First Round Capital reposted this
The reality is that this “overnight success” was 7 years in the making, as this timeline shows... What’s even more impressive is that this explosion in growth largely took place in the past 18 months or so. (As recently as spring 2022, Clay was still close to $0 in revenue.) Congrats Kareem Amin
Some companies are what we at First Round Capital like to call a “fast bake,” where the ingredients coalesce from the start. (Uber and Square are examples — early on we saw strong momentum.) But others are more of a “slow bake,” or an under-the-radar journey to land on the right product and message for the right customer. Roblox comes to mind here — as does Clay. As they shared this morning, their recent traction is impressive. They’ve passed 100K users and 2500+ customers (including Anthropic, Intercom, Notion, Vanta, and Verkada). They just announced a $46M Series B (from us here at First Round along with our friends at @Meritech Capital and @Sequoia). What’s even more impressive is that this explosion in growth largely took place in the past 18 months or so. (As recently as spring 2022, Clay was still close to $0 in revenue.) But the reality is that this “overnight success” was 7 years in the making, as this timeline shows. What the headlines don’t capture is the years that Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan, and Varun Anand spent quietly plugging away. Years spent landing on the initial idea. Waffling back and forth between building a wide, horizontal product or committing to a narrow vertical use case. Picking the right initial wedge. Perfecting their messaging and positioning. Building a community from the ground up. Refining their self-serve motion and word-of-mouth engine. Layering on enterprise sales. For me, this is a reminder of the role that patience plays in company building. It takes a long time to build a transcendent company — and you’ll often be misunderstood, undervalued or even feel lost for most of that time. I’m so inspired by how Kareem and the entire Clay team have kept at it for the past 7 years — and I’m grateful that he chose to openly share more about their journey to PMF on The Review today so more builders can learn from it. (You can read the article in the comments.)
