos all day until her calendar was completely booked. Today Merge has raised $75M and powers integrations for hundreds of B2B companies. 

This is raw, unfiltered founder advice from someone who believes you just have to "man up" and outbound your way to success.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why you should wait to collect revenue until you see a clear path to $1M ARR. 
• Why you need to outbound thousands of people to build your team.
• You can will your way to $10M—but you'll need something else to hit $100M.
• Why they are an in-office company, even for remote rockstar devs.

Keywords:

Startup podcast, Startup podcast for founders, Merge, Shensi Ding, integrations, B2B SaaS, outbound sales, seed funding, product-market fit, API, developer tools, startup growth

00:00:00 Intro

00:02:55 From coding in middle school to investment banking

00:06:45 How she found the problem

00:09:09 100 customer conversations

00:13:51 Quitting during COVID

00:16:16 Raising $4.5M seed in 3 weeks

00:21:01 Outbounding 50,000 engineers

00:25:32 Landing first customers through cold LinkedIn

00:31:37 Not collecting revenue on purpose

00:37:47 When product-market fit actually hit

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Eldon put a $150K line of credit on his house to start eSentire in 2001. No VCs would touch him—they didn't understand services businesses. He worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week for 7 years to hit $1M in revenue. His co-founder coded while he flew to New York on $99 JetBlue flights from Buffalo to save money. 

Then something clicked: they brought in an experienced CEO who transformed their scrappy cybersecurity consulting into a managed service. 

Revenue grew from $1M to $10M in just 3 years. They won 95% of competitive deals against Dell-backed SecureWorks by comparing themselves to a local burger joint versus McDonald's. 

Today eSentire is worth over a billion dollars. This is the raw, unfiltered story of building a massive B2B company without following any of the Silicon Valley playbook—no YC, no venture capital for years, just pure survival mode.

Why You Should Listen:

• How to win head-to-head sales battles against bigger competitors with no marketing budget.
• Why taking a long time to hit $1M ARR doesn't mean failure.
• How bringing in an experienced CEO after 8 years saved the company.

Keywords (comma-separated):

Startup podcast, Startup podcast for founders, eSentire, Eldon Sprickerhoff, cybersecurity, bootstrapping, managed services, B2B sales, Canadian startup, MSSP, founder-led sales, pivot

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:00 Starting eSentire after 9/11

00:03:26 The dot-com crash reality

00:05:23 $150K home equity line to start

00:08:32 Landing first customer at ING

00:14:03 Making up the rules as they went

00:19:09 Bringing in an experienced CEO

00:22:44 The hamburger pitch that beat Dell

00:28:36 From $1M to $10M in 3 years

00:34:39 Common founder mistakes

00:40:39 Chief survival officer mindset

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Soham spent 6 months building AI that would auto-generate integrations between any software. He locked down Glean as an early customer because he had friends there. And it failed completely.

So he pivoted. This time, he refused to work with friendly customers who knew him. Instead, he did 10-20 calls per day with strangers who would tell him his product sucked. He posted on Discord communities at 3am, wrote technical blogs that went viral on Reddit, and created fake landing pages to see what integrations people actually wanted. 

In one year, Composio grew to 100,000 developers and raised $30M from Lightspeed in just 3 weeks. 

His contrarian take: in AI, asking users what they want will just get you faster horses. Built it instead, and watch their eyes light up.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why friendly customers will kill your startup.
• The 20  calls per day strategy that scaled Composio to 100,000 users.
• Why you can't validate AI products by asking.
• The exact Discord and SEO tactics that got their first thousand users without spending on ads

Keywords (comma-separated):

The PMF Show is a startup podcast. The Product Market Fit Show is a startup podcast. Startup Podcast, Composio, Soham Ganatra, AI agents, developer tools, pivot, Series A, Lightspeed, integrations, API, tool calling

00:00:00 Intro

00:06:44 Playing with GPT-2 before ChatGPT

00:12:37 Leaving his job to start Composio

00:21:16 Pivoting to integrations for AI agents

00:28:42 Why friendly customers are dangerous

00:31:01 Getting first users through viral content

00:36:01 Taking 10-20 customer calls per day

00:40:58 Scaling from 1,000 to 100,000 developers

00:43:58 MCP and the explosion of growth

00:48:59 Raising $30M from Lightspeed in 3 weeks

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Sahil was 18 when TechCrunch published a hit piece calling him a copycat. His co-founder Aaron was 16. They'd just raised $6 million from YC and top VCs for their crypto startup, then got subpoenaed by a state government and watched their business implode. 

So they fired everyone, moved back to their parents' homes, and spent months cold-calling dentists and lawn care companies to find a real problem. What they discovered: 80% of SMBs still use community banks from 1995. Now Affiniti has 2,000 customers, $10M ARR run rate, and just raised $17M by partnering with trade associations to acquire customers at 25% the cost of traditional fintech. 

This is the raw story of teenage founders who got punched in the face by Silicon Valley and came back swinging.

Why You Should Listen:

• How getting destroyed on TechCrunch at 18 and subpoenaed by the government led to a $3M revenue pivot in 12 months
• Why going back to square 0 is often the best move
• The trade association go-to-market strategy that worked for SMB.
• Why 200 VC rejections and raising $6M in peak 2021 couldn't save their first startup—but taught them everything they needed to know.
• Get comfortable with bad days—stoicism is the only way to survive.

Keywords:

Affiniti, Sahil Phadnis, SMB fintech, startup pivot, Y Combinator, teenage founders, Series A, B2B payments, startup failure, trade associations

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:50 COVID existential crisis at 16

00:08:36 Building websites for restaurants

00:11:11 Meeting Aaron on Instagram

00:15:17 200 VC rejections then raising $6M

00:23:03 Getting called a fraud on TechCrunch

00:29:15 Firing everyone and moving home

00:31:16 Faking toothaches to research SMBs

00:40:50 Launching Affiniti

00:47:00 The trade association growth hack

00:55:03 Raising Series A in 3 weeks

00:58:30 Stoicism and bad days

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Jon spent 3 years building Gamma with barely any traction—just a few hundred users after burning millions. Then ChatGPT dropped. In desperation, he pivoted to AI-powered presentations in March 2023 with one year of runway left. What happened next was insane: Paul Graham publicly mocked their launch tweet calling it worthless—then it went viral. 

They went from 2,000 signups a day to 60,000. Their servers crashed for three days, but when they came back online, panicked users threw $50K at them thinking they needed to pay to make it work. Within two months of launching payments, they hit $1M ARR and became cashflow positive. 

This is the raw story of how a dying startup caught the AI lightning and never looked back.

Why You Should Listen:

• How to survive 3 years with no traction.
• Why 80% hype and 20% value can still build a real business 
• The exact onboarding flow that turned 5% activation into viral growth
• How negative viral engagement can still drive massive revenue
• The difference between 10x better and 50% better

Keywords:
Gamma, Jon Noronha, AI presentations, product market fit, pivot to AI, viral growth, Paul Graham, ChatGPT, cashflow positive, productivity startup

00:00:00 Intro

00:02:15 Why presentations haven't changed in 40 years

00:11:55 User research reveals the real problem

00:26:26 The market crashes and runway shrinks

00:34:32 ChatGPT drops and everything changes

00:43:19 Paul Graham trashes the launch tweet

00:48:59 Going viral by accident

00:51:33 60,000 signups a day breaks everything

00:55:07 Hitting $1M ARR in 2 months

00:58:47 Endurance is everything

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Soham co-founded Rubrik by taking what he learned from building Google's data center tech to enterprises desperate for cloud migration. Two quarters later, he hit $1M ARR. And a few years later, a $16B IPO. 

Soham breaks down why paid pilots beat free trials, how to sell enterprise hardware before it works, and why early customers become your biggest champions when you solve real pain. 

Now building WisdomAI after watching the ChatGPT moment unfold, he shares what's different about competing in AI's gold rush versus owning an ignored category.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why early customers  endure broken products
• How he hit $1M ARR in 2 quarters selling enterprise hardware
• Why you should always charge for pilots
• Customer feedback is the only PMF signal that matters

Keywords:

Rubrik, Soham Mazumdar, enterprise sales, data backup, IPO, product market fit, B2B SaaS, cloud migration, WisdomAI, data centers

00:00:00 Intro

00:04:26 Leaving Google to start a company

00:11:00 Building the founding team

00:14:27 Landing the first customer in Australia

00:22:30 Hitting $1M ARR in two quarters

00:25:42 Go-to-market strategy and the DeLorean stunt

00:30:30 When Arvind left to start Glean

00:34:10 Starting WisdomAI after the ChatGPT moment

00:51:22 Advice for early stage founders

Retry

Claude can make mistakes. 
Please double-check responses.

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Stéphan bootstrapped AODocs to $55M in revenue and 250 employees without taking a dime of VC money—while competing directly with venture-backed competitors. Starting as a services company in 2012, he spotted the cloud migration wave early and built document management for enterprises moving to Google Workspace. 

In this episode, Stéphan breaks down why doubling every two years beats hypergrowth, how to win enterprise deals with zero funding, and why touching business-critical documents means year-long sales cycles but 10-year retention. This is the anti-Silicon Valley playbook that actually works.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why the founder must personally close every single deal in 0 to 1
• How doubling every 2 years (not every year) creates a more stable business
• The brutal reality of enterprise POCs: doing it for free before getting paid
• Why you can't have both fast customer acquisition and high retention
• How being French/European became an advantage against US competitors 

Keywords

AODocs, bootstrapping, Stéphan Donzé, enterprise sales, document management, SaaS, Google Workspace, cloud migration, product market fit, B2B

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:12 Bootstrapping vs VC backed

00:03:44 From services to SaaS

00:19:08 Landing the first customer 

00:20:47 Why they turned down VC money

00:25:32 The 997 grind—four days on-site with customers every week

00:35:21 Why you can't have fast sales and high retention

00:40:33 Product-market fit

Send me a message to let me know what you think!