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50 episodes
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Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures: The Product Market Fit Podcast Sandhya Hegde, Unusual Ventures
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- Business
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5.0 • 28 Ratings
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Every overnight success in the world of software happens after years of hard work finding product-market fit. The Unusual Ventures Startup Field Guide is a podcast for early-stage software leaders and aspiring founders looking for help going from 0 to 1. Featuring great conversations between venture capitalist Sandhya Hegde and successful startup founders, you will learn about hiring, product research, go-to-market, fundraising, and more.
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Clay CEO Kareem Amin on AI-powered outreach for growth
Clay is an AI-powered platform for sales prospecting that gathers data from over 75 sources to build lists and help growth teams send personalized outreach messages. Recently valued at over $500M, Clay has several high-profile enterprise customers, including go-to-market teams at Intercom, Ramp, Notion, Anthropic, Verkada, Vanta, and more.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Kareem Amin, CEO and co-founder of Clay.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00 Preview: Picking the right customer
1:53 Lessons learned from Kareem’s first startup, Frame
4:54 Decision behind choosing acquisition for Frame
7:10 The founding insight behind Clay
9:20 Fundraising for Clay
11:52 Narrowing down the ICP for Clay
17:21 Clay’s decision to focus on growth marketers
21:12 Product feedback from early adopters
22:27 Picking the right strategy to monetize
28:37 Building the early team
32:14 Integrating GPT-3 into the product
34:38 Clay’s product roadmap
37:00 Advice for new founders
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.
Kareem Amin is the CEO and co-founder of Clay.
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. -
Scribe CEO Jennifer Smith on documenting workflows
Scribe makes it easy to share how you do your work by creating automated documentation. Scribe raised a Series B recently and has grown to millions of users with enterprise customers like Gong, LinkedIn, and Shopify.
In this episode, Scribe’s co-founder and CEO, Jennifer Smith chats with Sandhya Hegde about Scribe’s early days.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00 Preview — capturing institutional knowledge
1:46 The insight for starting scribe
5:40 Building the Founding Team
8:10 Product Launch and Early Adopters
12:40 Launching the GA Product
15:08 Analyzing User Feedback and Customer Profiles
16:42 Early go-to-market strategy
20:18 The evolution of Scribe’s GTM strategy
22:50 Leveraging AI
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.
Jennifer Smith is the CEO and co-founder of Scribe.
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. -
Eightfold AI CEO Ashutosh Garg on managing talent with AI
Eightfold AI is a talent management platform used by hundreds of large organizations like Vodafone and Activision Blizzard. It helps them leverage data to find great people with the skills they need, both internally and externally. Last valued at $2.1 billion, Eightfold was launched in 2016.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Ashutosh Garg, co-founder and CEO of Eightfold AI.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00 Why Ashustosh wanted to build a talent platform
1:47 Ashutosh Garg's early career at Google
5:09 The founding insight for Eightfold AI
7:38 Why Ashustosh decided to focus on HR tech
9:42 Challenges of selling to large enterprises
17:11 Advantages of being an "outsider" in HR tech
19:32 Ashutosh's learnings as a repeat founder
22:58 The impact of recent macro shifts on the labor market
24:50 The impact of GenAI on Eightfold's roadmap
30:16 The future of work
35:11 Advice for first-time founders
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.
Ashustosh Garg is the CEO and co-founder of Eightfold AI.
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. -
Monte Carlo CEO Barr Moses on data reliability
Monte Carlo is an end-to-end data observability platform that monitors pipelines for missing or inaccurate data. Last valued at $1.6B, Monte Carlo has over 150 customers, including data teams at companies such as CNN, JetBlue, Hubspot, PepsiCo, and Toast.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Barr Moses, co-founder and CEO of Monte Carlo.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00 Preview —Early feedback from a potential customer
1:37 Why Barr and Lior decided to focus on data observability
6:28 Profile of Monte Carlo’s early adopters
12:27 Common pain points among early adopters
16:05 How Monte Carlo narrowed in on their ICP
21: 33 Early product feedback and surprises
26:27 Monte Carlo’s current go-to-market strategy
31:22 How AI will impact the data ecosystem
35:57 Advice for founder building data platforms
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.
Barr Moses is the founder and CEO of Monte Carlo
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. -
Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-powered search
Perplexity is an AI-powered search engine that answers user questions. Founded in 2022 and valued at over $1B, Perplexity recently crossed 10M monthly active users and is growing fast.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Denis Yarats, co-founder and CTO of Perplexity.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00 Reactions to Perplexity’s prototype in 2022
1:33 How Arvind and Denis started working together
4:04 Building a text-to-SQL tool initially
6:34 Launch of ChatGPT and pivot to general search
9:46 Focusing on user data, and not on the foundation model
14:43 Perplexity’s early adopters
16:42 Early customer feedback
18:44 Perplexity’s core technical competencies
22:44 Subscription pricing and future gross margins
25:12 Perplexity’s hardware partnerships
29:49 Future product vision
32:50 Advice for founders in the AI space
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.
Denis Yarats is the CTO and co-founder of Perplexity.
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/. -
Everlaw CEO AJ Shankar on how AI is accelerating legal tech
Everlaw is a legal tech company started in 2011 that helps law firms and corporations run what’s called “e-discovery”— essentially a process of investigating often massive piles of documents to find the key pieces of evidence, the smoking gun, and then to construct a narrative from it. Last valued at over $2B, Everlaw has over 1,000 customers over the world.
In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with AJ Shankar, CEO and founder of Everlaw.
Join us as we discuss:
00:00: The vision for Everlaw
0:36 Introduction to Everlaw
1:45 AJ Shankar's Journey to Starting Everlaw
4:43 The Vision and Early Years of Everlaw
6:41 Challenges in Fundraising and Building the Early Team
9:56 Understanding Customer Needs and Building Authenticity
11:38 Product Development and Technical Skills
16:22 Impact of Everlaw on the Legal Industry
20:36 Fundraising Challenges and Success
23:59 Adoption of Generative AI and its Implications
29:30 The Future of Everlaw and the Legal Industry
35:51 AJ Shankar's Evolution as a Founder and CEO
Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at sandhya@unusual.vc.
AJ Shankar is the CEO and founder of Everlaw.
Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.
Customer Reviews
Great peak behind the veil of what it takes to find PMF
Rare to find startup focused content with this level of value per minute spent listening!
Helps Founders Learn to find Product Market Fit
This is an amazing resource for founders. Interviews with the tech ecosystem’s best founders diving deeply into those decisions they made in the early years on the journey to product market fit. There are so many lessons learned that are now made available to the next generation of founders. Well done!
Fantastic content for early stage founders
This is worth your time if you’re a founder building a startup. From understanding the struggles, the excellent questions Sandhya brings up, and hearing the journey about how founders find product market fit, this is gold!