PodcastsBusinessA Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

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A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
Latest episode

277 episodes

  • A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

    She got rejected by 22 VCs—then built 6sense to $100M+ in revenue. Now she's back for AI. | Amanda Kahlow, Founder of 1mind

    06/04/2026 | 52 mins.
    Amanda spent 16 years running a services business for Cisco and Intel. When she tried to productize her business, 22 VCs rejected her. That became 6sense, a $200M ARR company. After stepping aside as CEO and taking five years off, she's back with an AI startup called 1 mind. 
    In this episode, Amanda breaks down why she always goes enterprise-first when everyone tells her to start small, how she used an AI clone of herself to pitch 60 VCs and raise 1mind's Series A in three days, and why she believes the entire sales process—SDRs, AEs, sales engineers—is about to be collapsed into a single AI "superhuman."
    Why You Should Listen
    Why 22 VC partner meetings said no—and how one change fixed it overnight.
    How she used an AI clone of herself to close a Series A in 3 days.
    Why starting enterprise-first beats moving upmarket.
    Why outbound AI email is a race to the bottom and what to build instead.
    Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, AI agents, AI sales, enterprise sales, 6sense, 1mind, finding pmf, B2B SaaS, AI enabled services, net dollar retention
    Chapters
    00:00:00 Intro
    00:05:58 22 VC Rejections—Until She Found the Right Co-Founders
    00:08:49 Why She Always Starts Enterprise-First
    00:22:00 Five Years Off—Then the AI Wave Hit
    00:27:32 Why AISDRs Are a Race to the Bottom
    00:43:23 Using Her AI Clone to Raise the Series A
    00:49:52 The Moment of True Product Market Fit
    Send me a message to let me know what you think!
  • A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

    How this AI founder is on track to hit $50M ARR just 2 years after launch. | Tarek Alaruri, Co-Founder of Stuut

    02/04/2026 | 47 mins.
    Tarek already built a B2B software company to $30M ARR. But when the AI wave hit, he realized he could build a generational business by automating the manual world of accounts receivable. So, he left to start Stuut.
    In this episode, Tarek breaks down how he reached $1M ARR in a couple of months and is on track to hit up to $50M this year. He reveals how he pre-sold his first $65k contract with just wireframes, why he forces new customers to introduce him to five peers, and the brutal reality of finding message-market fit through hundreds of cold calls.
    Why You Should Listen
    How to pre-sell a $65k enterprise contract before writing code.
    The "Closing Discount" hack to generate 5 referrals from every new customer.
    Why finding "Message Market Fit" is more important than your ICP.
    How to spot and avoid early-stage startup "vultures".
    Why scaling a B2B sales motion requires hiring misfits over pedigree.
    00:00:00 Intro
    00:01:41 Leaving a $30M Startup to Build with AI
    00:08:06 Finding Message Market Fit Through Cold Calling
    00:20:07 Pre-Selling a $65k Contract with Wireframes
    00:27:51 The Voice AI "Aha" Moment
    00:33:07 The Closing Discount Referral Hack
    00:37:18 The Brutal Reality of B2B Sales
    00:42:19 Hitting $1M ARR and Pacing for $50M
    00:45:05 Why Product Market Fit is Never Truly Found
    Send me a message to let me know what you think!
  • A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

    He launched a free product for enterprise customers—then grew to $12M ARR in 2 years. | Bhaskar Sunkara, Founding CTO of AppDynamics

    30/03/2026 | 44 mins.
    Description
    Bhaskar was employee #1 at AppDynamics, which was sold to Cisco for $3.7B. He and co-founder Jyoti found a way to change how enterprise monitoring tools worked. From tracking low-level code metrics that ops teams didn't understand to monitoring what the business actually cares about.
    In this episode, Bhaskar breaks down how that one insight won them Netflix and Priceline as early customers, why they ran production POCs that no competitor would dare try, and how a free download called AppDynamics Lite generated over 60% of their leads—in an industry where getting started normally took weeks of professional services and six-figure contracts.
    Why You Should Listen
    Why selling to developers is operating on hard mode.
    How one-day POCs became the killer enterprise sales weapon.
    Why freemium disrupted an industry that required weeks of professional services to get started.
    How they grew from $2M to $12M in revenue in just one year post launch.
    Keywords 
    startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, AppDynamics, application monitoring, enterprise SaaS, B2B sales, finding pmf, freemium strategy, Cisco acquisition, production POC
    Chapters
    00:00:00 Intro
    00:11:33 Choosing the ICP
    00:20:37 Landing Netflix with Freemium
    00:28:44 Growing from $2M to $12M in Year Two
    00:30:10 The Free Download Strategy That Generated 60% of Leads
    00:32:04 Days from the NASDAQ Bell—Then Cisco Offered $3.7B
    00:41:28 The Moment of True Product Market Fit
    Send me a message to let me know what you think!
  • A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

    He raised $41M in one year to replace enterprise accountants with AI. | Yogi Goel, Founder of Maxima

    26/03/2026 | 43 mins.
    Yogi spent 20 years living the nightmare of enterprise accounting. As a senior finance leader at Rubrik, he watched highly paid professionals spend three weeks every month manually wrangling data into spreadsheets—a problem that caused mass burnout and multi-million dollar stock corrections.
    When ChatGPT launched, Yogi knew the technology was finally ready to solve the problem. In this episode, he breaks down how he left his executive track to found Maxima, how he landed massive enterprises like Scale AI and Rippling as early design partners, and why he managed to raise $41M from top-tier VCs like Kleiner Perkins and Redpoint before he even had a pitch deck.
    Why You Should Listen
    How a 1st-time founder raised an $11M Seed and a $30M Series A in a year.
    Why replacing accountants with AI is a bigger opportunity than replacing SaaS tools.
    How to use the "Design Partner Playbook" to secure Fortune 500 customers.
    Why charging for an MVP creates the friction you actually need to find true PMF.
    The difference between selling "digital shelves" and selling "folded laundry" in the age of AI.
    Keywords
    startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, AI in accounting, enterprise SaaS, product market fit, finding pmf, raising seed round, raising series a, B2B sales, design partners
    00:00:00 Intro
    00:07:37 Leaving a CFO Track to Become a Founder
    00:11:52 Raising an $11M Seed Round from Kleiner Perkins
    00:20:07 The Design Partner Playbook
    00:22:34 Why You Must Charge Your Early Design Partners
    00:28:36 The Aha Moment for Product Market Fit
    00:33:20 Selling "Folded Laundry" Instead of "Digital Shelves"
    00:36:47 Raising a $30M Series A Pre-Emptively
    Send me a message to let me know what you think!
  • A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

    How he grew his AI startup from $2M to $20M ARR in 12 months. | Omar Haroun, Co-Founder of Eudia

    23/03/2026 | 49 mins.
    Omar already built and sold an AI startup for over $100M. But when the generative AI wave hit, he realized the technology wasn't just the future of software—it was the future of labor. So he started Eudia to completely transform how enterprise legal teams operate.
    In this episode, Omar breaks down how he scaled from $2M to $20M ARR in just 12 months. He reveals the exact cold email strategy he used to land C-suite design partners, why he bought an existing legal services company to accelerate his AI platform, and why replacing human labor with AI is the ultimate business model.
    Why You Should Listen
    Why selling AI as a service is a much bigger opportunity than selling SaaS.
    How to secure Fortune 500 design partners using cold emails.
    Why playing to win beats playing not to lose.
    How to build a data moat that AI wrappers can't compete with.
    Why ARR shouldn't be your only measure of startup success in the AI era.
    Keywords
    startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, AI startups, product market fit, AI enabled services, legaltech, B2B SaaS, enterprise sales, finding pmf, generative AI
    00:00:00 Intro
    00:01:45 Why AI is the Future of Labor
    00:04:55 Replacing In-House vs. Outsourced Legal Teams
    00:09:35 Selling His First AI Startup for $100M
    00:12:11 Why the $1 Trillion Law Firm Industry is at Risk
    00:21:59 Landing Fortune 500 Design Partners via Cold Email
    00:28:26 Playing to Win vs. Playing Not to Lose
    00:33:45 Raising a $6M Seed Round with an 80-Page Transcript
    00:38:53 Buying a Legal Services Company to Accelerate Growth
    00:44:55 Scaling from $2M to $20M ARR in 12 Months
    Send me a message to let me know what you think!

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About A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Every founder has 1 goal: find product-market fit. We interview the world's most successful startup founders on the 0 to 1 part of their journeys. We've had the founders of Reddit, Gusto, Rappi, Glean, Cohere, Huntress, ID.me and many more. We go deep with entrepreneurs & VCs to provide detailed examples you can steal. Our goal is to understand product-market fit better than anyone on the planet. Rated one of the world's top startup podcasts.
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