First Round Capital reposted this
Some companies are what we at First Round Capital like to call a “fast bake,” where the ingredients coalesce from the start. (Uber and Square are examples — early on we saw strong momentum.) But others are more of a “slow bake,” or an under-the-radar journey to land on the right product and message for the right customer. Roblox comes to mind here — as does Clay. As they shared this morning, their recent traction is impressive. They’ve passed 100K users and 2500+ customers (including Anthropic, Intercom, Notion, Vanta, and Verkada). They just announced a $46M Series B (from us here at First Round along with our friends at @Meritech Capital and @Sequoia). What’s even more impressive is that this explosion in growth largely took place in the past 18 months or so. (As recently as spring 2022, Clay was still close to $0 in revenue.) But the reality is that this “overnight success” was 7 years in the making, as this timeline shows. What the headlines don’t capture is the years that Kareem Amin, Nicolae Rusan, and Varun Anand spent quietly plugging away. Years spent landing on the initial idea. Waffling back and forth between building a wide, horizontal product or committing to a narrow vertical use case. Picking the right initial wedge. Perfecting their messaging and positioning. Building a community from the ground up. Refining their self-serve motion and word-of-mouth engine. Layering on enterprise sales. For me, this is a reminder of the role that patience plays in company building. It takes a long time to build a transcendent company — and you’ll often be misunderstood, undervalued or even feel lost for most of that time. I’m so inspired by how Kareem and the entire Clay team have kept at it for the past 7 years — and I’m grateful that he chose to openly share more about their journey to PMF on The Review today so more builders can learn from it. (You can read the article in the comments.)
Love this, thanks Brett Berson. Curious about the horizontal vs vertical strategy decision companies have to make; what aspects made horizontal work well for Airtable and Notion but not for Clay?
This is my favorite type of content. The real story of struggle, persistence and iteration behind the “overnight success”
Brett Berson Thanks for sharing your experience. What you describe for Clay and Roblox is more likely to happen then the „overnight“ successes. Even it seems to be an overnight success if you look closer it is often not the real story. Most venture capitalists and business angels expect the companies to be overnight succeses and expect fast grow from the start. Which is very seldom. Do you have data which back up your fast bake vs. slow bake thoughts?
How did they raise a Series A in 2019 if they were close to $0 in revenue in 2022? Do you mean they pivoted and their pivot product was at $0 in revenue?
Love Clay’s product. In fact we are using it often to help GPs and LPs automate sourcing and outreach. Great to have „all“ foundation models in there and great UX, too. https://stackgenius.io/solutions/clay
love this article so much. thanks for writing it with such craft and care <3
Reminds me of this image. You never know how close you are to becoming the “overnight success”
Congratulations to Clay and the entire team! Their dedication and perseverance over the years are truly inspiring. Well-deserved success!
truly inspiring 🚀
Partner at First Round
3whttps://review.firstround.com/clays-path-to-product-market-fit/