Jul 3, 2023 · 37m · product-market-fit
Martin Basiri, Founder of Applyboard | How to Find Product Market Fit · PMF Show
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Product Market Fit Show, ApplyBoard co-founder Martin Basiri shares how he transformed his personal struggles as an international student into a $4 billion ed-tech unicorn. He discusses pivoting business models, overcoming VC rejections, recruiting early talent with relentless hustle, and launching his new venture, Passage.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Pablo holds 29.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Pablo as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 0.2 Pablo pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is Pablo, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 34:36 Rejecting the conventional PMF realization moment
When asked when he knew he had true product-market fit, Martin reframes the premise by asserting 'almost never,' stating he had unshakeable confidence before writing a line of code while constantly feeling unsatisfied with current progress.
Hardest push from Pablo ▶ 11:15 Challenging the apparent obviousness of the business modelPablo challenges the assumption of effortless success by pressing Martin on the non-obvious mistakes and missteps that occurred before the company reached its multi-billion dollar scale.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 11:51 Explaining the VC blind spot regarding non-elite universitiesMartin educates Pablo on the demographic blind spot of Ivy League venture capitalists who couldn't comprehend why middle-class families in developing nations liquidate assets to attend non-elite tier-two colleges.
Pablo holds their own ▶ 26:29 Pablo synthesizes the 10x ROI customer pull frameworkPablo demonstrates strong domain expertise by delivering an extended synthesis of how massive asymmetric value creation for both students and universities created the foundational pull for ApplyBoard.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Pablo as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Pablo pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origins: From Engineering Student to First Sale | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Pablo opens by setting the stage on ApplyBoard's massive valuation and invites Martin to share his origin story. Martin details his journey from engineering student in Iran to arriving in Canada and launching a crude initial landing page that made a day-one sale. | |
| Developing the Business Model and University Partnerships | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Pablo pushes Martin to clarify how automated the early product was and how he got past gatekeepers at universities with zero credibility. Martin explains physically walking into admissions offices and learning that charging per-student recruitment fees was far more lucrative than SaaS subscriptions. | |
| Early Fundraising Hardships and Frugal Operations | 4 | 5 | 0 | 1 | Pablo remarks that the international student model sounds obvious in hindsight and asks what went wrong early on. Martin educates him on how elite-educated VCs fundamentally failed to understand why a student in India would sell their family home to attend a tier-two Canadian university. | |
| Overcoming VC Objections and Geographic Biases | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Pablo offers insightful commentary on hiring unproven talent with high drive before asking why VCs passed. Martin explains the stark contrast between immigrant VCs who instantly grasped the model versus traditional Silicon Valley investors who were skeptical of Canadian startups. | |
| Recruiting Top Talent and Early Entrepreneurial Hustle | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Pablo asks about pivotal early hires, and Martin shares an anecdote about convincing his first software developer to join by offering to sell his Audi TT convertible to cover payroll if things went south. | |
| Behind-the-Scenes Fulfillment and First Student Successes | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Pablo asks if ApplyBoard disguised its manual processes as automation to customers. Martin gently corrects the premise, noting that customers actually expected personal manual service and only cared about outcomes, comparing it to not needing to know how an Amazon warehouse operates. | |
| Radical Customer Focus and the Vision for Passage | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Pablo delivers an extensive analysis linking extreme customer focus and high-ROI value creation to startup pull. Martin reinforces this by explaining how making the platform free for students and securing tuition discounts paved the way for his new venture, Passage. | |
| Scaling Through Global Agent Partnerships | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Pablo inquires about the critical strategic shift to partnering with overseas agents. Martin recounts noticing anomalous heavy IP traffic on their search tool, discovering international agents were using it, and deciding to partner with them based on mission alignment rather than short-term margin maximization. | |
| Product-Market Fit Milestones and Hiring for Drive | 4 | 4 | 1 | 0 | In the quickfire wrap-up, Pablo asks when Martin first felt true PMF. Martin playfully dismisses the premise by stating 'almost never' because he always demanded more growth, followed by advising founders to always prioritize raw drive and purpose over existing experience. |
Statements from this episode (12)
Srugo: Passage announced a $40M round, Canada's largest seed round
“Just actually last week, you announced what I think is Canada's largest seed round. We can even call that a forty million dollar round for your new startup passage.”
Srugo: ApplyBoard is worth $4 billion as a top Canadian unicorn
“You're the CEO of Applyboard, which is, you know, now worth four billion dollars, making it one of the biggest unicorns in Canada.”
Basiri: ApplyBoard earned its first $500 customer on launch night
“First night, we put the software up someone paid 500 dollars to get the admission package to come to Canada for whether it's for Canada or for an English language test, for English language program, sorry.”
Basiri: ApplyBoard started 99.9% manual and 0.1% automated
“If let's say that is hundred percent, day one might be, like.1% automated, 99.9% manual, and over years became more automation, went up where the manual went down.”
Basiri: Elite VCs failed to grasp demand for tier-two universities
“The fundraising for the first couple of years was extremely hard. Because a lot of the VCs, they go to very top schools like Harvard, Sanford, Yale, Columbia, and those schools, UPenn, and the fact that someone's like, sell their home and belongings in India t…”
Basiri: Training junior talent beats hiring seniors even when well-funded
“So we had to, like, get a lot of junior people, train them to be, to act even better than seniors versus get a lot of senior people that they do the job. However, later on in the company, I realized that that is actually the big model, even when you have the m…”
Basiri: ApplyBoard raised a funding round every 11 months starting in 2018
“Every 11 months is starting in 2018, so three years after building the company, every 11 months we done one fundraising, the company, right, went from, like, low valuation to, like, unicorn status and continuing”
Basiri: ApplyBoard Never Had Trouble Pitching Immigrant VCs
“We never have problem with immigrant VCs. Which there are not that many immigrant VCs. That's why the fire racing was hard. But like, any immigrant VCs, right away, they were getting it. I didn't even have to tell them about problems.”
Basiri: Candidate Rejection Is Emotionally Harder Than VC Rejection
“Actually like the rejection for me was a little like even harder to, you know, emotionally harder than that, like rejection from the disease because, you know, this person can make that decision versus, eh, I can't confirm that my firm doesn't want to do that,…”
Srugo: Wealthsimple's Mike Katchen Called Every User Within 30 Seconds Early On
“When I was talking to Mike Kachin from Wealthsimple, he mentioned in the early days, he would call up every user 30 seconds after they signed up, right? We're talking free users who probably hadn't deposited any money yet, download their app, sign up, and they…”