YC said his idea "would never work". So he lived in his office for months—then raised $17M from a16z in 14 days. | Marty Kausas, founder of Pylon

Marty and his co-founders lived full-time in their office for several months. They worked on their startup 24/7. To come up with the idea, they messaged 120 potential customers every day for 3 months. Originally, when they pitched YC they were told their idea would never work. YC said they'd seen it several times and it was destined to fail. So in 2 weeks Marty landed a customer and built a product-- and YC let him in. He went on to raise a $3M seed round from General Catalyst in 6 days and later a $17M Series A from a16z in 14 days.We go deep into how to come up with massive ideas, how to get to product-market fit, and how to quickly fundraise from tier 1 VCs.Why you should listenWhy all 3 founders living in the office was the best decision they ever made. How to raise a seed round in 6 days and a Series A in 14-- all from tier 1 VCs. How to leverage LinkedIn to get exposure and lots of leads. How to get more mindshare from your employees.Why Pylon has almost no meetings.How to come up with an idea using both top-down and bottoms-up processes.Keywordsfounders, startup, customer support, Pylon, co-founders, omnichannel, B2B, venture capital, product market fit, entrepreneurship, startup, Y Combinator, fundraising, product development, market trends, customer support, AI integration, team dynamics, venture capital, entrepreneurshipTimestamps(00:00:00) Intro(00:01:35) Why he chose to sleep in the office(00:07:11) Project Management instead of People Management(00:11:24) How it all started(00:23:33) Cold Messaging Potential customers(00:28:02) Finding the Trend(00:35:49) Building V1(00:38:32) Getting into YC as ChatGPT Comes Out(00:42:37) Why fundraising is a "social game"(01:01:21) Raising Series A from A16Send me a message to let me know what you think!