Episodes

Here's a step-by-step account of how to do proper customer discovery. From how to source potential customers, conduct proper interviews and test your early product -- Ron has done it all. He shares each step with lots of deta...

Being capital efficient is the #1 power move you can make as a founder. It gives you time, control, and a huge edge with investors. Check out this episode to understand why it matters and what you can do to get there. Send m...

Michael Hyatt founded BlueCat, which was sold for over $700M. Since then he’s shifted to the investor side and has invested in dozens of startups. Through it all, Michael has seen three financial crashes: the Dotcom boom and ...

95% of idea-stage startups fail because they don't solve an important enough problem in the first place. The most important part of customer discovery is to make sure you are solving real problems. But almost all founders do ...

We've had plenty of episodes showing you what you should do. So here's an episode on what NOT to do. Myles is an exceptional founder, thoughtful and charismatic. But he's made plenty of mistakes: whether it's coming up with a...

We talk about product-market fit constantly in this podcast. Hopefully, we learn from what others did and improve our chances of finding PMF. But, even if we do everything right, we may still fail to find PMF. That's why even...

Marty (CEO of Blockthrough) is the definition of a “Founder Cockroach”—he can’t be killed. In this episode, he shares how after 12 years and 2 failed start-ups, he sold his company for nearly $100M. I've known Marty since my ...

Every startup has the same competitor: Status Quo. Your customers have done things a certain way for many years. Status Quo might seem awful to you, but it's worked for them. It's entrenched. It's accepted. In many cases, it'...

"Wouldn't it be cool if..." Usually, those words are uttered by first-time founders. And unfortunately, they usually lead to terrible ideas. It was no different for Plooto. Their first idea sounded cool, but it didn't provide real customer value. Fortunately, Hamed noticed it and pivoted. Not once,…

Most bad ideas are born the same way. A founder says to themselves: "Wouldn't it be cool if...". I know because I did it. "Wouldn't it be cool if your workouts were automatically tracked" was the genesis for Gymtrack, my failed startup. When you do this, you are starting from the solution, not the …

Finding Product Market Fit is often a long journey, especially if you're a first-time founder who jumps in with two feet and no upfront research. It took Rodolphe FIVE pivots to get from where he started to the $10M+ ARR startup he has today. This is the story of each one of those pivots. How and w…

Everyone pays lip service to focus, but few understand what it really means. Those who are truly focused often do things that look insane. That's why we say that before product-market fit, "Only the Insanely Focused Survive"....

They say the best founders can walk through walls. Well, nothing can stop Nabeil. For the first two years, Nabeil and his team worked out of his house. His entire house, except for his bedroom, was an office. He would nap while changes were loaded to production only to wake up 2 hours later to test…

Many founders start companies because they want to get rich. Honestly, that’s what I did. Unfortunately, only caring about making money often leads to bad startup ideas. Focus on value instead. Another observation... seed sta...

To find product-market fit you need to deliver clear and exceptional customer value. The story of Applyboard shows you exactly what that looks like. Martin changed the lives of thousands of students who he helped study abroad. He impacted not just them but their entire families. In the meantime, he…

Two observations from the Loopio episode: 1. When you're working on your first startup, everything is hard. It's natural to think that the second time around will be much easier. It's not! 0 to 1 is always hard. 2. Most VCs w...

Starting your second startup should be much easier, right? Well, yes and no. Jafar was the founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Loopio, which went on to raise $200M+ and land thousands of customers. He left to start Barley. ...

Before the pandemic, there were 24 employees at Certn (Or Certonians, as they're called). After the pandemic, there were 500. That's 20x growth in just two years. That only happens for one reason... insane product-market fit. This is the story of how Certn got there. Andrew (CEO) walks us through h…

Bootstrapping isn't sexy. At least not at first. As they say, it's not greed that runs the world but envy. And when your founder friend raises $10M, it's hard not to want it too. But 10 years later, when you're running a $100M+ per year bootstrapped business, all of a sudden things aren't looking t…

What's the most important asset of any startup? It's easy. The talent. The software you build is not defensible. It can be replicated. The team you build is what's special. And the culture you develop is what's unique. In this episode, Rob shares some incredible advice from his days at Uber and as …

Wealthsimple is arguably the hottest private startup in Canada, with over 3M users and a valuation of over US$4B. In this episode, Mike (CEO) shares stories he’s never shared before. He goes deep into how he came up with the ...

When you launch a product and no one buys it, the decision is rather simple. You kill the product. At the very least, you make some serious changes to it. What happens when you do real customer discovery, launch a product tha...

There's nothing quite like going from 0 to an 8-figure+ acquisition, especially on your first startup. And 100% bootstrapped! Aydin, the founder of Fluidware and now founder of Fellow, shares the story of his humble beginnings as a Jr Engineer, to launching a startup that would compete with SurveyM…

Customer discovery is easy, right? You just call up a dozen or so potential customers, ask them a bunch of questions, and you're done. It seems absurd but that's what a lot of founders do. No one becomes a founder because the...