Jack Altman on Product-Market Fit
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What is product-market fit and why is it important?
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 like find product 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 like 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 trade-offs, first as the co-founder and CEO of Lattice, and now as an investor through AltCapital. In this speedrun 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 at Teespring. Then you built Lattice, unicorn company. Then you started a fund, $275 million first fund. Three kids, a really popular podcast. Yeah.
How should founders balance customer feedback with their vision?
What's next? Energy drink or are you going to start training for MMA 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? Is it just caffeine or?
It's a lot of caffeine. Yeah, the little kids makes, 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, 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... two 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 what I've been doing the last two years now.
And then, you know, in terms of your journey, so when I met you, you were at Teespring 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 Teespring, 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, there's like, you know, it's hard to do. Obviously, like, we'll talk about this.
What are the challenges of hiring the first employees in a startup?
But like, right now, we're probably in like the most momentum centric moment of startup building, at least I've ever seen. And which isn't a bad thing, but we definitely had that. So no, I've learned everything about management in that period of time, I guess.
And what's interesting is I'm wondering, 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 be the one in the hot seat? Were there scars or anything you need to work through from that experience?
I think on some level, I had the 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 in 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 and 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 entrepreneurship in your family, right?
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is product-market fit and why is it important?
0:00–1:26
2
How should founders balance customer feedback with their vision?
1:26–2:46
3
What are the challenges of hiring the first employees in a startup?
2:46–8:03
4
How did Jack Altman navigate the early days of Lattice?
8:03–12:05
5
What lessons can be learned from fundraising experiences?
12:05–29:13
Speakers
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