“So our average time to close about 20 days, and that's, like, enormously fast.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
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More from Siqi Chen
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Competitors Vena, Cube, and DataRails face acute churn problems
“So on Vena and Cube and Data Rails. And so their churn problems are like fairly acute and we get people switching from them all the time.”
Siqi ChenJan 5, 2026▶ 33:17It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
Insight
Operating without PMs only works when engineers build for themselves
“There was this viral thread about how Twitter or how Cursor doesn't have PMs. And I think Linear also said something similar. And people are like, yeah, we should have PMs. And That actually makes sense, but you have to really think about for whom it makes sen…”
Siqi ChenJan 5, 2026▶ 18:24It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
AssertionNot checkable as stated
a16z told Sandbox VR to plan for two-year COVID disruption in 2020
“They told us that, no, you need to plan for two years. Nobody was planning for two years in March of 2020.”
Siqi ChenJan 5, 2026▶ 5:49It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
Opinion
Founders find standard financial statements and QuickBooks completely useless
“Most founders would look at a financial statement or your QuickBooks and find it completely useless, right? It's very difficult to get insight from it. What you as a founder or CEO would think about is where did my money go in what categories?”
Siqi ChenJan 5, 2026▶ 16:44It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
What-if
Chen: Competing directly with QuickBooks would have been easier than integrating
“And in retrospect, it would have been probably a good idea to compete with QuickBooks early because that would have been actually easier to build and the market would have been larger.”
Siqi ChenJan 5, 2026▶ 19:56It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
Insight
Chen: FP&A is a strategic business simulation, not bean counting
“FP&A in general is in some ways a simulation of a business, and I think that's sort of not well understood, because most people think about finance as sort of bean counting, and that's like the accounting bit of finance, but the FP&A bit is strategic. It's abo…”
Siqi ChenJan 5, 2026▶ 2:15It took him 4 years to launch—then he hit $1M ARR in 30 days. | Siqi Chen, Founder of Runway · PMF Show
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