Startups For the Rest of Us

Episode 701 | The Long Journey to Product-Market Fit


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In episode 701, Rob Walling interviews Matt Wensing, founder of Summit, a SaaS platform for lead scoring and qualification. Matt shares insights on finding product-market fit, the importance of following customer workflows to get there, and the challenges of marketing and positioning. Rob asks about his choice to raise venture capital, and how keeping a lean team maximizes that opportunity.

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Topics we cover: 
  • 2:27 – “Traveling many H1’s”, refining a target market 
  • 5:44 – Moving back to a self-serve model
  • 10:52 – Niching down to achieve stronger product-market fit
  • 12:53 – Tactics that Matt used to achieve traction
  • 16:54 – Lead scoring by behavior and persona-fit 
  • 19:20 – Scoring as a whole product vs. as only a feature
  • 23:31 – Pursuing VC with a lean team
  • 29:09 – Who is your ideal customer profile?
  • Links from the Show: 
    • Apply for Tinyseed Feb 12th through Feb 25th
    • MicroConf Remote – Early Stage Saas Strategies
    • Matt Wensing (@mattwensing) | X
    • Summit
    • Episode 696 | The Truth about Product-Market Fit + Doing Sales as an Introvert (With Ruben Gamez)
    • Out of Beta
    • Episode 633 | Building SaaS Plus a Two-Sided Marketplace
    • The SaaS Playbook
    • "How I Sold My SaaS in An 8-Figure Exit" with Matt Wensing
    • If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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      Startups For the Rest of UsBy Rob Walling

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