This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to finally solve the problem of managing all your personal and professional relationships. My guest is Matt Achariam, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Clay.

Matt has a diverse background in product development and design.

He was a principal at design agency FortySix, working with clients like Disney, BBC, Expedia, and the University of Pennsylvania, and held product roles at Custora (acquired by Amperity) and LayerVault (acquired by Tiny Capital).

He has a lifelong obsession with the craft of design, sparked by childhood curiosity about why certain objects elicit feelings of joy. This led him to question the status quo in relationship management software - and that's how the vision behind Clay was born.

In 2018, he and his co-founder, Zach Hamed, founded the company, an app for managing personal and professional relationships.

Their mission: to help people be more thoughtful and helpful with their relationships, ultimately helping them achieve more and be happier by putting others first.

And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matt to my podcast. We explore his journey of building Clay. Matt shares how he and his team create meaningful differentiation beyond just solid functionality. He elaborates how they gained early traction and created strong organic growth that enables them to now manage over 100 million relationships. Last but not least, Matt shares his insights on navigating tradeoffs, maintaining confidence in decision-making, and staying true to company values while scaling rapidly.

Here's one of his quotes:

Be very clear about the values and the lines that you will cross and won't cross because when things start speeding up, momentum is something very precious.

When you move really fast, you have to move with confidence. And if you don't have the confidence and that foundation, you're not going to be able to make decisions rapidly.

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. His unconventional approach towards creating a "minimum remarkable product" instead of a "minimum viable product" 2. How they strengthen their differentiation by focusing on things other than just functionality, and where he focuses to find inspiration. 3. How they've managed to achieve all their growth to be entirely organic and driven by word-of-mouth 4. What signals, he in hindsight, wishes they had paid more attention to in order to grow even more.

For more information about the guest from this week:

Matt Achariam • Website: Clay