Rehman built two products that both found paying customers and both hit a wall on growth, before he and his co-founder distilled everything down to the one data point users actually valued. This conversation is about what happens when talking to users and moving fast still isn't enough, why salespeople will love your product and still never be the one who buys it, and how ditching an MCP for a CLI turned into the fastest growth curve his startup has seen.
In this episode:
→ Why two products with real paying customers still weren't enough to build a business
→ The "happy ears" problem: why glowing feedback doesn't mean anyone's going to pay
→ The one data point buyers cared about, and why almost everything else Saber built didn't matter
→ Why salespeople can love your product and still have zero authority to buy it
→ How ditching an MCP for a CLI closed Saber's first deal within a month
→ Why 95% of Saber's biggest users now run the entire product from inside Claude Code
For founders mid-pivot, tired of "build it and they'll come," and curious what it actually takes to land on the one thing that works.
----------- Episode's Chapters -----------
0:00 — Introduction & Claude Fable Release
1:33 — Meet Rahman: Building Saber
4:40 — Biggest Startup Failures
13:12 — Rethinking the MVP in the AI Era
20:27 — Sponsor Break: Rewardful
24:43 — Pivoting Again: Lessons from Growth Struggles
31:12 — The Claude Code Breakthrough for Saber
35:10 — Team Decisions & the Future of AI
🎙️ Rehman — https://www.linkedin.com/in/rehmanabdur/
Saber — https://www.saber.app/
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