A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

• She cold messaged 50,000 engineers—then grew to $10M+ ARR. | Shensi Ding, Founder of Merge

  Shensi cold messaged 50,000 engineers to build Merge. She worked 9am-9pm every day, gave her first customers two months free to prove herself, and refused to hire anyone remote—even during peak COVID. She purposefully didn't collect a single dollar of revenue until she knew she could hit $1M in a months. "Startups are all about momentum." She lost their biggest deal to a competitor who copied them, then won that customer back years later. She outbounded her way from zero to $10M through sheer force of will, doing demos all day until her calendar was completely booked. Today Merge has raised $75M and powers integrations for hundreds of B2B companies. This is raw, unfiltered founder advice from someone who believes you just have to "man up" and outbound your way to success.Why You Should Listen:Why you should wait to collect revenue until you see a clear path to $1M ARR. Why you need to outbound thousands of people to build your team.You can will your way to $10M—but you'll need something else to hit $100M.Why they are an in-office company, even for remote rockstar devs.Keywords:Startup podcast, Startup podcast for founders, Merge, Shensi Ding, integrations, B2B SaaS, outbound sales, seed funding, product-market fit, API, developer tools, startup growth00:00:00 Intro00:02:55 From coding in middle school to investment banking00:06:45 How she found the problem00:09:09 100 customer conversations00:13:51 Quitting during COVID00:16:16 Raising $4.5M seed in 3 weeks00:21:01 Outbounding 50,000 engineers00:25:32 Landing first customers through cold LinkedIn00:31:37 Not collecting revenue on purpose00:37:47 When product-market fit actually hitSend me a message to let me know what you think!

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• He bet his house on a startup—took 7 years to $1M, then hockey stick to $100M+ ARR. | Eldon Sprickerhoff, Co-Founder of eSentire

  Eldon put a $150K line of credit on his house to start eSentire in 2001. No VCs would touch him—they didn't understand services businesses. He worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week for 7 years to hit $1M in revenue. His co-founder coded while he flew to New York on $99 JetBlue flights from Buffalo to save money. Then something clicked: they brought in an experienced CEO who transformed their scrappy cybersecurity consulting into a managed service. Revenue grew from $1M to $10M in just 3 years. They won 95% of competitive deals against Dell-backed SecureWorks by comparing themselves to a local burger joint versus McDonald's. Today eSentire is worth over a billion dollars. This is the raw, unfiltered story of building a massive B2B company without following any of the Silicon Valley playbook—no YC, no venture capital for years, just pure survival mode.Why You Should Listen:How to win head-to-head sales battles against bigger competitors with no marketing budget.Why taking a long time to hit $1M ARR doesn't mean failure.How bringing in an experienced CEO after 8 years saved the company.Keywords (comma-separated):Startup podcast, Startup podcast for founders, eSentire, Eldon Sprickerhoff, cybersecurity, bootstrapping, managed services, B2B sales, Canadian startup, MSSP, founder-led sales, pivot00:00:00 Intro00:01:00 Starting eSentire after 9/1100:03:26 The dot-com crash reality00:05:23 $150K home equity line to start00:08:32 Landing first customer at ING00:14:03 Making up the rules as they went00:19:09 Bringing in an experienced CEO00:22:44 The hamburger pitch that beat Dell00:28:36 From $1M to $10M in 3 years00:34:39 Common founder mistakes00:40:39 Chief survival officer mindsetSend me a message to let me know what you think!

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• He quit his job, went all-in on AI agents—then grew to 100K users & a $30M Series A in a year. | Soham Ganatra, Founder of Composio

  Soham spent 6 months building AI that would auto-generate integrations between any software. He locked down Glean as an early customer because he had friends there. And it failed completely.So he pivoted. This time, he refused to work with friendly customers who knew him. Instead, he did 10-20 calls per day with strangers who would tell him his product sucked. He posted on Discord communities at 3am, wrote technical blogs that went viral on Reddit, and created fake landing pages to see what integrations people actually wanted. In one year, Composio grew to 100,000 developers and raised $30M from Lightspeed in just 3 weeks. His contrarian take: in AI, asking users what they want will just get you faster horses. Built it instead, and watch their eyes light up.Why You Should Listen:Why friendly customers will kill your startup.The 20  calls per day strategy that scaled Composio to 100,000 users.Why you can't validate AI products by asking.The exact Discord and SEO tactics that got their first thousand users without spending on adsKeywords (comma-separated):The PMF Show is a startup podcast. The Product Market Fit Show is a startup podcast. Startup Podcast, Composio, Soham Ganatra, AI agents, developer tools, pivot, Series A, Lightspeed, integrations, API, tool calling00:00:00 Intro00:06:44 Playing with GPT-2 before ChatGPT00:12:37 Leaving his job to start Composio00:21:16 Pivoting to integrations for AI agents00:28:42 Why friendly customers are dangerous00:31:01 Getting first users through viral content00:36:01 Taking 10-20 customer calls per day00:40:58 Scaling from 1,000 to 100,000 developers00:43:58 MCP and the explosion of growth00:48:59 Raising $30M from Lightspeed in 3 weeksSend me a message to let me know what you think!

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• TechCrunch called this YC founder a fraud at 18—then he built a $10M ARR fintech. | Sahil Phadnis, Founder of Affiniti

  Sahil was 18 when TechCrunch published a hit piece calling him a copycat. His co-founder Aaron was 16. They'd just raised $6 million from YC and top VCs for their crypto startup, then got subpoenaed by a state government and watched their business implode. So they fired everyone, moved back to their parents' homes, and spent months cold-calling dentists and lawn care companies to find a real problem. What they discovered: 80% of SMBs still use community banks from 1995. Now Affiniti has 2,000 customers, $10M ARR run rate, and just raised $17M by partnering with trade associations to acquire customers at 25% the cost of traditional fintech. This is the raw story of teenage founders who got punched in the face by Silicon Valley and came back swinging.Why You Should Listen:How getting destroyed on TechCrunch at 18 and subpoenaed by the government led to a $3M revenue pivot in 12 monthsWhy going back to square 0 is often the best moveThe trade association go-to-market strategy that worked for SMB.Why 200 VC rejections and raising $6M in peak 2021 couldn't save their first startup—but taught them everything they needed to know.Get comfortable with bad days—stoicism is the only way to survive.Keywords:Affiniti, Sahil Phadnis, SMB fintech, startup pivot, Y Combinator, teenage founders, Series A, B2B payments, startup failure, trade associations00:00:00 Intro00:01:50 COVID existential crisis at 1600:08:36 Building websites for restaurants00:11:11 Meeting Aaron on Instagram00:15:17 200 VC rejections then raising $6M00:23:03 Getting called a fraud on TechCrunch00:29:15 Firing everyone and moving home00:31:16 Faking toothaches to research SMBs00:40:50 Launching Affiniti00:47:00 The trade association growth hack00:55:03 Raising Series A in 3 weeks00:58:30 Stoicism and bad daysSend me a message to let me know what you think!

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• Paul Graham Said His Startup Was Worthless—2 Months Later He Hit $1M ARR. | Jon Noronha, Co-Founder of Gamma

  Jon spent 3 years building Gamma with barely any traction—just a few hundred users after burning millions. Then ChatGPT dropped. In desperation, he pivoted to AI-powered presentations in March 2023 with one year of runway left. What happened next was insane: Paul Graham publicly mocked their launch tweet calling it worthless—then it went viral. They went from 2,000 signups a day to 60,000. Their servers crashed for three days, but when they came back online, panicked users threw $50K at them thinking they needed to pay to make it work. Within two months of launching payments, they hit $1M ARR and became cashflow positive. This is the raw story of how a dying startup caught the AI lightning and never looked back.Why You Should Listen:How to survive 3 years with no traction.Why 80% hype and 20% value can still build a real business The exact onboarding flow that turned 5% activation into viral growthHow negative viral engagement can still drive massive revenueThe difference between 10x better and 50% betterKeywords:Gamma, Jon Noronha, AI presentations, product market fit, pivot to AI, viral growth, Paul Graham, ChatGPT, cashflow positive, productivity startup00:00:00 Intro00:02:15 Why presentations haven't changed in 40 years00:11:55 User research reveals the real problem00:26:26 The market crashes and runway shrinks00:34:32 ChatGPT drops and everything changes00:43:19 Paul Graham trashes the launch tweet00:48:59 Going viral by accident00:51:33 60,000 signups a day breaks everything00:55:07 Hitting $1M ARR in 2 months00:58:47 Endurance is everythingSend me a message to let me know what you think!

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