Astronomer lost zero customers and zero employees after CEO viral controversy
Viraj Parekh · He killed a $100K ARR product & pivoted—then raised $375M. | Viraj Parekh, Co-Founder of Astronomer · PMF Show · Dec 18, 2025 · at 2:41
Viraj Parekh, co-founder of Astronomer, discusses the internal fallout and retention after the company's former CEO became the subject of widespread viral media attention.
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“You know, I think the most exciting part for me from all that is throughout all of that, right? We do not lose a single customer or a single employee.”
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More from Viraj Parekh
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“We needed to show traction in a way that was set at a higher bar than if we were based in San Francisco, or if we had had the creator of the open source project on our team.”
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Parekh: Customer willingness to pay beats market size studies
“Like you could have every internal conversation that you want. You can kind of debate things to no end. You can look at studies about market size and so on and so forth. But when people who are willing to pay say, I will pay you if you can give me an easy butt…”
Parekh: Founders need 5 to 20 discovery calls daily to build resilience
“Unfortunately, the only way I found to get myself be able to do it and other founders I've talked to be able to do it is Just to do it nonstop. You really have to get yourself to get like five, 10, 15, 20 calls a day. Most of which you're getting bad news on a…”
Parekh: Anchor enterprise tech pricing against engineer salary multiples
“In the tech landscape, a really good guidance point for that is to do it with a, based on the salary of an engineer, right? You can say, hey, is this going to be worth half an engineer's salary to you? And you kind of put a number on that, or is this going to …”
Parekh: Value pricing shifts from labor cost to business risk
“And in that stage for us, the way you think about price and value is completely different because you're not thinking about, hey, what is the cost of an engineer doing it, right? You're thinking about what is that problem worth to a business and how would a bu…”