Ryo Chikazawa, founder and CEO of Autify, explains how to interpret early customer feedback during product discovery interviews.
Insight
Early-stage B2B products without paying customers are effectively worthless
“Even in the early days, like, if we don't have any customers, like, if we don't have anyone who is paying for your technology, that would kind of tell you that, you know, your technology, your product is worthless.”
Insight
Founders should reapply to Y Combinator even after seven rejections
“I talk to a lot of, like, YC alumni, and then they say, like, you know, they got rejected many times. They get accepted, like, after three times or four times, even, like, seven times or something. You should apply many times.”
Opinion
Accelerators reject startups for lack of traction, not to test resilience
“I don't think they would test the resilience of the founder. You could be accepted without any product, without any client, so on. If you don't have any traction, you would be rejected. So that would be the reason, like, you know, too early.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Autify failed to raise any capital from Alchemist Demo Day investors
“Turned out, like, you know, we couldn't find any, like, good fit from the Demo Day, but we could have many opportunities to talk to a lot of variety of investors, so, yeah, a lot of learnings, although we couldn't raise any money from those investors from Demo…”
Opinion
Joining an accelerator is critical for scaling globally outside Silicon Valley
“I thought that joining accelerator would definitely be one of the important things to make the other successful startup that scales globally.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Autify spoke to 70 to 80 customers in three months without sales
“So we've been like talking to 70 to 80 customers already in the first three months, but we couldn't sell anything.”