Today, Peter Walker, Carta's Head of Insights joins us to share the findings from Carta's Q2 reports. We go deep into data from pre-seed, seed and Series A rounds. We cover median valuations, time between rounds, graduation rates between rounds, the AI and repeat-founder premiums, and much more. Carta is the backbone of most venture-backed startups. They have access to specific information about every single round, not just what's reported in TechCrunch. VCs know most of this data. Founders need to be equally well-informed. You won't want to miss this episode. Listen to full episode here:
The Product Market Fit Show
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
Toronto, Ontario 11,385 followers
Helping founders find product market fit. Brought to you by Mistral, a seed stage firm.
About us
On The Product Market Fit Show, founders share real stories about what it takes to go from 0 to product market fit. These are not biographies. They aren’t promotional narratives about how companies were built. They’re very specific, detailed stories with real examples you can use.
- Website
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http://pmf.show
External link for The Product Market Fit Show
- Industry
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
- Company size
- 2-10 employees
- Headquarters
- Toronto, Ontario
- Type
- Partnership
- Founded
- 2022
Locations
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Primary
Toronto, Ontario, CA
Employees at The Product Market Fit Show
Updates
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Last quarter, Sanish Mondkar raised a $50M Series D. His company has raised over $130M. They have enterprise customers across 14 countries including Dollar General, Aldo, and CircleK. And it all started because Sanish was working out of coffee shops. He wasn't looking for a startup idea--he was just having casual conversations with retail workers. After a few of those, he noticed the problems retail workers and managers were facing, and he decided to build Legion Technologies to help solve them. He partnered with one local coffee chain, worked as a barista for a week, and developed the product with them for a year. He didn't try to sell to other customers, he stayed heads down until the local chain adopted the product across their entire organization. By the time they went to sell to other enterprises, they knew the product worked. Listen full episode here:
He built in stealth with 1 customer for a year—then grew to 1M paid users across 60,000 locations. | Sanish Mondkar, Founder of Legion - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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Daniel's been building robots for 20 years. He's sold 100s of AI robots-as-a-service to Walmart, FedEx, & DHL amongst others. Last month, he raised a $40M round. 6 years ago, Danielrealized the why robots weren't getting massively adopted. Builders like him were trying to build perfect robots that always worked. But every situation has plenty of edge cases. What if you designed robots to work only 80% of the time and use humans for the other 20%? That one unique insight changed everything and was the reason he started Vecna Robotics . His robots can tell when they need help and ask humans on the ground and remotely to assist in real-time. Like most capital-intensive startups, Daniel played on hard-mode. Here's how he built hardware, robotics and AI, sold enterprise contracts, and grew to $10s of millions in revenue. Listen to the full episode here:
He sold AI robots to Walmart & raised $150M. His #1 advice to founders? "Trust your gut." | Daniel Theobald, Founder of Vecna Robotics - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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Early-stage founders are bombarded with advice. A lot of it from investors who have never operated a business, never ran marketing, never led sales. And yet, many founders take VCs' advice as sacrosanct. And many VCs feel like they can and should opine on everything. If many people treat you like an expert, you must be one... right? VCs have a lot to offer founders. But, like everyone, they have circles of competence. Be careful who you listen to. Listen to the full episode here:
VCs give a lot of advice— and a lot of it sucks. Be careful who you listen to. - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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Alex Hoff quit the company he'd been working at for 9 years. He gave himself 6 months to launch a startup. Even though he got the co-founder of a public company to join him and raised $6M out of the gate—it took him 3 years to make his first sale. But after he shifted from selling to SMBs to selling to MSPs (Managed Service Providers i.e., outsourced IT), things took off: April 2015 - $1K MRR August 2015 - $10K MRR June 2016 - $100K MRR Nov 2018 - $1M MRR ($12M ARR) And growth never stopped—soon, he'll cross $100M ARR. Alex and his co-founder did many things differently. They came up with an idea by starting with markets, not customer problems. They raised a lot of money upfront and built a sophisticated product instead of an MVP. And they deliberated cultural values before making their first hire. Clearly—it worked. Listen to the full episode here:
He took 3 years to make his 1st sale—then grew 1000x to $10M ARR 3 years later. | Alex Hoff, Founder of Auvik - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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Big milestone alert!
It took The Product Market Fit Show 18 months to hit product-market fit. As a founder told me on the show, PMF is hard to define. His best definition: "You know it when you see it".
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When an employee unexpectedly quits, an investor backs out, or a big customer churns— fear of failure takes over. When you close a new round, land a big customer, or make a big hire— you feel pure excitement. Every founder is on a fear-excitement spectrum. There's no way to prevent yourself from feeling the two extremes. But I've seen great founders use several tactics to help themselves operate out of excitement more often than out of fear. Those founders also feel fear— but they use these tactics to spend more time closer to excitement. Because operating out of failure is playing not to lose—whereas operating out of excitement is playing to win. Here are 3 ways to do just that. Listen to the full episode here:
How to reduce fear of failure— if you wake up with your heart pounding out of your chest. - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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Pierce Ujjainwalla launched a consulting business that grew to millions in revenue and dozens of employees. But he noticed his customers kept asking for the same solution. So he launched Knak, an email marketing and landing page builder that integrates to Marketo. Unlike most founders, he didn’t go all-in. He kept working on his consulting business full-time until Knak hit $1M in ARR. After he transitioned over to Knak, he bootstrapped it to $5M ARR and then raised a $25M Series A. Here’s the story of how Knak found product-market fit. Listen to full episode here:
He refused to quit his job until $1M ARR—then grew to $5M ARR & closed a $25M Series A. | Pierce Ujjainwalla, Founder of Knak - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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Storytelling is one of the most important founder skills. So we asked the world’s best storyteller how to do it. He’s worked with Slack & Salesforce. He's won Moth StorySLAM (a storytelling competition in NYC) a record 59 times. There is no better storyteller in the world than Matthew Dicks. Every founder knows storytelling is a critical skill. But 99% of founders I meet are terrible storytellers. They overcomplicate, they include too much information, they try to convince with data. Like Matthew Dicks says, "Most of what people say in business is forgettable". Whether you want to close customers, investors or employees, you need to stand out and be remembered. And the best way to do that is to tell compelling stories that resonate. Here's how to do it. Listen to the full episode here:
99% of founders SUCK at storytelling. Here's the pro who taught Slack & Salesforce how to do it. | Matthew Dicks, professional storyteller & bestselling author of Storyworthy. - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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5 years ago, Shubham A Mishra had just graduated college and had no network. Now he's raised $200M and grown to $85M ARR. But he started trying to sell AI for marketing to enterprises with no network. So for 2 months, he'd go to the lobby of a bank and sit there for an hour. He'd wait for the CMO to walk by, just so he could say hi. He'd tell receptionists he was waiting for an interview. Finally, one day the CMO had enough and asked him who he was. Shubham got his 15-minute moment. That turned into a free pilot. That free pilot turned to $1.2M ARR. 2 years after he'd started the company, he bootstrapped to $3M ARR and was profitable— since then, the growth never stopped. Listen to the full episode here:
He went all-in on AI 5 years ago, bootstrapped to $3M ARR in 2 years—& grew to $85M ARR in 5. | Shubham Mishra, Founder of Pixis - A Product Market Fit Show | Startups & Founders
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