6 years ago, 3 Yale students decided to drop out and build @Prepared_HQ to fix America’s 911 system. Today, @michael__chime stops by for his first interview since announcing their acquisition by @axon_us. We dig deep into Prepared’s path to PMF and decision to sell (including the insane story of how Mike negotiated the deal from a hospital bed while doctors were telling him he might lose his leg to a spider bite). Some other topics we hit on that stuck with me: - How they pivoted from a different first product - Whether or not to drop out to start a company - Building in headwinds vs. tailwinds - Navigating govt. procurement as 20-somethings - Why he tries to be “terrible at sales” - Balancing listening to customers with following your founder conviction - Finding real AI uses cases - Giving away the product for free for years (and navigating spicy board meeting arguments on this) Since partnering closely with Mike, @dylan_gleicher, and @NealSoni00 from their 2021 seed, I’ve seen up close how they chose a hard path and made it work, so I’m glad other founders will get to learn from their counterintuitive moves. Full episode is below. I think it’s particularly worth a watch if you’re a founder selling into govt. or taking on a dusty industry with AI.
