Startup Field Guide by Unusual Ventures

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 with successful startup founders, you will learn about hiring, product research, go-to-market, fundraising, and more.

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Recent Episodes
  • Jyoti Bansal on how Traceable found product-market fit
    Mar 19, 2025 – 00:29:49
  • Samantha Mckenna on why solving customer problems is the best sales strategy
    Sep 15, 2024 – 00:47:18
  • Relyance AI CEO Abhi Sharma on building an unreasonably hospitable sales culture
    Aug 25, 2024 – 00:40:19
  • Clay CEO Kareem Amin on AI-powered outreach for growth
    Jun 28, 2024 – 00:39:35
  • Scribe CEO Jennifer Smith on documenting workflows
    Jun 2, 2024 – 00:28:04
  • Eightfold AI CEO Ashutosh Garg on managing talent with AI
    May 19, 2024 – 00:36:38
  • Monte Carlo CEO Barr Moses on data reliability
    May 5, 2024 – 00:39:15
  • Perplexity CTO Denis Yarats on AI-powered search
    Apr 21, 2024 – 00:35:14
  • Everlaw CEO AJ Shankar on how AI is accelerating legal tech
    Apr 7, 2024 – 00:39:58
  • Deepgram's CEO Scott Stephenson on Speech AI
    Mar 24, 2024 – 00:41:11
  • Material Security's CEO Abhishek Agrawal on securing enterprise workspaces
    Mar 10, 2024 – 00:38:07
  • Hightouch's CEO Kashish Gupta on activating data for personalization
    Feb 25, 2024 – 00:34:53
  • Notion's Akshay Kothari on productivity and embracing AI
    Feb 11, 2024 – 00:41:39
  • Domino Data's Chris Yang on helping data scientists run AI
    Jan 29, 2024 – 00:44:49
  • Stytch's Julianna Lamb on the future of passwords
    Jan 14, 2024 – 00:36:46
  • Clari's Andy Byrne on how AI is changing revenue ops
    Jan 1, 2024 – 00:35:13
  • 2023 AI Wrapped: The "so whats?" behind this year’s top AI moments
    Dec 18, 2023 – 00:47:19
  • Coda's Shishir Mehrotra on reinventing team collaboration with AI
    Dec 10, 2023 – 00:47:21
  • MosaicML’s Naveen Rao on building an edge in AI infrastructure
    Nov 27, 2023 – 00:43:41
  • Sprig’s Ryan Glasgow on AI-powered product feedback
    Nov 13, 2023 – 00:43:31
  • Solo’s product-market fit journey: Idit Levine on timing the market for open source success
    Oct 30, 2023 – 00:45:00
  • Writer’s product-market fit journey: May Habib on taking on ChatGPT Enterprise
    Oct 16, 2023 – 00:31:05
  • How open source AI will find product market fit: A conversation with Databricks, and AI startup Together
    Sep 25, 2023 – 00:46:33
  • Deliverr's product-market fit journey: Michael Krakaris on enabling Prime for all E-commerce
    Sep 11, 2023 – 00:46:57
  • How Forward found product-market fit: Adrian Aoun on automating healthcare with AI
    Aug 28, 2023 – 00:34:29
  • How Sysdig found product-market fit: Loris Degioanni on leveraging open source for cloud security
    Jul 31, 2023 – 00:40:32
  • How Gretel found product-market fit: Ali Golshan on unlocking synthetic data for developers
    Jul 17, 2023 – 00:50:38
  • How Instabase found product-market fit: Anant Bhardwaj on automating data processes for the F100
    Jul 3, 2023 – 00:49:56
  • Launching Bright and Early: Naveen Gavini on growing from first mobile engineer to SVP Products at Pinterest
    Jun 19, 2023 – 00:30:33
  • How Weights & Biases found product-market fit: Lukas Biewald on dev-focused ML ops
    Jun 5, 2023 – 00:48:33
  • How 6sense found product-market fit: Jason Zintak on account intelligence for revenue teams
    May 22, 2023 – 00:29:06
  • How Hex found product-market fit: Barry McCardel on data collaboration
    May 8, 2023 – 00:45:31
  • How Glean found product-market fit: Arvind Jain on enterprise search and AI
    Apr 24, 2023 – 00:44:02
  • How Vercel found product-market fit: Guillermo Rauch on dynamic web app development
    Apr 10, 2023 – 00:41:04
  • How Amplitude found product-market fit: Curtis Liu on pivoting to analytics
    Mar 6, 2023 – 00:43:10
  • How PLG companies find product-market fit: Sandhya Hegde on product-led growth
    Feb 20, 2023 – 00:50:22
  • How Harness found product-market fit: Jyoti Bansal and John Vrionis on customer discovery
    Feb 6, 2023 – 00:38:56
  • How LaunchDarkly found product-market fit: Edith Harbaugh on building a developer movement
    Jan 23, 2023 – 00:41:10
  • How Jasper found product-market fit: Dave Rogenmoser on pivoting to AI SaaS
    Jan 9, 2023 – 00:41:47
  • How Aurora Solar found product-market fit: Chris Hopper on bootstrapping climate tech
    Dec 5, 2022 – 00:40:41
  • How Webflow found product-market fit: Bryant Chou on the no-code movement
    Nov 28, 2022 – 00:44:12
  • How Vanta found product-market fit: Christina Cacioppo on startup compliance
    Nov 21, 2022 – 00:43:28
  • How Cockroach Labs Found Product-Market Fit: Peter Mattis on Leveraging Open Source Software
    Nov 14, 2022 – 00:45:44
  • Andy Rachleff on coining the term product-market fit
    Oct 31, 2022 – 00:48:05
  • How SessionM found product-market fit: Lars Albright on customer loyalty
    Oct 17, 2022 – 00:44:10
  • How Shippo found product market fit: Laura Behrens Wu on democratizing shipping for small businesses
    Oct 10, 2022 – 00:26:07
  • How Oyster HR found product-market fit: Tony Jamous on leveling the global employment playing field
    Sep 26, 2022 – 00:40:42
  • How Arctic Wolf found product-market fit: Brian NeSmith on getting to the tipping point
    Sep 12, 2022 – 00:45:10
  • How StackRox found product-market fit: Wei Lien Dang on riding tech stack tailwinds
    Sep 2, 2022 – 00:36:20
  • How Carta found product-market fit: Henry Ward on distribution-led product strategy
    Aug 18, 2022 – 00:52:32
Recent Reviews
  • Alonmower
    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!
  • FirstTimeFounder
    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!
  • Priscilla Haven
    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!
  • Jon191991
    Incredible content
    Such a valuable resource for early stage founders! A must listen
  • Evenwing
    Great podcast for startup founders
    Really useful advice for founders on the first few years of building a software startup from a VC
  • AAve18
    Amazing founder stories
    Love hearing the stories of founders on their way to product market fit. So often you see the end result of a successful company but not the journey along the way. It’s so inspiring to hear founders talk about what worked and what didn’t work in the early stages, and the lessons learned from both. A must listen for anyone interested in entrepreneurship!
  • Cbigg123456
    Startup Founder
    This show is a great to listen to for all tech founders! Finding product market fit is one of the most important things you can do as a founder and Sandhya brings amazing product market fit stories to life!
  • Beantown Rules
    Must listen for founders
    Sandhya does an amazing job bringing out the best stories and insights as founders find their path (with lots of twists and turns) to product market fit. Highly recommend for all founders.
  • GigiProExtrovert
    Ideal for early stage software startups
    The specific questions Sandhya asks startup founders in this series has helped me gain a solid understanding of what it actually takes to become an “overnight” success as an early stage startup founder. Hearing these real, lived stories (and struggles) from other entrepreneurs is motivational!
  • podcasticSF
    Excellent content for tech startups enthusiasts
    Loved the podcast with Guy Podjatnu and Ben Williams from Snyk - really compelling PMF conversation. Well done Sandhya! Looking forward to more episodes. Let’s go :)
  • Emmar1988
    Venture
    Excellent new format for showcasing tech winners and their application of a product-led-growth mentality. Fun to see Unusual’s Field Guide themes successfully transferred to a new medium. Will be following this one.
  • ladymadrietta
    Terrific content!
    Such a thoughtful approach to guiding early stage founders! I look forward to future episodes.
  • Wordophile
    In-depth topics for early stage startups
    Really impressed by this podcast so far. Really timely conversations with founders and operators who’ve made pretty iconic companies. Thanks for making this!
  • Schwarzy123
    Great podcast for founders!
    Really insightful first episode on the challenges Snyk had in the early days. Looking forward to the next episode!
  • Rorules384
    Great new podcast
    Great content! Looking forward to future episodes.
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