StartupDevKit

Some companies are what we at @firstround like to call a “fast bake,” where the ingredients coalesce from the start. (Uber and Square are examples — early on we saw strong momentum.) But others are more of a “slow bake,” or an under-the-radar journey to land on the right product and message for the right customer. Roblox comes to mind here — as does @clayrunhq. As they shared this morning, their recent traction is impressive. 100K users, 2500+ customers (including Anthropic, Intercom, Notion, Vanta, and Verkada), and a fresh $46M Series B round (from us here at First Round along with our friends at @MeritechCapital and @sequoia). What’s even more impressive is that this explosion in growth largely took place in the past 18 months or so. (As recently as spring 2022, Clay was still close to $0 in revenue.) But the reality is that this “overnight success” was 7 years in the making, as this timeline shows. What the headlines don’t capture is the years that @kareemamin, @NicolaeRusan, and @vxanand spent quietly plugging away to refine the idea and positioning. For me, this is a reminder of the role that patience plays in company building. It takes a long time to build a transcendent company — and you’ll often be misunderstood or undervalued for most of that time. I’m so inspired by how Kareem and the entire Clay team have kept at it for the past 7 years — and I’m grateful that he chose to openly share more about their journey to PMF on The Review today so more builders can learn from it. You'll find the entire story below.