He turned off a product with 20M users and went from 70 people to 7—then raised a $45M Series A. | Keith Peiris, Co-Founder & CEO of Lightfield

Keith raised a $43M Series B for Tome. The product had 20 million users. But retention was terrible and nobody cared enough to complain. So he turned it off before he knew what he'd build next, went from 70 people to 7, and started over. Lightfield just closed a $45M Series A.

In this episode, Keith breaks down how he knew Tome would never grow up, why customers lighting up your Slack at 3am is the signal you actually want, and the exact playbook he used to sell an AI-native CRM to YC founders before he charged them a dollar.

Why You Should Listen

• Why angry customers are a better signal than 20 million happy ones.
• How to know when optimizing metrics will never re-inflect your business.
• Why you have to kill the old product before you can find the new one.
• How to win founders with free software and events instead of cold email.

Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, Lightfield, Keith Peiris, Tome, pivoting a startup, AI native CRM, agentic system of record, cutting burn, go-to-market, selling to YC founders, launch videos, B2B SaaS

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Intro
• 00:02:27 The Customers Who Were Hopping Mad
• 00:07:41 20M Users, Almost No Retention
• 00:09:27 When Your Business Works But Won't Inflect
• 00:11:24 Why His Board Said Burn the Boats
• 00:18:29 Turning Off the Product Before Knowing What's Next
• 00:22:13 Reinventing the System of Record
• 00:30:25 How to Sell to YC Founders
• 00:36:04 Making a Launch Video Hit a Million Views
• 00:44:08 The One Piece of Advice