What Most Founders Miss About the First $1M with Mike Zayonc

Most founders try to scale too early. They chase warm intros, polish the pitch, and skip the hard part: doing the reps.

In this episode, Mike Zayonc, co-founder at Kodif, shares what finding real traction actually looks like: testing fast, selling early, and staying close to the problem.

If you’re still guessing at PMF, this conversation will help you stop guessing and start proving.

Warm intros help, but execution closes.

Your network might open doors. But warm intros don’t build conviction. Early-stage buyers aren’t investing in your background. They’re betting on whether your product actually works.

Kodif’s founding team had credibility in spades: a Stanford MBA, an ex-Uber engineering lead, and years of investor relationships through Plug and Play. That got them in the room with brands like Dollar Shave Club and Good Eggs.

But deals didn’t close on pedigree.

They closed because the product delivered immediately. One engineer built a working AI chatbot in five minutes. The customer tested it on the spot and said it worked better than the system live on their site. That wasn’t a sales pitch. It was proof.

This is where many founders go wrong. They confuse attention with traction. An intro isn’t interest. Interest isn’t intent. You still need to convert.

Real PMF feels like pull, not push

Most founders try to “sell” their way to product-market fit. But real PMF isn’t something you convince people of, it’s something they pull out of you.

At first, Kodif was experimenting. They tried different products, pitched a few angles. However, the signal didn’t really emerge until customers started requesting the same thing repeatedly.

Not “What else can you do?”
Not “Can it also do X?”
They said, “Can you build us an AI agent for chat and email?”

That kind of repetition is gold.

It’s not just interest, it’s direction. It tells you what to double down on. And when customers want to delve deeper into that one thing, rather than bouncing to the next shiny feature? That’s pull.

PMF isn’t always a dramatic moment. More often, it’s a quiet shift, when your roadmap starts sounding like customer requests, not founder assumptions.

Founder-led sales isn’t a phase. It’s a requirement

You can’t delegate what you don’t understand. Not yet. Not if you’re pre-product-market fit.

Early-stage sales isn’t something you hire for. It’s something you do. At this stage, you’re figuring out what the product even is. That feedback loop is too short, too fragile, and too critical to hand off.

When Mike joined Kodif, he didn’t sit back and “advise on GTM.”

He did the hard stuff himself. He ran outreach. Took the calls. Demoed the product in real time. In one case, he got an engineer to build a functioning chatbot in five minutes during a conversation, just to prove a point. That demo outperformed what the prospect had live on their site.

That’s what early sales looks like: scrappy, personal, and fast. Not scalable. Not polished. But essential.

Product-Market Fit is testable

Many founders treat product-market fit like a philosophy class: full of frameworks, but no clear answers. But PMF isn’t theoretical. It’s practical. It’s testable.

And if you’re not testing, you’re just guessing.

Don’t overthink it.

One of Kodif’s prospects complained about their live chatbot, saying it was clunky and ineffective. Most teams would’ve logged the feedback, scheduled a follow-up, and added it to the roadmap. Instead, Mike had an engineer build a demo bot on the spot. Five minutes later, the customer was hands-on with something that worked better than what they were already using.

That was the moment of truth. Not a pitch. Not a deck. Just: “Here, try this.” And the customer’s reaction said everything.

Too many founders delay this step. They want the brand to be perfect. The UI to be tight. The narrative to be locked in. But the market doesn’t care about polish. It cares whether your product does the job.

Until a real user interacts with it, gives feedback, and wants more, you’re not validating. You’re speculating.

Go narrow and go deep.

If you’re targeting “any company that needs customer support,” you’re targeting no one.

A broad ICP feels safe, but it’s actually the fastest way to stall. The messaging gets fuzzy. The pain isn’t urgent. The results are inconsistent. You receive lukewarm interest across the board, with no clear signal from anywhere.

Early traction comes from focusing on a narrow niche, identifying a single, painful, and specific use case, and solving it better than anyone else.

Don’t chase “AI for everyone.”

Kodif focused on digitally native brands drowning in customer support tickets, companies like Dollar Shave Club, Trust Wallet, and Liquid IV. These weren’t just ideal customers, they were urgent customers. The pain was clear, the stakes were high, and the impact was immediate.

That wedge gave them something repeatable. It created referrals, not just case studies. And it provided the product with a tight feedback loop that they could build into.

Founders often resist this because they don’t want to “limit the opportunity.” But if you try to serve five markets early on, you’ll learn nothing deeply and build nothing useful.

Conclusion

Warm intros don’t close. Results do.

Early traction doesn’t come from polish, it comes from solving real pain, fast. Kodif didn’t scale on pedigree. They won by shipping value in minutes, not months. That’s how you earn conviction.

If customers keep asking for the same thing, don’t pitch. Build. Show. Deliver.

Still hunting for PMF? Get scrappy. Go narrow. Stay close to the signal. And remember: the real unlock isn’t another feature. It’s a customer saying, “Can you build this for us?”