Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast

How Hex found product-market fit: Barry McCardel on data collaboration

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Hex is a data platform that allows teams to streamline their entire workflow using collaborative notebooks, BI, and docs. Hex offers data scientists the ability to work together to deliver their insights and empowers both business users and data analysts to quickly find the answers they need to do their jobs. Today, the company has over 500 enterprise customers. 

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Hex’s co-founder and CEO Barry McCardel about their path to product-market fit. 

Join us as we discuss:

  • (1:51) How Barry and his co-founders came up with the idea for Hex 
  • (5:37) Why Hex’s co-founders saw the need for a collaborative data platform
  • (7:42) How the early team picked a beachhead around sharing and communicating work
  • (12:01) How “commitment engineering” became key to validating Hex’s early assumptions
  • (16:03) How the team identified early users and personas
  • (20:41) How early users informed Hex’s product roadmap
  • (28:34) Hex’s approach to early team-building
  • (32:33) How Hex sees its user profile evolving, and its impact on their product roadmap
  • (38:39) Hex’s AI strategy to empower people to do creative work with data
  • (43:29) Advice to founders thinking about building data startups


    • Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at [email protected] and 

    • Twitter - https://twitter.com/sandhya

    • LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandhyahegde/


      • Barry McCardel is the co-founder and CEO of Hex Technologies. Prior to starting Hex, Barry worked at Palantir and TrialSpark.


      Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.


      Further reading from the Startup Field Guide:

      • Identifying early adopters: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/segmenting-early-markets
      • Building a product roadmap: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/building-a-product-roadmap
      • Hiring an early-stage team: https://www.field-guide.unusual.vc/field-guide-enterprise/three-traits-in-early-stage-hires


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