452: Proof: SaaS Growth Lessons from $0 to $100M ARR - with Pat Kinsel

Pat Kinsel went from years of painful struggle at Notarize to building Proof, a SaaS platform approaching $100M ARR with 230 employees and $260M raised.

In this episode, Pat explains how a notary error during his first startup exit sparked the idea, why he validated demand with a simple landing page before building, how he endured years of slow traction and false signals, and what changed when he expanded beyond notarization to transaction security.

You’ll learn:

- How Pat validated demand with a landing page and Google ads

- Why losing money on every transaction nearly killed the company

- What really happened when COVID demand spiked 100x overnight

- How he spent years pushing to make online notarization widely accepted

- Why many COVID-era enterprise signups never activated and what that taught about real product-market fit

Full show notes → saasclub.io/452

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