SaaStr 080: Segment's Peter Reinhardt on Why The Reality Distortion Field Is Damaging When It Comes To Product Market Fit, How Founders Should Approach Pricing Negotiations with Large Corporates & How Founders Can Truly Determine Product Market Fit?

Peter Reinhardt is the Founder and CEO @ Segment, the startup that allows you to collect all of your customer data and send it anywhere and they count some of the biggest and best companies in the world as customers including the likes of Reuters, HotelTonight, New Relic and Atlassian. They do not only have some of the world’s leading customers but some of the world’s best investors with the likes of Accel, Thrive and Kleiner Perkins participating in their latest $27m Series B. I would like to say a huge thanks to Grant Miller @ Replicated for the intro to Peter today.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Peter make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Segment?
• How does Peter define product market fit? Does he agree with Justin Kan in stating that it is when you get the first 10 customers that are unaffiliated?
• Why does Peter believe product market fit suffers when related to Job’s idea of the reality distortion field? What is so damaging and what should founders look to avoid?
• How do technical and non-technical co-founders differ in their approach to product market fit? How do their expectations, desires and reactions alter to differing levels of uptake?
• How did Peter navigate the process of scaling prices with time? Was he nervous when doing so? What does Peter advise founders when attempting significant price increases?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What were the biggest takeaways from YC?
2. What does Peter know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. The biggest challenge in building out the team?
4. Favourite SaaS resource or reading material?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Peter Reinhardt