Subvolts take Find your ideal customer before you build. Learn to read market signals. Oct 6, 2025 - Business
- Learn how to identify and target your ideal customers effectively, a crucial step for any AI product's success.
This is a solid interview with a CEO discussing fundamental business strategy relevant to AI companies.
Material Security CEO: How To Find Your Ideal Customer
Audio streams from a16z. Your place is remembered on this device.
From Subvolts
Summary and analysis by Subvolts editorial, AI-assisted.
This AI + a16z podcast episode features Martin Casado interviewing Abhishek Agrawal, CEO of Material Security. They discuss discovering an ideal customer profile, managing customers, and how frothy markets can obscure important signals when building a company. The conversation focuses on the challenges of customer identification over product development.
This episode explains that finding the right people to sell your product to is as hard as building the product itself. The CEO shares how to figure out who your best customers are and how to tell what the market really needs, even when things seem busy.
This episode offers insights into a critical, often overlooked aspect of startup success: finding the right customers. It is for founders, product managers, and anyone involved in go-to-market strategy. While not directly about frontier AI models, understanding customer acquisition is vital for companies building AI products, especially as AI adoption scales across industries. Learning to discern market signals is key for navigating the current AI landscape.
- Hosta16z
- GuestAbhishek AgrawalCofounder and CEO, Material Security
- Guest: Abhishek Agrawal, Cofounder and CEO of Material Security
- Show: AI + a16z
- Length: 34 minutes
- Topic: How to find your ideal customer
What if the hardest part of building a company isn’t the product, but knowing exactly who it’s for?
In this episode, a16z General Partner Martin Casado sits down with Abhishek Agrawal, Cofounder and CEO of Material Security, to discuss how an ideal customer profile is discovered, how to manage any kind of customer, and how frothy markets can distort real signal.
Follow Martin on X: https://x.com/martin_casado
Follow Material Security on X: https://x.com/material_sec
Follow Abhishek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishek--agrawal/
Check out everything a16z is doing with artificial intelligence here, including articles, projects, and more podcasts.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
24 minHow AI Is Rewriting the Rules of Cybersecurity | Truffle Security & Socket
WithDylan Ayrey, Feross Aboukhadijeh
47 minInside vLLM: The Engine Powering Open-Source AI
WithSimon Mo
41 minBuilding Self-Accelerating AI with Mirendil
WithBehnam Neyshabur, Harsh Mehta
43 minIdeogram’s Open-Weights Image Model and the Future of AI Design
WithMohammad Norouzi
Questions people ask
- What is the main challenge discussed in the episode?
- The main challenge discussed is identifying and understanding your ideal customer, which can be harder than developing the product itself.
- What is the role of market conditions in customer discovery?
- Frothy markets can distort real signals, making it difficult to discern genuine customer needs and opportunities.
Page generated Oct 19, 2026. Summaries are Subvolts' own; the audio, artwork and notes belong to a16z.