If you have a startup idea, how do you know whether you’re onto something—or just really good at convincing yourself?
Pete Martin has spent his career finding out. He’s worked at six cybersecurity startups, most of them in the pre-product, pre-revenue days, with two IPOs along the way. Today, he’s CEO and co-founder of Realm Security.
In this episode, we get tactical about finding the right early adopters, running customer discovery that produces actual signal, recognizing patterns in the feedback, and knowing when someone’s interest is strong enough to ask a question that makes a lot of founders uncomfortable:
Would you pay for this?
And if you’ve got an idea but aren’t ready to quit your day job, Pete lays out a seven-day experiment you can run to start finding out whether there’s really something there.
RUNTIME 36:19
EPISODE BREAKDOWN
(1:51) What does Realm do today, and who's buying it?
(3:28) Finding the right early adopters
(8:01) Where to locate your first potential customers
(12:54) Why customer discovery requires volume
(18:55) How to write outreach that gets a (positive) response
(21:05) When to say no to a potential customer
(23:48) Sell the outcome, not the features
(28:33) A seven-day experiment to test your startup idea
(33:01) When is it time to hire a sales team?
LINKS
Pete Martin
Realm Security
Are you building something that’s hard to explain?
That’s often a sign you’re working on something interesting, but it raises the risk that you’re missing out on fundraising, sales, hiring, and media opportunities.
I help early-stage founders sharpen the narrative: what matters, why now, who needs to care, and why they’re the right team to make it happen.
If you’re preparing for a raise, launch, important customer meeting, panel, or hiring push, I can help you pressure-test the story before the stakes get higher.
Visit the Fund/Build/Scale website to learn more, or email fundbuildscale@gmaii.com
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