He quit Google & his 1st startup failed—but his 2nd grows at $1M ARR every 10 days. | Zach Llyod, Founder of Warp.dev

A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Zach spent 8 years at Google leading engineering for Google Docs, then left to build a photo sharing app with zero go-to-market plan.

Reality hit hard: "At Google, anything you launch gets millions of users. At a startup, the challenge isn't building—it's getting anyone to care." After writing a brutal postmortem documenting everything that went wrong, he started Warp with strict principles: only hire product-obsessed people, document every process, build pure software not services.

For three years, Warp had hundreds of thousands of free users but no revenue. Then they pivoted to AI-powered development in 2024. Here's how they went from taking 300 days to hit their $1M to now adding $1M ARR every 10 days.

Why You Should Listen:

• Why working at Google can set you up to fail as a founder
• How to know when to quit your own startup
• Why you should write down every operating principle before starting
• The shift he made to grow insanely fast
• Why competing directly with fast-growing startups is actually smart

Keywords:

startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, Warp, Zach Lloyd, Google alumni, developer tools, AI coding, product-market fit, startup pivot, Series B

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:48 From law school to Google via Craigslist

00:05:01 Why Google makes you a terrible startup founder

00:10:36 Joining SelfMade as technical co-founder

00:19:00 Writing a brutal post-mortem of the startup experience

00:27:15 Building Warp and getting 10,000 signups day one

00:38:08 Raising $50M Series B with zero revenue

00:41:50 Pivoting to Agent Mode and AI development

00:46:27 From 300 days to $1M to adding $1M every 10 days

Retry

Send me a message to let me know what you think!

Fejezetek

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. From law school to Google via Craigslist (00:01:48)

3. Why Google makes you a terrible startup founder (00:05:01)

4. Joining SelfMade as technical co-founder (00:10:36)

5. Writing a brutal post-mortem of the startup experience (00:19:00)

6. Building Warp and getting 10,000 signups day one (00:27:15)

7. Raising $50M Series B with zero revenue (00:38:08)

8. Pivoting to Agent Mode and AI development (00:41:50)

9. From 300 days to $1M to adding $1M every 10 days (00:46:27)