Assertion certainty 3/5 debate potential 1/5

Denehy: Swarm sold its lousy $100 Wi-Fi sensor MVP to 100 customers

Ryan Denehy · 20VC: Why Pre-Product Market Fit Is About Systems Design Not Engineering, The Right Way For Leaders To Approach Wartime Leadership Today & A Guide To Recruitment Forward Planning with Ryan Denehy, Founder & CEO @ Electric · Nov 8, 2019 · at 11:40

Ryan Denehy, founder of Swarm and Electric.ai, explains how Swarm validated its initial business model by repurposing cheap Wi-Fi hardware to measure foot traffic.

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“And then we were able to, you know, we were able to sell that product to probably, I think, our first 50 or a hundred customers. It was a lousy product, but it was good enough for the early adopters to see what we were trying to do and prove that there was a business there.”

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