He took 3 years to make his 1st sale—then grew 1000x to $10M ARR 3 years later. | Alex Hoff, Founder of Auvik

A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Alex got the co-founder of a public company to join him and raised $6M out of the gate—but it took him 3 years to make his first sale.
But after he shifted from selling to SMBs to selling to MSPs (Managed Service Providers i.e., outsourced IT), things took off:
April 2015 - $1K MRR
August 2015 - $10K MRR
June 2016 - $100K MRR
Nov 2018 - $1M MRR ($12M ARR)
And growth never stopped—soon, he'll cross $100M ARR.
Alex and his co-founder did many things differently. They came up with an idea by starting with markets, not customer problems. They raised a lot of money upfront and built a sophisticated product instead of an MVP. And they deliberated cultural values before making their first hire.
Clearly—it worked.
Why you should listen

• Learn why you should define culture before making your first hire.
• How to find market trends and customer problems top-down instead of bottoms-up.
• Why keeping your product unchanged but targeting a different market can have a massive impact and lead to product-market fit.
• Why you should be willing to be bold and not hedge.
• Why you should only focus on one thing at a time.
• How to use constraints to do more things faster.

Keywords

Auvik, software company, networking, SMBs, mid-market, decoupling, control plane, hardware, software solution, automate, configuration, user research, product design, team, company values, SaaS, IT management, product-market fit, pivot, managed service provider, MSP, boldness, discipline, advice
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:01:47) The Origin of Auvik
(00:07:20) Finding a co-founder
(00:12:35) It's People Who Build Companies
(00:14:10) Finding the Concept for Auvik
(00:20:07) Buikding the Product
(00:30:30) First Customer Experiences
(00:34:40) Feedback Loops
(00:39:08) Getting to a Million
(00:41:33) Finding Product Market Fit
(00:42:54) One Piece of Advice
Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Bab

1. He took 3 years to make his 1st sale—then grew 1000x to $10M ARR 3 years later. | Alex Hoff, Founder of Auvik (00:00:00)

2. The Origin of Auvik (00:01:47)

3. Finding a co-founder (00:07:20)

4. It's People Who Build Companies (00:12:35)

5. Finding the Concept for Auvik (00:14:10)

6. Building the product (00:20:07)

7. First Customer Experiences (00:30:30)

8. Feedback Loops (00:34:40)

9. Getting to a Million (00:39:08)

10. Finding Product Market Fit (00:41:33)

11. One Piece of Advice (00:42:54)