Clay’s path to product-market-fit: Building vertical, creating power users, and understanding founder psychology | Kareem Amin (Co-founder and CEO)

In Depth

English - January 18, 2024 12:00 - 54 minutes - ★★★★★ - 51 ratings
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Previous Episode: Inside Figma’s early days: How to build a world-class sales org | Kyle Parrish (VP of Sales)

Next Episode: The human side of world-class engineering leadership | Michael Lopp (Apple, Palantir, Slack)

Kareem Amin is the co-founder of Clay, a lead-generation software that uses AI to scrape 50+ databases and help companies scale their outbound campaigns. Before Clay, Kareem was the VP of Product at The Wall Street Journal. Kareem also co-founded Frame (useframe.com) which was acquired by Sailthru in 2012.
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In today’s episode, we discuss:

Creating a community of power users

How to stay ruthlessly focused and make decisions faster

Clay’s principles for finding product-market-fit

Why a company is the reflection of its founder’s personality

Aligning your own psychology with the business

The mindset change from a first to second-time founder

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Referenced:

Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/

Clay: https://www.clay.com/

Figma: https://www.figma.com/

Internal Family Systems: https://ifs-institute.com/

NetSuite: https://www.netsuite.com/

Notion: https://www.notion.com

Sailthru: https://www.sailthru.com/

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Where to find Kareem Amin:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kareemamin/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/kareemamin

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Where to find Todd Jackson:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddj0/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/tjack

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Where to find First Round Capital:

Website: https://firstround.com/

First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital

This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:36) Clay’s origin story
(05:54) Building for a specific customer
(10:42) Knowing when to build for a broader customer-base
(12:46) The life spiral framework
(15:52) How founders can make better decisions
(18:57) Kareem’s principles for product-market-fit
(25:36) Clay’s customer journey
(30:04) Interesting tactic to find power users
(34:00) How to know you have product-market-fit
(37:11) The impact of founder psychology on the business
(39:41) Mastering commitment to sprints
(40:47) How Kareem’s own personality affected his company
(43:31) Actionable advice to understand founder psychology
(46:25) Why focus is misunderstood
(47:09) The mindset shift from a first to second-time founder
(50:28) What’s next for Clay
(52:14) The best piece of advice Kareem has actioned

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In today’s episode, we discuss:

Creating a community of power users
How to stay ruthlessly focused and make decisions faster
Clay’s principles for finding product-market-fit
Why a company is the reflection of its founder’s personality
Aligning your own psychology with the business
The mindset change from a first to second-time founder

—

Referenced: