a16z Podcast - Jack Altman on Product-Market Fit

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Jack Altman joins Speedrun to discuss product-market fit, customer feedback, hiring, fundraising, and the realities of building an enduring company. Drawing on his experience building Lattice from startup to multi-billion-dollar company, Altman explains how founders should think about customer requests, when to pivot, and why some of the hardest decisions come from balancing conviction with market feedback. He shares lessons from the early days of Lattice, including finding product-market fit, building a sales motion, hiring the first employees, and navigating the tradeoffs that emerge as companies scale. The conversation also covers fundraising, co-founder relationships, startup momentum, and what Altman looks for today as an investor at Alt Capital.   Resources: Follow Jack Altman on X: https://x.com/jaltma Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You've got to have some North Star vision of your product. It's obviously wrong to scramble to every single customer request. It's also wrong to ignore it all. Some of it's good, some of it's bad. You're both hungry to just find private market fit, but you have some people who are asking you still, oh, if you could do this, I'd really like that. And you kind of have to just trust yourself to say, I'm going to ignore that.

Sometimes it's clear. Sometimes you know it's right or wrong, but I think most of the time those calls are hard. One of the most common pieces of startup advice is, listen to your customers. But what happens when customers ask for the wrong thing? Founders are constantly balancing competitive forces. Conviction versus feedback, focus versus opportunity,

and short-term revenue versus long-term vision. Jack Altman has spent years navigating those tradeoffs, first as the co-founder and CEO of Ladis, and now as an investor through Alt Capital. In this speed-run conversation, Jack shares lessons on product market fit, customer feedback, hiring, fundraising, and what separates companies that find momentum from those that stall.

Let's talk about Jack Altman. Started off investment banking. Then you were an early startup employee, a T-spring. Then you built lattice, unicorn company. Then you started a fund. $275 million first fund. Three kids? A really popular podcast.

Yeah. What's next? Energy drink? Or are you going to start training for MMM? fighting. I don't know. I might just come do speed run all the time. What's kind of talk about this part of your life that you're in now? Kind of what's lighting you up? What's firing you up? It's just caffeine or?

It's a lot of caffeine. The little kids make, they take every minute. They're six, three, and one. So that's a lot of it. But I'm loving investing right now. And I did some of it while I was running lattice. But the truth is, well, when I was building a company, investing was totally uninteresting to me. I just wanted to work on my company and like going and meeting another founder. I was like, I'm happy for you, but I just like can't get myself excited. Like I just too in the tunnel. And now I'm enjoying being not in tunnel vision. And so for me, I feel like life has always been chapters and I just like embrace the changes. But at the moment, I'm loving investing. And that's, that's what I've been doing the last two years now. And then, you know, in terms of your journey,

so when I met you were at T-Spring and you were the VP of Business Development, Had you been a VP of anything at that point? No. I had never managed anybody. When I joined T-Spring, it was like 10 people or 12 people, and over two years it became like 300 people, as you saw. And that was probably too fast. You know, it's hard to do. Obviously, like, we'll talk about this.

But like right now we're probably in like the most momentum-centric moment of startup building, at least I've ever seen, which isn't a bad thing. But we definitely had that. So, no, it all, I've learned everything about management in that period of time, I guess. And what's interesting is I'm wondering, you know, what was it about that experience that made you say, you know what? Next time I'm going to be the founder, I'm going to, I'm going to be the one in the hot seat, you know, where there's scars or anything you need to work through from that experience. I think on some level I had the, like, Jeff Bezos regret minimization thing, which is I was like, I know I love tech, I know I love startups. And if I don't try to build my own company at some point, I'm like, that is.

seemed to me at least like the pinnacle startup experience out of all of the different seats and tech and you know that was kind of how I felt about it and so I just was like if I don't try my hand at building a company I'll kind of always regret it and I was at an age in a point in my life where it made sense to do it but then just in terms of like the origins of this spirit right there's there's entrepreneurship in your family right this seems to be it just seems to be kind of a core value did you have some you know elementary schools candy business like I did or, you know, when did it start? Not at all. I mean, look, we grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and it was not, like, there was no sort of focus on tech or even like professionalism

in general, like for the future, I would say, you know, like embedded in our childhood. Not in a negative way. I think I'm like a positive way. It was just like focused on being a kid. It was really how I remember it. And it wasn't until coming out here. But I think once I worked at a YC company and you're at like a small company, like I'm sure for all of you, like hopefully most of your 12th employees will want to start startups one day. Like I think that's a really good thing

if you have the types of employees that have been founders or want to be founders or could be founders. So I think some of it too is once you work at a company that's like that, you're like, I want to see if I can do it. You're like, I could do that. Maybe.

Maybe I could do it. And then in terms of the idea for lattice, you kind of talk about how you can't, how many of you've heard of lattice? That's pretty good. So, so Lattis is a phenomenal success story. I think you guys, what, raised it around $300 million. Yeah. No, 300 million. No, it was $3 billion. Oh, $3 billion. Yeah, $3 billion valuation. Yeah, $300 billion. We'll go with that. You know, you got to unicorn status in five years. It all sounds very easy. You know, how sure were you

about that idea when you, when you set off on the adventure? I knew there was a problem, but I didn't know it was actually like our third pivot. So it was, we had the problem. right, which was that like people management was a problem at startups and that there was coordination issue between employees and feedback and compensation, all these like murky HR people issues, but we didn't have the right solution. So we knew the problem, we got the problem right. We had the wrong solution. What was sort of the rubric you used to say, okay, pivot time? This is not always true, but this was something I came to believe, both with like, you know, getting initial product market fit. And then Lattis was also a company that launched many products.

We had four product lines at substantial revenue over the years. And so I came to the view that most of the time when stuff works, it works fast. And I still believe that. And now with my investing, I still mostly think that. And that's not like a hard and fast rule. There are things that take time. There are situations where you don't quite have price market fit, and it is actually right on the other side of like a few more features or a little bit more sanding of the edges.

But directly speaking, when people want what you're selling, you know kind of quickly, I think. And we just weren't getting the pull. And so it always seemed like one more feature, one more feature, and it was just never there. And then on a third, you know, a third attempt, it was like all this stuff was broken and we sold it anyway. And at the beginning, you were really hands-on in sales, as I remember. How big did you do the company get before you started to kind of step away from that? step away, probably like 10 million of error. But I wasn't like, I was not the best sales rep even by like 2 million of error. And I didn't do sales for the, I mean, I did sales at first to see,

you know, to try to have a business at all. But then at some point, the reason I still think it's good for founders to do sales, even when you have a sales team that can be productive, is I still think it's how you find, I think sales is the best way to find product market fit. And even when you're in early revenue, I still think that the person who's doing the sales conversations or the customer success conversations just as good, if not better. I think being in those rooms is like the best way still to know exactly what's not resonating, what lights customers up. And so I just didn't want to get away from that. And the truth is, you know, still the end. At $100 million of revenue, I was still selling customers periodically just because I was like,

I just want to see what deals hard. And how often did you have to sort of wrestle with this potentially large customer wants this one thing, or they think they need this one thing that we don't currently have, and it kind of pull us away from our roadmap. Do we do it? Do we not do it? Every day. Like, constantly. Then how did you manage that?

Well, some of it's good, some of it's bad. And that's the issue with it is like some of it is, like, it is wrong to, it's obviously wrong to scramble to every single customer request. Like, there's plainly that won't work. it's also wrong to ignore it all and just be like, nah, I know best, like, let me tell you why the thing I'm,

you know, building is perfect and why your idea is wrong. And so some of it is like a judgment, you know, back and forth dance with customers to figure out, you know, you've got to have some North Star vision of your product, but then I do think customers are good

at helping fill in the gaps of, like, within this outline, like, what's the color in the blanks? So I think you actually have to listen to it. One of the trickiest things, is when you get like a big customer, like some big enterprise comes along. And they're like, hey, we'll give you $400,000 a year

if you do this thing that zero other customers have asked you for. And right now you're at 220,000 of error. And you're like, oh, I could triple if I just derail myself for like a month. It's like kind of tempting. And usually, you know, usually that's a hard call. Sometimes it's clear. Sometimes you know it's right or wrong, but I think most of the time those calls are hard.

But it's never a month and it's never their last ask. Yeah. And you know, you'll hear stories about like at a company like Stripe, for example, they had a couple early, really big customers. I think like Shopify and Lyft, who pushed their product roadmap in directions that turned out to be really helpful for a lot of other customers. And so this is why it's not straightforward.

And I don't think you can apply like a this is correct or this is incorrect thing to it. I think you really have to like think about it and see like if we listen to you know, Shopify, are we going to get a lot of features out of these requests that other people aren't currently asking for, but that will help a lot of other large customers or whatever else. And then when you were first kind of ramping up in sales, did you hire seasoned sales folks, or did you hire kind of you, but a couple years younger right out of school? How did you think about it? What we had good luck with early was we needed sales reps who were like pretty creative and entrepreneurial. Like we tried a couple sort of like out of huge org sales reps and that just like worked less well for us.

They like wanted to play a book. They wanted to just like throughput this thing that like wasn't ready yet. And they like had to figure out how to be creative and like figure out a process. Because like at the beginning you're trying to figure out a sales process as much as you're just trying to like sell stuff. And how far ahead of your current capabilities were you selling? You know, you're always sort of as the CEO, you're always selling a little bit ahead. Definitely. I was selling like six months ahead.

Wow. And my co-founder would get really mad at me. So, but then at some point he was like, you know, kind of accepted that it was like useful. I would say the sales team was trying to, I was trying to tell them not to sell ahead, even though I was doing it. Because like I actually think that like by and large with customers, if you are selling things you don't have, I actually think that's really expensive to your brand and reputation. So I didn't want to do that, like, broadly. Like, people talk, the best referrals are ones from existing customers. And so, like, I actually think it's important that customers like your product and get what they thought they were getting and all of that.

But at the same time, speaking out the other side of their mouth, I did find it helpful to say, you know, we're thinking about doing this thing. We don't have it yet. But if we do, would you be interested? And that you can kind of feel as a founder, you know, will my aperture open a little bit or a lot if we're, if we're not. had this thing. And that can kind of guide your product roadmap. So I do think some amount of that's important. And then as you as you start to scale, then it shifts from not just the challenge of selling, but actually getting folks implemented in live. Were there any kind of any, if I could do it all over again, how would I think about implementation? Oh yeah. On the first product, it didn't have good

product from market fit, which was this like goal management tool, OCare Management. You remember from I remember. And it's like we built the shit out of this product. like way too many features, like, and then people just like didn't want it that bad. And then on performance reviews, we built like some of it. And then we were just like, here's designs of what it's going to look like. You should trust us that we're going to be able to build it. And people were like, great, we'll pay you for it. But I remember the very first like annual paying customers we had for performance reviews,

launch performance reviews without there yet being a completed way to close the performance review and do the follow up work. And so as the first performance review, was going live, my co-founder is like programming the ability to end the cycle and share feedback and stuff like they were like on the beginning of the roller coaster that didn't yet have the end. And so like, and I'm like, that's good. And it worked. And like, you know, he was tired and he got it done and it's fine, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I think that's a better way to approach the early crunchy days of a startup than like trying to make everything absolutely perfect. It's

just like it's not the right energy usually. Yeah, I mean, I think that's that often you just build the wrong thing. Yeah. You sort of have to go through it. One cat, I mean, we could talk about things that are like the same and different from, you know, I started last in 2015. Now it's 2026. Like a lot has obviously changed.

I do think one thing that has changed is the like standards of product quality have just gone up a lot. And, you know, I remember thinking this and I guess we got the performance reviews things live like end of 2016. But I remember talking about like, oh man, these companies from 2010. that just got this like piece of junk live, but it was cloud-based and they just like ripped. Like how lucky were they?

Because those products were awful. And look how much harder, how much better arts have to be. Now I see like, you know, a product of, you know, a series A company with like three million of ARA.

And I'm like, whoa, that is a much more polished product than we have. So I do think that like, I don't know if this is a, I think this advice maybe should be a little bit adjusted for the time because I do think standards from customers are a little bit higher. on what product quality should look like.

So I'm less confidenter on this. So you mentioned your co-founder, which Eric Coslow's co-founder, really great human being. And you guys had a very successful co-founder relationship. Lots of startups really struggle with that. Do you have any kind of pattern recognition on what works and what doesn't work?

There was some luck involved. I mean, we were friends and colleagues from T-spring. And so there was like a lot of trust there. But like, I don't think we knew when we got started how close we would be. So there was some luck involved there. But to like highlight what it like, you know, we, I think with a different co-founder for both of us, we would have like quit, you know, before we had found product market fit.

And there was the sense of like, oh, I asked this person I really care about to like take the sleep. And so we got to keep pushing and like not give up just yet. So there was like a lot of caring trust in there, which I think like that just like helps you get through tough times. I think the other thing that was really useful was there was a high degree of like professional trust, like, I thought he was good at what he was good at. He thought I was good at what I was good at. And as a result, we, like, have clarity in, like, domains. And there wasn't a lot of second-guessing each other.

There wasn't a lot of, like, getting in the way of each other's stuff. There wasn't a lot of, like, both looking over the computer at the same issue trying to solve it together. So there was, like, a high degree of divide and conquer and trust the other person. So those were really good. And did you guys have any sort of rituals that you think supported the partnership over time? We were definitely co-founders who were friends. It wasn't like we were just like best friends doing a company together. Like our relationship was rooted in work for sure. But like the fact that we spent so much time together outside of work too,

I think led to like a lot of shorthand-out work. So I think it was like just a large amount of like time together. I also think there was like a degree like in a personal relationship too of like we both let little stuff go. Stuff never got ad hominem. We didn't hold back from telling each other the truth. We would get into loud arguments like in front of everybody not hiding anything,

but it was always over like the ideas at hand never like attacks at each other. So it was like a high, it was like a high trust relationship, but that included like a lot of arguing. Creating something is hard. And so there's going to be friction. And so I think it sounds like you guys kind of said,

okay, we are having a disagreement right now. Yeah. And we would like kind of like bicker in like a sibling. You know, it's like it wasn't like if you said X and I thought 20 degrees different from what you said, but I didn't have that close relationship. But I didn't feel like fighting with you. I'd just like, yeah, sure. But it wasn't like that.

I was like, no, actually I think it's a little bit different. You know, and I think I think that actually mattered. In hindsight, what were the sort of what were the big leverage points that you got out of the YC program? I think there's like two things that stuck out to me. One was the clarity of what actually matters. Like I do think programs like Speed Run, like YC, are very good at helping people really just internal. Because it takes some repetition to internalize these things that we've all seen in blog posts. And we've all like seen on Twitter that like the only things that matter are like getting product market fit and building a great team.

And the only things that get product market fit are talking to users and building product. And like it feels like there's so many other things that are important when you're running a very early stage startup. And they kind of are, but they basically aren't. And it just, it requires repetition. And so I think that was one thing, was like setting the DNA early of, like, the clarity of this matters, this doesn't matter. And then was there anything that was just kind of noise? The advice that you're going to get in any program, maybe there's an exception here. But generally speaking, any, anytime anybody's trying to give advice, this is why I'm, like, trying to say, like, nothing I'm saying I'm totally confident about.

But, like, any advice that you get that's giving to a group of companies is, you're not. doing its best to fit to the highest number possible. But there's no advice that's right for 100% of companies. And so what you end up getting is a bunch of advice that probably is actually right 80% of the time. But like if, you know, there's 10 pieces of advice given, two out of those 10 aren't going to be right for you, just statistically or whatever.

So I do think that if you listen to it all as dogma, you're going to something's going to be wrong for sure. When you think back to hiring those first few employees, sort of, you know, where did they come from? And how did you sort of convince them to join? Two things are true. One is, in order to be a great company, you need a high percentage of your first 10 employees to be, like, truly great. There's, like, almost no examples of great companies where, like, that didn't happen. And so that's the task at hand.

And you also have to sort of take the pragmatic view that an obviously great employee it doesn't make that much sense for them to be the sixth employee at a startup. The reason doesn't make that much sense is if they are that obviously great, they're going to go get $10 gazillion dollars from a frontier lab or SpaceX or whatever,

or they're going to get an exact job at some super hot series D company or they're going to be a founder. And so what you're really looking for is diamonds in the rough of people who are in fact great but are not legibly great to the entire world. It's the only way. So this is like a piece, you know, again, this is 80% confidence advice.

Like there are tons of other examples. There's a lot of situations where like somebody will be sitting here and they're like, well, I built, you know, this is my third company. My last two were unicorns. I have all these amazing people who would follow me to the ends of the earth. Like, this isn't for you. But generally speaking, the goal of the first 10 employees is diamonds in the rough. And like that has to be the mindset.

And then, you know, when you think about onboarding on a small team, sort of, how did you sort of set the tone for that first 10 people? We didn't do a heavy onboard because when you're 10 people, it's just like you could do the hour or two hours or day of onboarding, but you're just all together in a room all the time. So it was like no onboarding needed because it's just so quick and so organic. That said, we did like really fun stuff. Like when we were seven people, we went to Nicaragua for like a week and we just like hung out in an Airbnb all together. And that was like super jelling for the team. We did like all sorts of like random stuff outside the office.

we were also just all together all the time, working on the same thing, caring about the same problem. People actually, like, for us to ask company, like, it was pretty mission-oriented, so people care about what we were doing, which I think is, like, really helpful. When you think about the hunt for the right investor, you know, what stands out in your mind

from your processes that you've gone through? You'll get a range from how helpful investors are from founders to, like, from zero to medium. And some will say it just truly doesn't matter, so all you want is, like, the most money at the best possible terms and the lease control imaginable, there are some that'll tell you you're actually like hiring a partner basically and so you should take your time and do it.

That's a personal taste thing. I know some like really great founders who would kind of describe it to either way. Speaking personally, I liked liking my investors and so I wanted to have a relationship. So I did spend time like getting to them a little bit and references were super important and all of that. But a few just like general thoughts on fundraising is, You guys are probably in like the best fundraising market imaginable. Like it's just like a very, very good time.

So you're on like the right side of things. I think things are very momentum driven right now. And again, I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that like, you know, we all see this that like AI companies are growing at these insane rates. And so the whole market has really rotated in that direction. So as you think about talking about your companies, a lot of investors are very geared towards what's the story of how this is going to take off and, you know, whether you have like a, you know,

a go forward rationale for that or some data you can point to, I think it seems highly driven by that in a lot of ways. I think, like, you know, the, the advice you get from accelerators like this about how to run a fundraiser are mostly, like, extremely correct. And I would basically just fully listen to them, which is like... I'm sorry, could you say that again? If there's one thing, it is that the fundraising advice is very good, which I'm guessing that the fundraising advice is something along the lines of like,

talk to a wide funnel, do it all in a compressed timeline, practice what you're talking about, follow up, keep the whole thing short. You know, that is the right way to raise the seaground. And so I wouldn't mess with the, I wouldn't mess with the template on it. We also would add avoid raising at this point, wait to we're. Yeah, post demo day. A lot of people will try to get you to like raise early. And the way they'll try to get you to raise is we're so excited about what you're doing, come meet us.

We want to get to know you. We want to, we're going to make you run a process. And like, somebody gave me the, you know, I was like, oh, I remember one time during last, I was like, oh, they're going to invest in someone like some other founder who was like more experienced. It's like, oh, cool. They gave you a term show. Like, well, no. But they're like, okay, well, if you don't have term sheet, they're not investing.

So, like, you should stop saying that. And that's the same thing with, like, preemptions is, like, if you don't have a term sheet, you're not being preempted. And so, like, if some amazing investor comes to you and says, I'll give you X at Y and you like that, that's one thing. If someone's trying to drag you into a process, my process is in, you know, in the time that the team tells me it's in. As you think about the role of CEO and no two people experience it in exactly the same way, we joke a lot, you know, job number one, don't run out of money. But what was the sort of internal scorecard that you used on yourself? Like, did you have sort of Jack's report card? How did you check in with yourself?

Well, like, at a high level, it's just like, is the company going well? And then like going into that, at different times, it was different things. Like, at first, it's like, don't run out of money is, yeah, I guess that is the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy. The next thing on Maslow's hierarchy is like, do we have product market fit? The next thing on Maslow's hierarchy is, do we have a great team? You know, and you can kind of like work your way up through things of like, do we have good competitive differentiation. Do we have like, you know, good processes and all the rest of it?

But I think at the earliest stages, aside from not running out of money, I just think the more time you are focused on, do we have strong product market fit or do we not? Do we have a product that customers badly want? Once they get it, do they want to keep it? Do they want to buy more of it from us? I think like the purity of product market fit obsession at seed is like the whole thing. Product market fit isn't so much, it's sort of the beginning. And then there's sort of keeping it, right? So how do you think about... And deepening it, yeah.

And deep, yeah, exactly. How do you sort of operationalize that? Well, at some point, your company gets to a size where your job goes from, you know, building the product and serving the customers to like building the machine that builds the product and serves the customers. And actually, until you make that flip, which I think, usually is around like 20 employees or some amount of time where your brain is just too scrambled to try to do the work and also manage and hire the people who are doing the work.

Up until that point, it's actually very natural to be obsessed with this. It's like what you're doing all day. I think after it's where it gets hard. And so it's like how do you make sure that you as a founder are staying connected to the work, to the customers, to the product and all of that? Because it can become very easy just to listen to the team doing it. And I think that's like a, you're busy and there's a lot going on. I think that's when it gets, that's when it gets hard.

I can't remember who said it, but there was some, you know, somebody described it as like taking ice cores all over the company all the time. It's like even once you've got a company, it's like you want to be constantly sampling everything and like making sure that the micro is still working the way that, you know, you think it should. And then if you were to add one habit that really compounds over time in this journey,

what would it be a, and please don't just say listen to the uncapped podcast. It's at YouTube slash uncapped. You want to do as much of your work proactively versus reactively as possible. And so as time goes on, it is really easy for all of us to just like, you work out of your inbox rather than off your to-do list. Or you're taking meetings that somebody else asked you for rather than that you asked for. And all of that kind of stuff, I think, is you've got to do some of it. But I think a lot of people end up doing reactive work 90% of the time.

and it should be like 9% in time. What are you looking for now that maybe is different than a few years ago when you were an angel? My relationship with the companies is different now because now I'll join boards or lead seeds if it's a seed or whatever. And so it's like a totally different engagement

because like as an angel, nobody's thinking that you're going to work with them all the time versus when you're a lead investor or large investor even, just a different engagement. So I think that's cool and fun and that's like what I enjoy. I guess versus just like, you know, that fit aside.

I think the biggest interesting thing to me now is, and this wasn't the case during lattice era cloud software, is for many companies, it's not all, and some people are doing like the deep technology themselves, but for a lot of companies, so much of the new technology that's like explains the why now of the company lives somewhere else. It lives in the intelligence at like a frontier lab or whatever.

whatever. And so then it's like what's the what you know in that context like what is the role of the founder and how's it different. And I actually think it's like I think it is pretty different when so much of what you're doing is actually channeling this like amazing new superpower into like unique ways. You just have to think about stuff different. Is it like I don't even know to start with it because I actually think it changes like quite a lot about a company. But it's, it's a meaningful difference. Check. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe,

leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcast, and Spotify. Follow us on X, A16Z, and subscribe to our substack at A16Z.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell, any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include pay promotional advertisements,

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