All of our Finding a startup idea articles

Alma’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How to Pivot and Succeed as a Solo Non-Technical Founder
Alma founder and CEO Harry Ritter sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he tackled a huge pandemic pivot that turned his initial startup idea on its head and found product-market fit twice.

The Rounds’ Path to Product-Market Fit: Accelerating the Eco-Friendly Delivery Startup through Gut Intuition
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, The Rounds’ Alex Torrey sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he came up with the idea for his eco-friendly delivery service, and what signals guided him along the way.

Webflow’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons on Creating a Market with Rigorous Customer Empathy
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Webflow’s Bryant Chou sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he and his co-founders leaned into the power of customer empathy to create the leading visual development platform for building powerful websites.

X1's Path to Product-Market Fit — How the Consumer Credit Card Company Pulled off a Pandemic Pivot
In our "Paths to Product-Market Fit" series, X1 founder and CEO Deepak Rao sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the dramatic story of how his company pivoted during the pandemic and found product-market fit with a bold launch strategy.

Retool’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster
In our "Paths to Product-Market Fit" series, Retool founder and CEO David Hsu sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share how the internal tools company hypothesized, tested and iterated its way to 100 happy customers

Maven's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Leveraging Community in the Early Days
In the second post for our new series, "Paths to Product-Market Fit," Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the inside story of the first female-led telemedicine startup to achieve unicorn status.

Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Building Horizontal Products
In the first post for our new series, "Paths to Product-Market Fit," Airtable co-founder Andrew Ofstad sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the inside story of the no-code platform's long journey and the challenges they came across while building a horizontal product.

The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas
The traditional approach is to do some customer research, throw an MVP out there as fast as possible, and hope it hits. After being early at three startups that achieved over $1M in run-rate in their first six months of going live, Gagan Biyani has landed on an approach that’s quite different.