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The most honest lessons about the path to product-market fit
Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:34:48 GMT
Selected Message
From: review@...
To: [email protected]
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:34:48 GMT
Subject: The most honest lessons about the path to product-market fit
To: [email protected]
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:34:48 GMT
Subject: The most honest lessons about the path to product-market fit
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<span class="preheader" style="color: transparent; display: none; height: 0; max-height: 0; max-width: 0; opacity: 0; overflow: hidden; mso-hide: all; visibility: hidden; width: 0;">Featuring founders from Gusto, Mercury, Meter and more </span>
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<h2 id="what-the-best-founders-taught-us-about-building-companies-in-2025" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 32px;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj8tq6zAURb9GmimchyzpDDS4cPF_6NmI2nFxlBT69aWhkw73ZsFi1ZgzOqtbRO8cOhvA67ansZlRoxO7hJAgcWB2AIDkO_egr7GWYLnXlPsSJIukLA2XmiijLyhZj0hACxIKegLwF04EyUmg4rmSbcpCH-d9nsfjVi_l2PUWr3N-3BX_U7QqWs_2HO3z8pf6-RWtToptoVbF6674P-cOgQqYisUZ220wQtxNL94LClcPiz7j1zyVhW2k_bi9lDPmx_ZuXsV6xrfrcZ-_6xnpOwAA__8WOVQ4" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank">What the best founders taught us about building companies in 2025</a></h2><div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj0lqxDAUBU8j7WT-IGtYaBEIvofGWMRuB1vdgZw-pMmml-9RUFQJKaHRsga0xqDRDqyse-yb6iUYr2fnIkR2zAYAkGzj5uQaKnqjqTnO6CPGOoM2yWSfkB2WXGUPBDQjoUdLAHbiSBCNd5QtF9JVaGj9vMZ53G9lyscut7CO8XUJfhO0CFrO-uj1e3ql_n5BCzFTthAFL7vgd04NHGVQBbNRummnPHFTLVvr0XOxMMsz_IxTaNh63I_bUzlCum-f6lksR_hYj2v8r0eg3wAAAP__N6FS9w" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><img src="https://review.firstround.com/content/images/size/w1600/2025/12/EOY-3.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="338" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"></a></div><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">All companies start with a founder who asks some version of the same question: <em>Imagine if</em> this could be different?</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">What happens next is where the real story lives — when ideas become real. That path is hardly ever a straight line. But what’s shared among those who walk it is an obsession with building something truly great.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">This year on our podcast, In Depth, we asked founders to retrace the steps they took to find product-market fit in more detail than they’ve ever shared before.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Owner</strong> co-founder and CEO, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Adam Guild</strong>, takes us through how the idea for the company started after saving his mom’s struggling dog grooming business. <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Braintrust</strong> founder and CEO <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Ankur Goyal</strong> recounts first feeling PMF when he didn’t have to convince anyone to use the product. And <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Jyoti Bansal</strong>, founder and CEO of <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Harness</strong>, shares why the hardest decision he ever made was to break up with Netflix as a customer. You’ll also hear from the founders of <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Gusto</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">fal</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Meter</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Postman</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Reducto</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Sentry</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Serval</strong> and <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Stedi</strong>.</p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Of course, this is only a sliver of the advice shared across dozens of episodes of In Depth this year. Here were some more of our favorites:</p><ol style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; padding-left: 1.3em; padding-right: 1.5em; list-style: decimal; max-width: 100%;"><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj0tqxDAQBU8j7WRa3bI-Cy0CwffQr2MRexxszQRy-pAhm1m-R0FRNeasrZEtamettsaDk21PfVO9RhvM7H2CRJ7IAoBGx8RerpHJMlg7h-QZOYfMFXNBA60EQ1rLHhFw1qiDdgjgJkoIyQaPxVFF04QB7uc1zuN-q1M5drnFdYyvS9CbwEXgcrZHb9_TK_X3C1xSqQ5nBEHLLuidMoPHAqrqYpVh41VAYsXFuaADVQezPOPPOIWBraf9uD2VI-b79qmexXLEj_W4xv96RPwNAAD__4B8U18" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">How Clay learned the problems its ICP needed to solve</strong></a>: The product started as an API-connected spreadsheet that pulled information from many sources into one place — but it had too many ICPs, leading to inconsistent usage and feature bloat. After identifying agency owners (and eventually salespeople) as targets, co-founder <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Varun Anand</strong> wanted to better understand their problems. “I would join all these WhatsApp groups and basically wait for people to talk about problems related to data enrichment,” he says. “We used that as a way to get into the ecosystem and get people really solving their problems with Clay.”</li><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj81qLCEQRp9Gdw5llVq6cHHh0u9R7U9G0j0depwJ5OlDhmyy_D4OHE7N62qD0y1bDsEGF4F122VsZtQckvMxCghFogAAFrlTj_qaQbwwSG8CITlIXL1Yz6mIWJTU9cgI6C3aZBkB-EKCICFFLEwVXVMO-jjv8zwet3opx663fJ3z467on8JF4XK252ifl7_Uz69wqVLDGjEqWnZF_2ntELGAqbYE47qLJiF10wtzsokqg9dn_pqncrAN2Y_bSznz-tjezatYz_x2Pe7zdz0zfgcAAP__h2RTjA" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">Why Linear’s founders built a product for themselves, making it opinionated instead of flexible</strong></a>: Linear’s co-founder and CEO <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Karri Saarinen</strong> has always had a designer’s eye, but as a principal designer at Airbnb, that focused on a dissatisfaction with the company’s project management software. So he and his co-founders built an alternative. “My design philosophy has always been that you should design something for someone, and it’s really hard to design something good for everyone,” he says. “I don’t believe you can build the optimal tool for anything if it’s very flexible. So from the beginning, we wanted to be opinionated that there should be a good way of doing things.”</li><li style="margin: 0.5em 0; padding-left: 0.3em; line-height: 1.6em;"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj8tq6zAURb9Gmjmch3yONNDgwsX_IevRiNpxcZQU-vWloZMO92bBYpW4rijO1ogqguI8qK176tvUS5TgZu8TJPbMAgBI2rh5e43erdRIQZsrNYWsawZNKIIBnaTZ9khAMxIGVALQCyeCJMFTVi7kqnHQ-nkf5_G4lUs-drvF6xgfd8P_DC2GlrM-e_28_KV-fkMLI0qaZzW87Ib_89rAU4apYJbJNeenQNymllUDBi4Ksz3j1ziNg62n_bi9lCOuj-19ehXbEd-ux338rmek7wAAAP__C7BSog" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #62DCAD; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><strong style="font-weight: 700;">What the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition believes is the real moment a founder is born:</strong></a> Prior to <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Applied Intuition</strong>, <strong style="font-weight: 700;">Qasar Younis</strong> was a founder and COO at Y Combinator. He’s interacted with many founders and has identified this as the moment they truly claim the founder mantle: “A founder is not made when you decide to start a company or raise capital. A founder’s made when you get feedback about the product, the market or yourself, and interpret it correctly,” he says. “What’s really important is you have to somehow discount some people’s feedback and over-index on other people’s. This analysis interpretation is the true heart of being a founder, especially in the early days.”</li></ol><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;">Thanks, as always, for watching and sharing!<br><br><em>-The Review Editors</em></p><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"></p><div class="btn btn-accent" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: 100%; display: table;"><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: auto;" width="auto"><tr><td align="center" style="font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; border-radius: 5px; text-align: center; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; background-color: #2CC58A;" valign="top" bgcolor="#2CC58A"><a href="https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj01q6zAURlcjzRzun6-uBho8eHgfsiU1pnZcHCWFrr40dNLh93HgcEqaZ1TxNWFQRRWD4Oue121YS9Ioo1mGzMasAIAUGjfz1yQVxmIZSecmqnUeG8RoJhXHysZ-TQQ0ImHEQADhwpkgazRaAheS6gTaet77eTxu5bIcu9_StfePu-N_jiZH01mfa_28_KV-fkcTgii3HB1Pu-P_PDcwWmAouOggTWyIxG1oSwgRI5cAoz_TVz-dwLbm_bi9lD3Nj-19eBX7nt6ux73_rmei7wAAAP__ApFSsw" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; border: solid 1px #3498db; border-radius: 5px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 12px 25px; text-decoration: none; background-color: #2CC58A; border-color: #2CC58A; color: #FFFFFF;" target="_blank">Explore more episodes of In Depth</a></td></tr></table></div><p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em;"></p>
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What the best founders taught us about building companies in 2025 [https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj8tq6zAURb9GmimchyzpDDS4cPF_6NmI2nFxlBT69aWhkw73ZsFi1ZgzOqtbRO8cOhvA67ansZlRoxO7hJAgcWB2AIDkO_egr7GWYLnXlPsSJIukLA2XmiijLyhZj0hACxIKegLwF04EyUmg4rmSbcpCH-d9nsfjVi_l2PUWr3N-3BX_U7QqWs_2HO3z8pf6-RWtToptoVbF6674P-cOgQqYisUZ220wQtxNL94LClcPiz7j1zyVhW2k_bi9lDPmx_ZuXsV6xrfrcZ-_6xnpOwAA__8WOVQ4]
All companies start with a founder who asks some version of the same question: Imagine if this could be different?
What happens next is where the real story lives — when ideas become real. That path is hardly ever a straight line. But what’s shared among those who walk it is an obsession with building something truly great.
This year on our podcast, In Depth, we asked founders to retrace the steps they took to find product-market fit in more detail than they’ve ever shared before.
Owner co-founder and CEO, Adam Guild, takes us through how the idea for the company started after saving his mom’s struggling dog grooming business. Braintrust founder and CEO Ankur Goyal recounts first feeling PMF when he didn’t have to convince anyone to use the product. And Jyoti Bansal, founder and CEO of Harness, shares why the hardest decision he ever made was to break up with Netflix as a customer. You’ll also hear from the founders of Gusto, fal, Meter, Postman, Reducto, Sentry, Serval and Stedi.
Of course, this is only a sliver of the advice shared across dozens of episodes of In Depth this year. Here were some more of our favorites:
1. How Clay learned the problems its ICP needed to solve [https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj0tqxDAQBU8j7WRa3bI-Cy0CwffQr2MRexxszQRy-pAhm1m-R0FRNeasrZEtamettsaDk21PfVO9RhvM7H2CRJ7IAoBGx8RerpHJMlg7h-QZOYfMFXNBA60EQ1rLHhFw1qiDdgjgJkoIyQaPxVFF04QB7uc1zuN-q1M5drnFdYyvS9CbwEXgcrZHb9_TK_X3C1xSqQ5nBEHLLuidMoPHAqrqYpVh41VAYsXFuaADVQezPOPPOIWBraf9uD2VI-b79qmexXLEj_W4xv96RPwNAAD__4B8U18]: The product started as an API-connected spreadsheet that pulled information from many sources into one place — but it had too many ICPs, leading to inconsistent usage and feature bloat. After identifying agency owners (and eventually salespeople) as targets, co-founder Varun Anand wanted to better understand their problems. “I would join all these WhatsApp groups and basically wait for people to talk about problems related to data enrichment,” he says. “We used that as a way to get into the ecosystem and get people really solving their problems with Clay.”
2. Why Linear’s founders built a product for themselves, making it opinionated instead of flexible [https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj81qLCEQRp9Gdw5llVq6cHHh0u9R7U9G0j0depwJ5OlDhmyy_D4OHE7N62qD0y1bDsEGF4F122VsZtQckvMxCghFogAAFrlTj_qaQbwwSG8CITlIXL1Yz6mIWJTU9cgI6C3aZBkB-EKCICFFLEwVXVMO-jjv8zwet3opx663fJ3z467on8JF4XK252ifl7_Uz69wqVLDGjEqWnZF_2ntELGAqbYE47qLJiF10wtzsokqg9dn_pqncrAN2Y_bSznz-tjezatYz_x2Pe7zdz0zfgcAAP__h2RTjA]: Linear’s co-founder and CEO Karri Saarinen has always had a designer’s eye, but as a principal designer at Airbnb, that focused on a dissatisfaction with the company’s project management software. So he and his co-founders built an alternative. “My design philosophy has always been that you should design something for someone, and it’s really hard to design something good for everyone,” he says. “I don’t believe you can build the optimal tool for anything if it’s very flexible. So from the beginning, we wanted to be opinionated that there should be a good way of doing things.”
3. What the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition believes is the real moment a founder is born: [https://email2.firstround.com/c/eJxUj8tq6zAURb9Gmjmch3yONNDgwsX_IevRiNpxcZQU-vWloZMO92bBYpW4rijO1ogqguI8qK176tvUS5TgZu8TJPbMAgBI2rh5e43erdRIQZsrNYWsawZNKIIBnaTZ9khAMxIGVALQCyeCJMFTVi7kqnHQ-nkf5_G4lUs-drvF6xgfd8P_DC2GlrM-e_28_KV-fkMLI0qaZzW87Ib_89rAU4apYJbJNeenQNymllUDBi4Ksz3j1ziNg62n_bi9lCOuj-19ehXbEd-ux338rmek7wAAAP__C7BSog] Prior to Applied Intuition, Qasar Younis was a founder and COO at Y Combinator. He’s interacted with many founders and has identified this as the moment they truly claim the founder mantle: “A founder is not made when you decide to start a company or raise capital. A founder’s made when you get feedback about the product, the market or yourself, and interpret it correctly,” he says. “What’s really important is you have to somehow discount some people’s feedback and over-index on other people’s. This analysis interpretation is the true heart of being a founder, especially in the early days.”
Thanks, as always, for watching and sharing!
-The Review Editors
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