Timeline and Customer Acquisition

Josh Ma and his co-founder interviewed 46 engineers before writing a single line of code for Airplane. Their SaaS go-to-market strategy started strong - but selling to tech startups stopped working when budgets tightened in 2022.

In this episode, Josh reveals how Airplane pivoted its SaaS go-to-market from Silicon Valley startups to fintech and healthcare verticals, reaching 7-figure ARR. You will learn why founder-market fit matters more than TAM, how Google Ads landed their first five largest customers, and why cold outbound emails produced zero traction.

Airplane is a platform for engineers to build internal tools. The company has raised over $40M from Benchmark and has a team of 20 people. Josh credits their go-to-market strategy shift to vertical targeting and word-of-mouth growth.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Founder-market fit filters out bad ideas early: Josh used two tests - "Can I spend 10 years on this?" and "Do customer conversations give me energy?" - to select Airplane's SaaS go-to-market direction.
• 🤝 Interview 40+ prospects before writing code: Airplane talked to 46 engineers about frustrations and workflow gaps, which led them to the script-running problem that became their core product.
• 📉 The startup-selling SaaS go-to-market playbook broke in 2022: A $30K contract negotiation took six months with a startup, forcing Airplane to pivot to non-tech verticals with less constrained budgets.
• 🏢 Target specific verticals for a horizontal go-to-market strategy: Fintech and healthcare companies had regulation and compliance needs that created stronger demand for internal tooling.
• 💰 Google Ads can bootstrap early enterprise deals: Airplane used paid search to land its first five largest customers at $20K ACV, making acquisition break-even at one deal per month.

Chapters

• Introduction
• Josh's motivation and what Airplane does
• How the Airplane product experience differs from competitors
• Business size - 7-figure ARR, $40M raised, 20 people
• Josh's background as CTO at Benchling
• How the Airplane idea came about through exploration
• Idea filters and founder-market fit
• Why founder-market fit matters more than TAM
• How to run pre-build customer interviews
• Entering a crowded market and why competition is overrated
• Build versus buy - selling to developers
• Shipping the MVP in four months
• Getting the first 10 paying customers
• Why Josh wishes he shipped the MVP sooner
• Word of mouth as the primary growth driver
• Content marketing strategy for developer tools
• Why Google Ads worked despite common wisdom
• Why cold outbound emails failed
• Shifting from startups to fintech and healthcare verticals
• Messaging a horizontal product for specific verticals
• Lightning round

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/370
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email