Inside Supademo’s PLG Growth with Joseph Lee

I am excited to have Joseph Lee, the founder of Supademo - The fastest and easiest way to create high-converting interactive demos with AI. Over 70k professionals in marketing, growth, sales, and success use Supademo to enable customers, scale product adoption and close more deals.

In this episode, Joseph Lee, founder of Supademo and former Freshline co-founder, shares his journey from seafood marketplaces to revolutionizing product demos. Joseph dives into building a product-led SaaS company, how Supademo scaled through SEO, Reddit, and handcrafted outreach, and why intuitive UX beats feature bloat. He unpacks the importance of market over founder, building brand as a moat in the AI age, and lessons from past pricing and hiring mistakes. Joseph also shares why startups shouldn’t overcapitalize early, how AI is reshaping the maker role, and his vision for Supademo becoming the “Calendly” of interactive demos—and much more!

Timestamps

01:05 – Joseph’s accidental path into entrepreneurship and early projects.

02:30 – Founding Freshline and tackling inefficiencies in the seafood supply chain.

04:05 – Pivoting Freshline during the pandemic to serve food distributors.

05:10 – What inspired Joseph to build Supademo based on past demo frustrations.

07:00 – The problem Supademo solves for knowledge workers across teams.

08:20 – Lessons from Superhuman and thoughts on pre-launch hype and waitlists.

09:35 – Getting early traction: Product Hunt, SEO, Reddit, and cold outreach.

11:25 – Manual demo outreach tactic Joseph used to hook potential users.

12:40 – Supademo’s PLG (Product-Led Growth) approach and ideal customers.

13:55 – Fundraising strategy: optimizing for optionality over maximization.

15:20 – Startup lessons from Freshline that influenced Supademo’s early success.

16:55 – Why a strong market matters more than just a shiny idea or founder pedigree.

18:10 – Supademo’s competitive moat: craftsmanship and brand, not features.

19:25 – Thoughts on remote vs. co-located teams for startup collaboration.

20:45 – The evolving definition of an engineer in the AI age.

22:05 – Future of product managers and convergence of maker skillsets.

23:15 – Supademo’s proactive adoption of AI tools like Cursor and Windsurf.

24:10 – Crazy product bet: making the whole experience login-less—and winning big.

25:30 – Supademo’s wide adoption across multiple functions beyond sales.

26:15 – Founders using Supademo for interactive investor pitch decks.

27:00 – Monetization lessons: underpricing and value-based pricing evolution.

29:00 – When to raise Series A: only with a clear growth thesis.

30:30 – Building outside Silicon Valley: Why Joseph moved from Canada to NYC.

Joseph’s Links 

LDN– https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhylee/

Website - https://supademo.com/

My Links 

Podcast: https://lifeselfmastery.com/itunes