He killed a $100K ARR product & pivoted—then raised $375M. | Viraj Parekh, Co-Founder of Astronomer

They were building a Segment competitor. It was working—customers were paying. But every sales call, prospects kept asking about the backend tech instead of the product. 

So they killed the roadmap and pivoted. It took them 18 months to hit $1M ARR. Then they started growing. And so far, they've raised $350M. 

Viraj walks through exactly how he validated the pivot, landed the first 10 customers, and why being outside Silicon Valley forced him to show more traction than everyone else.

Why You Should Listen

• How to know when your side feature is actually your real product
• The exact question to ask prospects to validate willingness to pay
• Why getting to $1M ARR slowly can set you up to scale faster
• How to compete when you're not based in Silicon Valley
• What talking to your first customer 4x a day for 2 months teaches you

Keywords

startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, open source startup, B2B SaaS growth, pivot strategy, developer tools startup, finding product market fit, early stage fundraising, design partners, commercial open source

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:46 Getting caught at the Coldplay concert

00:14:29 Deciding to Pivot From a Working Product to Something New

00:17:27 Building a Business Around Open Source Technology

00:19:38 Selling Before You Build

00:27:37 Talking to the First Customer Four Times a Day

00:30:51 Landing the First Ten Customers

00:35:10 Fundraising Without Silicon Valley Pedigree

00:38:48 When He Knew He Had Product Market Fit

Retry

Send me a message to let me know what you think!