Product-Market Fit Lost and Found After a 100x Spike

Episode notes

Negative 110% gross margins. Then COVID demand spiked 100x overnight - and nearly killed the company anyway. Pat Kinsel spent years chasing product-market fit while losing money on every transaction. When the pandemic brought 100x growth, most of those customers were urgency buyers who churned when COVID ended. Pat reveals the product-market fit journey behind Proof's rise to nearly $100M ARR - how he used a $0 landing page for market validation before writing code, why 10 years of lobbying across 47 states became a moat competitors cannot replicate, and how losing PMF after COVID forced a complete rebuild around enterprise. You will learn why product-market alignment sometimes has to be found more than once. Pat previously sold his startup to Twitter and spent time in venture capital. Proof (formerly Notarize) has raised $260M and now serves thousands of enterprise customers across identity verification and transaction security. Key Lessons Validate product-market fit before writing code: Pat built a $0 Unbounce landing page and ran Google Ads to prove people searched for online notary services - measuring acquisition costs and conversion rates first.