In this episode, Sandhya Hegde chats with Shishir Mehrotra, CEO and co-founder of Coda.

Coda is a collaborative workspace that brings together teams and tools to create organized workflows in docs. Started in 2014, Coda serves over 80% of the Fortune 100. Last valued at $1.4B,  Coda is used by over 25,000 teams including ones at Figma, The New York Times, Square, Doordash, and Toast. 

00:00 Preview: Coming up with product insights

01:38 Shishir’s experience at YouTube

03:32 YoutTube Shorts versus Tiktok

06:03 Product-market fit is not a binary

08:04 The founding insight behind Coda

11:16 Positioning Coda against incumbent products

18:05 Coda’s alpha launch

24:36 PMF scores versus disappointment scores

29:53 Shishir’s approach to product rituals

38:05 The launch of Coda 4.0

43:50 Advice for new founders in enterprise productivity

Sandhya Hegde is a General Partner at Unusual Ventures, leading investments in modern SaaS companies with a focus on AI. Previously an early executive at Amplitude, Sandhya is a product-led growth (PLG) coach and mentor. She can be reached at [email protected] and 

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Shishir Mehrotra is the CEO and co-founder of Coda. Prior to Coda, Shishir was the Vice President of Product, Engineering, and UX at YouTube. 

Unusual Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm designed from the ground up to give a distinct advantage to founders building the next generation of software companies. Unusual has invested in category-defining companies like Webflow, Arctic Wolf Networks, Carta, Robinhood, and Harness. Learn more about us at https://www.unusual.vc/.

Further reading from Unusual Ventures:

• Coming up with a founding insight
• What are design partners?
• How to find product-market fit