20VC: Why Being First To Market Does Not Matter, Why You Do Not Have Defensibility on Day 1, How to Analyse Market Size and Present it to Investors, Vitamins vs Painkillers; Do Vitamins Survive Recessions and Good vs Great Messaging with Guy Podjarny @ Snyk

Guy Podjarny is the Founder of Snyk, the leading Developer Security platform, helping developers secure as they build. Guy was previously CTO at Akamai, co-founded Blaze.io (acquired by Akamai), and was the product manager of AppScan, the first AppSec scanner, through Sanctum, Watchfire and IBM. Guy is a public speaker, O’Reilly author, and an active early stage angel investor.

In Today’s Episode with Guy Podjarny We Discuss:

1.) From Israeli Military to Founding a $10BN Company:

• How Guy made his way into the world of startups from the Israeli military?

• What is Guy running away from? Why does he hate tribalism so much?

• Does Guy believe serial entrepreneurship is valuable or naivety of young founders is good?

2.) The Secret to Finding Product Market Fit:

• Why does Guy believe PMF is a poorly defined term? How does Guy define PMF?

• What are the single biggest mistakes founders make while searching for PMF?

• What are the most important elements on messaging when it comes to PMF?

• If you have a horizontal tool, how do you message and resonate with specific audiences?

3.) Defensibility and Being First to Market:

• Does Guy believe that being the first to market is really that valuable?

• Does Guy agree that investors expecting defensibility on day 1 is wrong?

• Why does Guy think market leadership is way more important than first to market?

• What are the true defensible moats that can be built early today?

4.) Lessons from 100 Angel Investments:

• What have been the single biggest lessons for Guy from his 100 angel investments?

• What are the biggest mistakes angels make when investing today?

• How should founders present their market size to investors? Where do they go wrong?

• Does Guy invest in both painkiller and vitamin businesses? How does he compare them?

• Why is Boldstart Guy’s favorite venture capital firm?