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

Samantha Mckenna is the founder of SamSales and a leader in building go-to-market strategies. She has spent her nearly 15+ year career in enterprise sales doing two things: breaking over 13 sales records and doing so by leading with a buyer-first approach to sales.

Samantha Mckenna is the founder and CEO of SamSales.

Relyance AI is a global privacy compliance and data governance platform that allows enterprises to protect customer data, avoid expensive fines, and build customer trust. It provides visibility and control over all enterprise data processing. In this episode, we chat with Abhi Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Relyance about the early days of the company, and how Relyance has recently completely transformed its sales culture.

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Preview: Culture is about what you do day-to-day

1:28 The insight behind Relyance

6:20 Early feedback from design partners

9:17 Abhi’s learnings as a second-time founder

11:10 Transforming Relyance’s sales culture and strategy

15:30 How Unreasonable Hospitality influence Abhi’s thinking about company culture

18:18 What the hospitality industry can teach software founders

24:18 How Abhi coached his team into changing their mindsets

30:06 How Relyance’s customers and team have responded to the shift in the sales culture

35:51 Advice for early-stage founders on building strong company culture

Abhi Sharma is the CEO and co-founder of Relyance.

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/.

Clay is an AI-powered platform for sales prospecting that gathers data from over 75 sources to build lists and help growth teams send personalized outreach messages. Recently valued at over $500M, Clay has several high-profile enterprise customers, including go-to-market teams at Intercom, Ramp, Notion, Anthropic, Verkada, Vanta, and more.

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Kareem Amin, CEO and co-founder of Clay.

Join us as we discuss: 

00:00 Preview: Picking the right customer

1:53 Lessons learned from Kareem’s first startup, Frame

4:54 Decision behind choosing acquisition for Frame

7:10 The founding insight behind Clay

9:20 Fundraising for Clay

11:52 Narrowing down the ICP for Clay

17:21 Clay’s decision to focus on growth marketers

21:12 Product feedback from early adopters

22:27 Picking the right strategy to monetize

28:37 Building the early team

32:14 Integrating GPT-3 into the product 

34:38 Clay’s product roadmap

37:00 Advice for new founders

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].

Kareem Amin is the CEO and co-founder of Clay.

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/.

Scribe makes it easy to share how you do your work by creating automated documentation. Scribe raised a Series B recently and has grown to millions of users with enterprise customers like Gong, LinkedIn, and Shopify.

In this episode, Scribe’s co-founder and CEO, Jennifer Smith chats with Sandhya Hegde about Scribe’s early days.

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Preview — capturing institutional knowledge

1:46 The insight for starting scribe

5:40 Building the Founding Team

8:10 Product Launch and Early Adopters

12:40 Launching the GA Product

15:08 Analyzing User Feedback and Customer Profiles

16:42 Early go-to-market strategy

20:18 The evolution of Scribe’s GTM strategy

22:50 Leveraging AI

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]⁠.

Jennifer Smith is the CEO and co-founder of Scribe.

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/⁠.

Eightfold AI is a talent management platform used by hundreds of large organizations like Vodafone and Activision Blizzard. It helps them leverage data to find great people with the skills they need, both internally and externally. Last valued at $2.1 billion, Eightfold was launched in 2016.

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Ashutosh Garg, co-founder and CEO of Eightfold AI.

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Why Ashustosh wanted to build a talent platform

1:47 Ashutosh Garg's early career at Google

5:09 The founding insight for Eightfold AI

7:38 Why Ashustosh decided to focus on HR tech

9:42 Challenges of selling to large enterprises

17:11 Advantages of being an "outsider" in HR tech

19:32 Ashutosh's learnings as a repeat founder

22:58 The impact of recent macro shifts on the labor market

24:50 The impact of GenAI on Eightfold's roadmap

30:16 The future of work

35:11 Advice for first-time founders

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].

Ashustosh Garg is the CEO and co-founder of Eightfold AI.

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/.

Monte Carlo is an end-to-end data observability platform that monitors pipelines for missing or inaccurate data. Last valued at $1.6B, Monte Carlo has over 150 customers, including data teams at companies such as CNN, JetBlue, Hubspot, PepsiCo, and Toast. 

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Barr Moses, co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo. 

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Preview —Early feedback from a potential customer

1:37 Why Barr and Lior decided to focus on data observability

6:28 Profile of Monte Carlo’s early adopters

12:27 Common pain points among early adopters

16:05 How Monte Carlo narrowed in on their ICP

21: 33 Early product feedback and surprises

26:27 Monte Carlo’s current go-to-market strategy

31:22 How AI will impact the data ecosystem

35:57 Advice for founder building data platforms

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].

Barr Moses is the founder and CEO of Monte Carlo

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/.

Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that answers user questions. Founded in 2022 and valued at over $1B, Perplexity recently crossed 10M monthly active users and is growing fast.

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Denis Yarats, co-founder and CTO of Perplexity.

Join us as we discuss:

00:00 Reactions to Perplexity’s prototype in 2022

1:33 How Arvind and Denis started working together

4:04 Building a text-to-SQL tool initially

6:34 Launch of ChatGPT and pivot to general search

9:46 Focusing on user data, and not on the foundation model

14:43 Perplexity’s early adopters

16:42 Early customer feedback

18:44 Perplexity’s core technical competencies

22:44 Subscription pricing and future gross margins

25:12 Perplexity’s hardware partnerships 

29:49 Future product vision 

32:50 Advice for founders in the AI space

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].

Denis Yarats is the CTO and co-founder of Perplexity.

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/.

Everlaw is a legal tech company started in 2011 that helps law firms and corporations run what’s called “e-discovery”— essentially a process of investigating often massive piles of documents to find the key pieces of evidence, the smoking gun, and then to construct a narrative from it. Last valued at over $2B, Everlaw has over 1,000 customers over the world.  

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with AJ Shankar, CEO and founder of Everlaw.

Join us as we discuss: 

00:00: The vision for Everlaw 

0:36 Introduction to Everlaw

1:45 AJ Shankar's Journey to Starting Everlaw

4:43 The Vision and Early Years of Everlaw

6:41 Challenges in Fundraising and Building the Early Team

9:56 Understanding Customer Needs and Building Authenticity

11:38 Product Development and Technical Skills

16:22 Impact of Everlaw on the Legal Industry

20:36 Fundraising Challenges and Success

23:59 Adoption of Generative AI and its Implications

29:30 The Future of Everlaw and the Legal Industry

35:51 AJ Shankar's Evolution as a Founder and CEO

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].

AJ Shankar is the CEO and founder of Everlaw.

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/.

Deepgram is a voice AI company that has built an incredible reputation in the market for the quality of its speech recognition. Last valued at over $250M, Deepgram has over 500 customers, including NASA, Spotify, and Twilio. 

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram.

Join us as we discuss: 

00:00 Preview: Fully contextualized speech-to-speech is the future

01:07 Scott's background in particle physics and starting Deepgram

7:18 Scott's first years as a founder

13:17 How the Deepgram team gathered early customer feedback

17:38 Early use cases and product feedback

22:58 How conversational AI will impact the customer support industry

26:54 Specialized hardware in the AI Industry

30:34 How additional hardware specialization will impact Deepgram

32:14 Deepgram's product vision

36:46 Advice for Founders starting an AI company

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].

Scott Stephenson is the CEO and co-founder of Deepgram.

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/.

Material Security is an email security company that protects an organization's users and data particularly across Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Last valued at $1.1B, Material has over 100 enterprise customers, including Doordash, Lyft, and Fox. 

In this episode, Sandhya Hegde and Wei Lien Dang chat with Abhishek Agrawal, CEO and co-founder of Material Security.

Join us as we discuss: 

00:00 Preview: Seeking validation for a B2B product

1:36 Founding Material Security

5:31 Identifying the Gap in Existing Solutions

10:00 Validating the Thesis 

12:41 Product Vision and Initial MVP

19:56 Go-to-Market Strategy for the First Million in ARR

25:40 Product Vision and Impact of AI

31:50 Advice for Founders Starting Companies in 2024

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].

Wei Lien Dang is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures and leads investments in infrastructure software, security, and developer tool.  Wei was a co-founder of Stackrox, a cloud-native security company prior to its acquisition by Red Hat. He can be reached at [email protected]

Abhishek Agrawal is the co-founder and CEO of Material Security

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/.