Finding Product-Market Fit: A Pivot to $2.5M ARR

Guillermo Sanchez quit his consulting job at Deloitte on a Monday after a Friday night pub conversation. He had 20,000 euros in savings. Then an apartment deposit wiped out half his runway before he made a single sale. Finding product-market fit would take years of selling to the wrong customer before one lucky break changed everything.

Publitas sold digital publishing to trade publishers who feared transparency. Growth stalled because purchases came from innovation budgets, not operational spend. Finding product-market fit required a SaaS pivot: when a major Dutch retailer approached them, the analytics engine publishers rejected was exactly what retailers wanted. The same product, repositioned to a different customer segment, took Publitas to $2.5M ARR with 600+ customers.

Guillermo shares how a concierge MVP let them sell before building, why getting customers to fund product development is possible when you invest in understanding their problems, and how finding product-market fit through a customer segment pivot saved the company from dying. His philosophy on sales - "you don't sell to people, you make them want to buy" - shaped every step of the journey toward product-market fit.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🔄 Finding product-market fit saved Publitas from dying: Publishers saw digital as a threat and bought from innovation budgets. Retailers valued the same product for analytics. Switching customer segments turned stagnation into rapid growth.
• 🛠️ Use a concierge MVP to sell before you build: Guillermo delivered digital publications as a manual service first, automating tasks over time. This generated revenue from month one without outside funding.
• 💰 Get customers to fund your product development: Publitas built enough trust that customers paid for features before they were built, effectively co-financing the company's growth.
• 📉 Over-investing in sales costs your competitive edge: Guillermo focused on selling instead of building the product team. Competitors with stronger engineering outpaced them.
• 🎯 Recognize when growth stalls mean finding product-market fit requires a pivot: Publitas had paying publishers but no week-over-week growth. Guillermo used Paul Graham's 5-15% weekly growth benchmark to recognize they lacked product-market fit.
• 🧠 Solve problems instead of selling products: Guillermo discovered that understanding a customer's problem deeply is more effective than any sales technique. His philosophy: "You don't sell to people, you make them want to buy."

Chapters

• Introduction
• How the pub conversation started Publitas
• Quitting Deloitte with almost no product
• Starting with 20K euros and losing half immediately
• Selling the concierge MVP to publishers
• How customers financed product development
• Pivoting from publishers to retail
• Why Publitas would have died without the pivot
• Growing to $2.5M ARR with 600+ customers
• Running a 20M visitor platform with 9 people
• Lightning round

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/47
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email