From Data Scientist at Microsoft to Raising $19M with his Own Startup: Peter Fishman’s Journey with Mozart Data

Rui: If you’re looking for stories, strategies, and actionable advice on how entrepreneurial careers start, you’re in the right place. I’m your host, Rui, and this is the Startup Journey podcast, the show where every week I sit down with different entrepreneurs, experts, and thought leaders to dig deep into what it takes to get a startup off the ground.

Today I’m joined by Peter Fishman. Peter is a data scientist with experience at companies like Microsoft or Walt Disney. Now he’s built his own startup, Mozart Data. Mozart provides an out of the box modern data stack that empowers anyone to easily consolidate, organize, and prepare their data for analysis.

In 2020, Peter and his team were accepted into Y Combinator and since then have secured over 19 million in funding. In this conversation, I’ll be talking to Pete about his journey building Mozart Data, his experiences at YC, and whatever else it takes to launch a startup, a successful startup. So, Fish, thank you for joining me today.

How are you? Thanks very much for being here. Doing great. Perfect. As you know, our purpose today is to bring your insights and lessons to our community of entrepreneurs so that they can apply this to their own journeys. Could you start by quickly introducing yourself and giving our listeners a quick overview of Mozart Data?

Fish: Well, thanks for the warm intro. I’ll hit on some of the same points. So my name is Peter Fishman. I go by Fish. I’m the co founder and CEO of Mozart Data. We started Mozart Data. At the beginning of the pandemic, so we’re just over three years old, we’re a company that helps other companies set up their data infrastructure.

That’s just a short way of saying we help companies optimize and get the answers that they need. The way that we do that is we put in the pieces of a modern data stack. So we help companies build out their data platforms without having data engineers.

Rui: Okay. You can’t go on without introducing yourself as well.

Fish: So tell us a bit about you. Great. So my background is like many people in the data field. I was a failed academic. So I was an economist by trade and a statistician and ultimately found my way to data at startups in technology and felt really passionate about the application of those sort of, new techniques of, of sort of data in, you know, at, at tech companies and really found a footing and a, and a career and have sort of bounced around mostly late stage startups, but also some early ones and now my own.

Rui: Okay. So how did the idea for Mozilla Data came up?

Fish: So I mean, a lot of times the best ideas from entrepreneurs are scratching their own itch. Whenever I would join a company. There would typically need to be a few corresponding hires to get the most out of the team. So you couldn’t really hire a data analyst without hiring a data engineer, that the data engineer would be, you know, writing ETL scripts would be monitoring the data warehouse would be building tables and, and saving time and money for all the queries that I was writing, but.

That role has become not so much obsolete, but has moved on to higher order things. So the basics of moving data and tuning a warehouse, um, really can be done by services these days, including our own.

Rui: So that is clear. Then what was the process to validate the idea? So the first version of what is today Mozart data, how was that about?

Fish: Sure. So, you know, there’s a YC cliche. That is. make something people want. And for us, we had actually applied to Y Combinator with just a small sliver of the Mozart data platform. And if you ask people, Hey, are you interested in maybe being one of our early customers or trying our, our sliver, you know, they would sort of sheepishly say, yes, you know, yes, but like, you know, not today or yes, but like in a week or yes, but you know, just, uh, give me a little bit of time.

And that’s a kind way of saying no, not at all. You know, I think, I think one of the important things that I take, you know, from my, my past as an economist is this idea of revealed preference versus stated preference. So, you know, when I, when I think about getting dinner, my stated preference might be for a salad, but my revealed preference might be for a pizza.

So the same kind of applies here, which is when we, when we thought about kind of the tools that we used, we were building sort of a narrow sliver of Mozart that we thought was very powerful. Um, the reality was, was that to get sort of operators going with the modern data stack, we would have to build more.

And, and the validation was And you’ll be like, no, no, I could really use this today. So there’s just a difference between, I want to use this today and I definitely want to use this, but just give me a week. And that was really the, the, the main validation of the idea.

Rui: Okay. So a minimum viable product where both the minimum and the viable are actually applied.

Also, I love this reveal preference reference you have here. Because I’m used to listen to, to hearing the, and this is something that I advocate myself, which is the measuring user action instead of user intent, right? Because if you ask 10 people, if they are gonna, if they would like the solution for a certain problem, most likely all of them are going to say yes.

When it comes to taking money out of their pockets to actually buy it, it’s a very different story, right? So user action or revealed preference, as you mentioned here is paramount, I agree. So you mentioned YC. Can you share a little bit about the key benefits you gained from going through the program?

Fish: So I, I, myself, I’m a first time CEO.

I actually ran a hot sauce company. So, but it’s my first time as a tech CEO. And I think like in general, the accelerator helps you sort of, sort of clears a path for you. So there are very basic things that you need to get started. So there’s sort of mechanical things like setting up your corporations, but then there’s, you know, if you’re going to run a venture backed startup, there’s sort of going to find the first.

You know, set of venture checks and, you know, YC, I think does many things. It’s a sort of, it’s a conglomerate of, of many things. It’s something that helps you find your product market fit. It’s something that gives you an opportunity to interact with peers and a cohort that are sort of doing a lot of things that you can sort of look to.

You know, kind of look to your right and look to your left and kind of notice what are, what are successful companies doing. Um, and then it obviously is, you know, a tremendous mechanism for us as a B2B company for finding other sort of SMB companies that are sort of at a stage of meeting, uh, data infrastructure.

And, and then, you know, the one that it’s very well known for is many companies come out of YC with a lot of attention and a good ability to raise some money. Um, we were fortunate enough to raise right around demo day and that was a good sort of slingshot for the company.

Rui: Awesome. So as you know, I’m a marketer, right?

So I also want to ask you about your early adopters. And this is a tangent of something you said before. So what was your main strategy, or at least a successful strategy behind acquiring those all important first users?

Fish: So, I mean, our, our first users were all cheating. So, you know, when you’re running a B2B company, When we graduated from Y Combinator and, you know, when we went out pitching companies, we had three customers.

Those three customers are all folks that I had known or Dan had known through a variety of channels. So that’s, that’s just straight up cheating. It’s very hard to get somebody to trust you with their data infrastructure as an unknown company, as a fledgling company. But it is easy for, you know, some of my friends to trust me that I know what I’m doing in the data space and they want it to work with me on something.

Now, at some point, those companies transitioned from being friends to being customers. So it’s, it’s one thing to be servicing these folks typically at a At no cost or a loss or at a trivial cost It’s another thing to be charging them sort of the market rate on your services And you know, I would say that while it’s true.

Our initial three customers were all sort of pals of ours I would say that the the reality was that Once they started paying us, you know five figures or more That became like a real customer that we had to service and be excellent with and, you know, had a risk of churning and, you know, they didn’t cease to be friends, but they, they did transition to be real customers.

Um, now one of the things is, is that’s not observable. to anybody outside of your organization. So, but it does start the flywheel of, well, do you have any customers? Well, yes, we have these three customers. And then some of them, oh, wow, that customer, that customer is a, you know, a sizable customer. And, and, you know, I think like, that’s kind of one of, you know, the best advice I have in general is when you, you can cheat.

In this respect, you know, do it. I think it’s, I think it’s not, you know, I think finding that initial set of customers starts the flywheel, which is exactly what you need. You need to get in the B2B space. You need to get customers to get use cases and references and, you know, sort of deepen your product roadmap and, uh, have people to interview and get feedback from and, and all of that.

And, you know, it’s, it’s hard to do cold outreach to, to get that started.

Rui: Super important lesson there, right? You call it cheating. Actually, I call it doing whatever it takes, right? Because we know that the strategy to do, to, to get the first one to 10 users is nothing like the strategy to getting 10 to 100 and then 100 to 1000, right?

So this is all about doing things that don’t scale, doing whatever it takes to have someone in that can give you feedback that can allow you to iterate the product, to fine tune the experience so that other people, people can Come in and then enjoy a good solution for their problems as well. You also get trust builders for commercial presentations and pitches, all of those things start to compound after a while.

So thank you for that. Now you raised, as you mentioned, money right around demo day, and this is actually quite early in the journey. So are there any milestones, any moments that you can think of that you before, between the moment where you had the idea and raising money that were crucial for the success of the company?

Fish: Sure. I mean, obviously we’ve touched on one, which is getting admitted to Y Combinator. I, you know, I think a second one was hiring our first engineer. So, you know, Dan and I are both technical founders, but hiring our first engineer really accelerated us. And then, you know, obviously you mentioned the first customers, but, you know, more than that, honestly, we’re the first failures, you know, we launched the product and.

In general, you know, if you’ve launched a product that you’re proud of, you’ve launched it too late. And, you know, the, the failures are painful and real and hard, and you’re putting your name to something when you release, you know, a new product, you know, you sort of anticipate some things, but then there’s always the unknowns.

And, and I think kind of what, What sticks out to me, I think we got, I think we got our funding maybe one or two months after a demo day. So Y Combinator has this, I would say, brilliant yet artificial deadline. It’s the end of class. It’s graduation on some level, though, you know, I, I still participate in a lot of things in the YC community and I think there, you know, there’s never really graduation, but there’s this brilliant moment, which is the end of the sort of program, the end of the three month program, they, they, they They have a day where they invite a bunch of investors and this is a great forcing function to get people to one, get to a point where they’ve delivered something and two, to force investors to be serious about, you know, the opportunity in front of them or not.

So it’s always sort of a nice, thing where you have this sort of arbitrary deadline, you know, and, and, and in our case, it was demo day. And we could with real conviction say, Hey, we’re really heads down and building towards demo day, or, Hey, we’re really looking towards raising money. And we’d like to do it, you know, around demo day, you know, are you in, or are you out?

And, and that was kind of both very helpful in the journey. So I hit on a few points along the way, obviously, if I were to go back on that answer, I would say the number one thing is always the team. You know, a company is just a collection of people. So of course I would say, you know, uh, not just, you know, Dan and I getting the company started, but hiring our first engineer, John, um, that was really sort of one of the most important moments in the company.

Rui: Couldn’t agree more. Actually, it’s all about the people. I’m more and more convinced of that. And I speak with hundreds of entrepreneurs. I work with many others and it’s always the same. The team gets you out of trouble, right? It’s, it’s all about the people that you bring in.

Fish: Ironically, John, both. Gets us in trouble and gets us out of trouble.

So, uh, sometimes you have that magical person that, uh, is, and usually actually on small teams when you’re, when you’re entrepreneurial, having that ability to rapidly iterate is, is a really critical skill. So the type of engineer or the type of marketer or the type of. A product manager that might be great at, you know, a fang company, uh, might not be the, the best first hire or second hire or 10th hire, you know?

And I think, you know, you said, Oh, these, you know, these are the folks that get us out of trouble. I’m like, well, they get us out of trouble, but they also get us into trouble. And that’s kind of their best feature.

Rui: 100%. And I actually see a lot of use cases like that, where we’re transitioning from a startup to a scale up, right?

And you reach those important numbers, like 50 people in the company, and you, what got you there is, it was the ability to Of the people to solve problems, right? So that entrepreneurial mindset kicks in and everyone is running to fire us down. Uh, whatever it is, right? Then at some point you need processes, structure, uh, much, uh, much more fine tuned organization in order to avoid chaos.

So, uh, 100%. Then I want to start by your first hire. So John, because I think I didn’t ask you this before. How did you go about building the first version? Did you build it yourself with your co founder since you were both technical or John was already a key part in building the first version of the product?

Fish: Yeah, John was the front end engineer. So most of the sort of. Uh, UX that, uh, our users interacted with John sort of envisioned and delivered, and that was amazing. Now, I will say the real first version of our product, you know, and again, I don’t want to demean the work and, and, you know, we are now over three years later, so I feel a little bit better about saying this, but was not exactly vaporware, but it was, it was, it was just queuing Dan to do things, right?

So. We had an interface where somebody would make a request to, you know, maybe, you know, schedule a transform or connect, uh, a data, some data to Snowflake. Some of that was, was real. And some of that was just essentially sending Dan a message to, you know, make the connection himself. So I think a lot of, you know, I, I sort of mentioned the, the classic line, which is if you release a product you’re proud of released it too late.

I will say that I think, you know, in some sense, I am proud of the fact that we had, we had essentially, you know, we call it like mechanical Turk where somebody is sort of behind the scenes actually sort of turning the knobs, even if The customer is interacting with the screen,

Rui: whatever it takes.

Absolutely. So I’m interested in knowing a bit more there because it’s quite usual, especially nowadays that most technical stakeholders, so qualified developers, front end, back end, whatever, they are either. In developing their own ideas or they have high paying jobs. It’s really hard to attract them with an idea that is yet to be validated by the market.

Right. So how did you go about convincing John? Was this someone that you knew before? Were you pitching out of the blue? Because I would imagine that would have been harder. So what was that about?

Fish: So I think maybe six of our first eight engineers were also what I would call cheating. So, uh, John and I worked together in a past life.

Right. So that’s like we worked together about a decade ago, you know, knew each other’s strengths. So, so I think there was already sort of a deep trust and respect, both directions that said, I, I would say that our networks. Themselves became tapped pretty quickly. So it is the case that we were able to add more engineers over time that, you know, honestly, weren’t ready to be our first engineer or second engineer.

But a few of the early hires did come from outreach and that was very challenging. You know, I think we did the classic spend months looking typically at the wrong candidates or candidates that ended up being sort of unaffordable or candidates that ended up being really. Maybe not perfect fits for, you know, our size company, uh, many of whom would have been great, but I would say you have to be very intentional and select folks that are looking for this type of opportunity.

Many of them, you know, that that would sort of meet our bar could obviously go get jobs at big tech companies that, you know. Full disclosure, pay, um, obviously much, much better than say we do, but you know, I do think that you do have to look at it as the, the total bundle of what you’re offering. So yes, very, very obviously we do offer, you know, generous equity packages and, and if you’re, very bullish on the company, you might believe that your compensation package is in line or better than what it would be at a, at a big company.

That said, I don’t see the compensation or even the total comp as the most compelling reason to work at Mozart. In general, people like to work with other great, you know, great people like to work with great people. So the number one thing that you have to do is convince folks that you have, A really special team around you, a really great set of practices for them to, to thrive and to grow.

And, you know, I think some of our best cold engineering hires were, were folks that would generally have been called or considered a junior relative to what people want, but they very quickly. massively surpassed that sort of characterization, partially through the responsibilities they were given, partially through learning from other very talented and senior people, and partially because they just have incredible aptitudes and energy and, and applied it very well.

Rui: Clear. Still on that note, you mentioned that it was you, your co founder and John, anyone else with you in the early days?

Fish: Yeah, we had a, you know, a few folks that sort of launched some of our GTM efforts in sort of more part time capacities. And we brought in another front end engineer in a part time capacity, but those were sort of the, the main staples.

We, we really sort of gummed it and glued it together until we really raised our seed round.

Rui: Okay. So who was in charge of the business side? Because you’re both. technical. So I can only assume that you were more passionate about the tech side of things, right? Then actually creating pitch decks and pitching to investors and having conversations with potential clients and all of that.

So who was in charge of what?

Fish: Shortly after YC, we did actually bring in someone to sort of part time coach me and, and help with our sales process. A person that I had previously worked with was an incredible AE named Dylan. Dylan ultimately we Convinced to join us in a full time capacity and today he’s our vp of revenue.

So we You know, during Y Combinator, while it’s true, you know, I think in general I was more the business side and Dan was more the tech side. The reality was Dan was, you know, pitching people too, and cold out reaching people too, and, and you know, he was the head of support. I mean, he was the head of support for the first, you know.

By like two years of the company. So I would say, you know, in general, Dan ran the technical side of the house and I ran the business side of the house, but we, we quickly wanted to replace me. I, I will tell you that, you know, there was a moment where we had a lead in a prospect that I thought I was doing a great job with, and you know, I’m a, I don’t have a deep experience, you know, doing sales and this is one of our first sales, that prospect, I Dylan brought the prospect and that was really what Not to say someone more professional than I am or but someone that was more Skilled that at that side of the house and had those chops than I had

Rui: Which makes perfect sense and that was actually a data driven decision, right?

Because it was right there and the guy actually pulled that the lead back So it’s also important to say because I believe that’s a crucial lesson here Know exactly what you don’t know, right? So bringing someone in part time to help you coaching, you mentoring you, whatever it is to cover what as a founding team is still lacking, there may be the difference between another stone in the graveyard or a successful company that raises 19 million.

So, uh, thank you for sharing that.

Fish: The only, the only thing that I would caveat that answer with is that I think a lot of times you, and, and we do this too, I I’m super guilty of this. We passed the buck to folks that report to us with those deferred expertises, but the most successful B2B companies, their marketing team is their founding team, their, their sales team, at least they’re, uh, you know, it’s not just founder led sales, but it is You know, I think it’s founder led marketing.

Um, and rather than say, okay, what we’ll do is we’ll hire someone good at marketing and they’ll go figure out how to position us and, and, and pitch us. And that’s, that’s just the, you know, that’s just, that’s a failed spiral. I I’m sure that you’ve seen lots of companies go this route. And that is not to say that once you’ve figured something out, that it’s, it’s better that you do it than an SDR does it, or that you do it than a marketer does it.

In fact, it’s not the figuring it out. You know, I think you’ll be able to, as a founder, more rapidly iterate and understand the nuance of the response of the, of the no or the yes. And that’s really important.

Rui: There are some layers in there. I actually advocate also that founders should be doing everything at the start, right?

The moment that is needed to professionalize a department or that it’s not enough for the next stage, then that’s the moment where you need to bring someone in. Having founders doing a better job, there are multiple layers there, right? Because. The commitment, the passion, the story, the human element, the sacrifice.

There are so many layers in there that make, that put people in a different position to pitch their, their own businesses. So, yeah, I mean, it makes sense to have. Founders at the forefront of everything, then the moment that you see that there’s a gap in there, as you said, you lost the lead, the guy came in and brought the lead back.

That’s one of those moments where it’s clear that there’s something there that can improve. So that’s the moment where you should, you should change something. Then regarding marketing, it’s all about relevance. I mean, if you understand the people that you’re trying to serve, if you where they spend their time.

If you understand how they consume their information, it doesn’t really matter who delivers the message, as long as it’s relevant for them. It’s not about us, it’s all about them. Most strategies will work if you follow that mindset. Now, Fish, let me change gears a bit here. So you raised money one or two months after YC.

So can you share the most important lessons you learned on how to deal with investors? And this can be. during the program or just speaking to a lot of investors, what would you share with yourself six months before raising money, if you could?

Fish: Sure. So, so our seed round, we raised with safe notes. So because it’s a safe note, um, you can get a commitment that day.

You know, you can basically send a form and get a commitment like almost instantly. So generally people that are lukewarm are out. People that are interested are out people that are very interested. They’re out people that are very, very interested. They’re out people that like, wouldn’t miss this for the world.

There may be in, and you know, people that. You know, our, our, our, our signing they’re in. So I think the, the, you know, these sort of, I think these lessons are really important, which is to say, you know, this, I, I, I talked about it earlier, but Y Combinator has this, you know, it is a real set of demos. So demo day is not a made up thing.

It’s not, you know, a figment of my imagination. I, I demoed during demo day. That said, the primary purpose is I think to have a deadline for investors and a deadline for yourself. So, um, while we didn’t. You know, raise our round until after demo day, the sort of nature of trying to get in before demo day, and maybe there’d be a pre demo day price and a post demo day price.

These were all credible threats that we could make to investors. And that basically sped up the process. So, you know, you want to minimize your time raising money. And even, you know, even, you know, even I mentioned, um, you know, I think. In general, the best practice for we were the summer batch. So people do their demo day at the end of August and they say, don’t try to talk to investors until August 1st.

So you say this cliched line, which is I’m heads down building until August 1st. And then, you know, and then from there you start taking conversations and. If there’s sort of a fixed amount of time, it’ll happen in a fixed amount of time. If it’s a, well, we need to raise money or we’re going to go out of business.

Well, now there’s no incentive to really, you know, kind of end things. So I think the number one learning for me is you, you do need to create an artificial deadline for yourself. The second thing that I think is really important for raising money. Is that you always want to have a line out the door at your club.

So when I, uh, I, not that I’m a club frequenter, but I, I, I guess back in the day, maybe I’ve been to a handful. I, I was always struck by, there would be like a real long line. It would be cold outside. I’d be like very frustrated. How come I can’t get into this club? What’s going on ? And then you’d get into the club and it’d be like three quarters empty.

And, uh, why was there a, why was, why was there a line? And I think, you know, we learned in the process that if you want to raise, you know, 3 million or a million dollars or 10 million, uh, you’re better off trying to raise, you know, seeking to, in my opinion, some number that you’re 90 percent confident you can hit.

And then, you know, if you want to expand it from there, expand it to three. So. You know, if you’re somebody that says, okay, I’ve soft circled a million dollars, but I want to get to 3 million, because we think we need 3 million to get to our series a milestones. Well, don’t go out and try to raise, you know, the full three, because now you’re saying, well, I’m a third of the way committed on my round.

You know, I’m sure we’ll get there. Whereas if you’re, you know, racing, say. Three and you start by raising one and a half, you say, well, I’m two thirds committed and honestly, like there’s one more check that might put us over the top, but we might expand the round up to two or expand the round up to the three.

I mean, that’s the nice part with safes that you’re able to do that. So I would say in general, you want there to be a line at your club, as opposed to working backwards from the amount of money that you need. Um, one of the things that, one of the things that YC says is like, have a bunch of different plans.

Have the plan where you full, sort of, cockroach it, and generally your A plan, which is raise as little as possible, if any. Have your B plan, which is like, you know, a standard plan, maybe a little bit bare bones, etc. Then have your C plan, which is if, like, you know, things go wildly well. Now, one of the things that’s really important to understand is that it’s not that C is better than B is better than A.

Sometimes A is better than either B or C. And sometimes B is better than either A or C. So it’s just important to have multiple plans and multiple strategies. And that’s one of the things that we learned. And we did end up in sort of our C plan, which is we did raise more than we anticipated at a time when it was great to raise.

So it was a little bit easier of a task. That said, that said, I think we were always shooting for more of a B plan that, that happened to, you know, change on the fly.

Rui: Thank you for that. So Fish, now let’s talk a bit about a day in the life back then. How many hours a day were you working? How many days a week?

And how was your focus split? How much time were you spending on managing the company, selling, doing the, building the product. How was that

Fish: like? So at the time during Y Combinator and, and slightly post it was pre vaccine. So it was, it was real pandemic time. So it was, you know, you would, I would be stuck in my one bedroom apartment in San Francisco and my whole day would be blocks of zoom meetings.

And then, ironically, I would go on Zoom dates, you know, at the, at the end of a long chunk of Zoom meetings. In fact, I met my wife at the same time as, my now wife, as of this week, on one of these Zoom meetings. So, uh, on one of these Zoom dates. So my, my day was just an incredible blast. Uh, of, of meetings, but I was working, you know, uh, you know, Dan and I started, started this company, uh, after a number of different stops in our career.

So a little bit later in life and, but I was working probably 12 hours a day. I’d work probably eight to eight. And, you know, there would be breaks in there, but I would say that we, we took, we took it very seriously and I work maybe five, six days a week. It was, it was a very intense start to the, to the company.

And, you know, part of YC is working really hard and then you look to your right and someone’s working twice as hard as you. And that sort of inspires. So I will say, I, I did a lot of, you know, that was, you know, that was a time where I was, Sort of glued to my machine, not 24 hours a day, but almost all the time I spent a lot of time working out.

What was the breakdown of that work? I would say probably a third of it was product, which is to say, you know, figuring out what we need to build, building some of those things, iterating on it, you know, I would say maybe a third of it was Was company running. So, you know, you mentioned things like things like, you know, I think I was, I was responsible for payroll.

Dan and John can back, you know, back the statement up. I was always like late on payroll and it was always really annoying to them. Then it was, uh, I, I, I was not a good head of HR. Um, uh, I’ve been subsequently replaced, but I, but so, you know, you mentioned company running, you know, we were obviously trying to recruit, um, some engineers as well, certainly after we had raised our seed round, so that would be about a third of my time, and then a third of my time was, And by the way, in the company running piece, that would be like investor meetings as well.

So, you know, trying to raise money and about a third of the time was selling. The one thing that I would say is I think those ratios are slightly big towards the middle piece. Like if you can shrink that middle piece, you’re more successful. I mean, one of the things, you know, there’s a term a friend of mine had, which is called playing company.

So I think like the worst CEOs end up playing company, you know, like playing house or something like that, which is, you know, It is true that you, you know, you want to run a good ship. So you want to pay people on time and you want to have your paperwork filled out and you want to pay your taxes and you want to achieve certain realness to the company.

You know, we, we incorporate in all of those things. You don’t want those to be mistaken. That said, it’s very easy to balloon that part because it’s a little bit fun. It’s a little bit easy to accomplish stuff. And typically when you’re pitching investors, Even, you know, until the part where you get a no, it’s all very ego gratifying.

So I will say and then it’s very ego crushing so it has those extremes But I think too often founders get stuck doing that middle piece more than they should And even the first piece, a little bit more than they should, is to be really focusing on the third piece, the selling, not to necessarily make revenue, but really to, you know, validate, which I think was your first question, validate the idea.

And the best way to validate ideas, kind of like you said, is like, is somebody willing to break out their, their credit card or their wallet?

Rui: 100%. And there, so I can’t remember who is, who was responsible for, for the quote that I’m about to say, but it is around, if you’re not selling or building the product, you’re wasting time as an early stage founder.

Right. And obviously it’s not exactly like that, but it conveys the right idea. And I’ve seen this pattern over and over and over again in successful projects. And then at a more individual level, I’ve known more than one founder that were brilliant, actually had the industry expertise, had the network, had the funds to, so perfect position to do it.

But then they decided to hide behind a beautiful business plan. So while building the product, we’re too focused on creating a perfect business plan all around what they would have, because that was their comfort zone, right? The moment they launched, runway was over. So there was no customers. There were no investors.

There was no contact with the market whatsoever. Uh, and the runway wasn’t there anymore. So, uh, I’ve seen this happen too many times to people that were in a brilliant position to solve problems for millions of other people, right? So I can’t actually stress that enough and thank you enough for sharing that as well.

Obviously paying salaries is important and having a lean business plan that guides your, your actions is also important. But most of the effort should be to talking to anyone in the industry and actually building the product so that you can start iterating based on what is the actual request from the market as possible.

Fish: And just to clarify one thing, which is I talked a lot about how a third of my time was spent selling, you know, not in the typical kind of sales process. So I think selling in this case included more the equivalent of informational interviews, which is not to say a sale ever came from it. It was, it was helpful.

Yeah.

Rui: Has nothing to do with revenues, is selling the vision. It’s actually speaking to different stakeholders, talent, investors, potential clients, and understanding how they receive the information, how much interest they show in it, if that’s the right message, the right channel, the right way to do things.

So always be selling, for me, is more selling the vision than actually selling the product. Anyway, so you spend a good portion of these first couple of months eating your noodles, right? So making the sacrifices, working long days and all of that. So. You briefly touched that, actually your marriage came from it, but how did you balance this with your personal life?

Because for sure there were some sacrifices in there, and it’s important to manage expectations as to what you need to sacrifice in order to be successful as well, because there’s work to be done.

Fish: So certainly, you know, life is about trade offs, and you can’t make everything a priority. If you make everything a priority, nothing’s a priority.

And I will say that, while I Love Mozart and certainly love the Mozart customers. You know, I, I mentioned that I got married this week, getting married, you know, started, you know, starting a family together. That’s always been my priority. So I, you know, that’s my, that’s my, my North star that said, I’m not a huge believer in substitution.

So often what I found is that energy. For me is there’s not a fixed sum. So one way of thinking about kind of how you can spend your time is it’s like a gas tank. And I can either, you know, spend that gas driving east or driving west, but I can’t drive in both directions. I would say, I would say that it’s sort of like the wrong way to think about it.

We, you know, I always found that when I was inspired in life or, you know, had something going on, I was able to bring more energy to other parts of my life. Um, in fact, it’s not a coincidence, I, you know, I would argue that it’s very much not a coincidence that I started Mozart at the same time that I, you know, met my, you know, now wife.

And I, the reason I don’t think it’s a coincidence is because I think you’re sort of more inspired across the board. Um, and each sort of plays into the success of the other.

Rui: So first one thing I just realized, am I interrupting your honeymoon?

Fish: We did a mini moon, but we’ll be doing a honeymoon shortly.

Rui: Uh, okay, so if that was the case, please apologize to your wife, it was not my intent.

So that’s the first thing. The second is you’ve touched in, in, in another thing that I find crucial, which is a lot of people talk about work life balance. For most companies, that’s actually something to, to, as a sales argument more than anything else. They don’t really take it seriously. I actually believe in work life symbiosis because the moment where I’m doing something that I love.

My confidence levels go up, my energy goes up, everything starts to compound for a better life, right? So I, even if I’m spending less time in other parts of my life, the energy levels and the good contributions I can give are much higher, right? So I completely agree with what you said there. And I actually think that the goal should be that to feel good with whatever you are doing, right?

My, uh, I always remember something my father told me when I was little, which was, It told me to find something that I really liked and then to find a way to make money out of it. And I wouldn’t work one day in my life. Right. And I’ve been trying to, to, to follow that and, and until now it has been quite successful.

So perfect. Now I’m ready. I hope you’re ready for a set of rapid fire questions. Is that okay? Let’s do it. Cool. So one key lesson you learned on product.

Fish: Again, talk to customers. So some of the cliche answer, but always talk to your customers. We

Rui: can’t

Fish: have

Rui: that said enough because it’s truly crucial. So one key lesson you learned

Fish: on marketing, um, again, that you can’t outsource your marketing.

You have to find the ICP or the pitch or the. Messaging that resonates and works. And then, you know, and you typically have to iterate to get there and then you go from there and scale it from there rather than the other way around.

Rui: Yeah. If you want a strategic narrative with the soul, it needs to come from the founding team.

I agree. Can you share one key lesson you learned on managing people?

Fish: Generally, the, the, this is a lesson that I learned well before being a startup CEO, but rather being a line manager and then also being a director and a VP, I think the answer is. You have to invest in people. It sounds like sort of cliched, but that, that often comes back tenfold.

I actually, uh, you know, remember my mentor giving me a lot of the credit for some of the projects that we collectively worked on rather than him taking his appropriate piece of the credit. And what I discovered was, you know, by, by me being elevated at the company, it really sort of spoke to. His own sort of prowess at both being able to attract and retain someone that’s doing well at the company.

And that really elevated his status. So in general, when it comes to managing, it’s sort of counterintuitive. You’re really trying to push success, uh, downward and that ultimately bubbles right back to you.

Rui: One key lesson you learned on creating and maintaining a good culture.

Fish: You know, I think. This is all, this is all tied.

I mean, I think generally what makes people happy at companies is, is twofold. They have great bosses. So the. Boss tends to give the right autonomy, helps develop mastery and gives everybody purpose. Um, the other thing that people really care about at companies is the team that they work with. So not just the, the no assholes policy, but also things like, you know, that you work with people that, you know, That you’re really, IM impressed.

You know, by, and I think, I think like if you, it’s sort of a virtuous cycle when you know there’s the cl, the cliche A is higher a’s B’s, higher C’s, and I think you really have to stay in that a zone.

Rui: Awesome. So one resource that was invaluable to your success. And this can be a book, a podcast, a mentor, whatever, something that you look back and was truly significant to your success.

Fish: Sure, so the things that I mention all the time, one, the book Moneyball, so that, that got me really into data and analytics and Michael Lewis is just such a great writer and this idea of using data to get a competitive edge, which was so nicely illustrated in baseball, ultimately became my career, but doing it in a variety of other industries.

And the second thing is, I also mentioned, I know it’s, I know it’s a rapid fire, but I do have to re mention my mentor, Dave Botkin, who ultimately taught me, um, in a brief time, just all of the, you know, techniques that became a real part of my career. And I brought to other companies and those were sort of the foundations, you know, 15 years ago for Mozart data today, the types of infrastructure that we collectively built on his team.

Rui: Okay. So just to clarify, when I say rapid fire is simply because it’s fun because I don’t have a limit for these conversations. I actually, so I’m a marketer again. And when people tell me, ah, the message needs, needs to be short or the video needs to be short, or the podcast needs to be short. I mean, people read books and they see a lot of the Rings movies that last for freaking four hours, right?

So what really matters is relevance. If the conversation is good, people will listen to it. If it’s not, they won’t. There’s a pause button in any app that, that they’re going to use to listen to this. So for me, that’s fine as well. So thank you Fish for taking the time out of your schedule to sit down with me.

That’s all, that’s all I had for this conversation today. Excellent. Thanks again for having me. To our listeners, I hope you found the conversation useful. I know I certainly picked up some valuable insights from Peter Fish’s story. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you again in the next edition of the Startup Journey podcast.