#397: Two Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Answer

"If the customer doesn't scream, you don't have product-market fit." — Andy Rachleff Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This time, we have a slightly different episode—a takeover by Mike Maples, Jr. Mike Maples, Jr. (@m2jr) and his firm, Floodgate, have invested in and supported many of the startups you might recognize — including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, Chegg, and Okta, among others — long before they were household names. He's been on the Forbes Midas List eight times in the last decade, but he's much more than a successful investor. Mike has also succeeded as both a founder and operating executive. He's also simply a great guy and the first person who really taught me how to angel invest. For more on that background, listen to my interview with Mike at tim.blog/mikemaples. In this episode, however, Mike speaks with Andy Rachleff (@arachleff), co-founder of Wealthfront and Benchmark Capital, about two of the biggest questions that should be on every start-up founder's mind: How do you reach "product-market fit" (a term that Andy coined), and how do they know when you've achieved it? Andy has known many of the start-up world's giants and synthesized their lessons, so you will also hear what Andy learned from Don Valentine of Sequoia, Scott Cook of Intuit, Reed Hastings of Netflix, Geoffrey Moore, Clay Christensen, Eric Ries, and Steve Blank. The audio from this conversation is from the premiere episode of Mike's brand-new podcast, Starting Greatness, which I encourage you check out. There are some incredible guests coming. So, if you like this conversation between Mike and Andy, be sure to subscribe to Starting Greatness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also check out the website at greatness.floodgate.com, and on Twitter you can follow Mike at @m2jr and Andy at @arachleff. Please enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Peloton, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this