Most founders spend years searching for product-market fit. This founder found it twice - and the signals were completely different each time. Girish Redekar is the co-founder and CEO of Sprinto, an autonomous compliance platform. He taught himself to code at 28, spent 2-3 years on failed ideas, then built RecruiterBox. It launched before Stripe existed, so customers had to click a PayPal link, swipe their card, and wait for daily credits to deplete. It was terrible. But they kept doing it. That was product-market fit. He bootstrapped RecruiterBox to 2,500+ customers and single-digit millions in ARR. Then he sold it - not because it failed, but because it got too comfortable. The second time, Girish made a rule: no code until the idea was validated. He ran 15-20 customer interviews using The Mom Test, then paid auditors to audit a company that didn't exist - 10 times. By audit number 10, he knew exactly what to build. For go-to-market, he tried 20 channels. 17 failed. Only 3 worked. Stay for 38:15 where Girish explains how AI is hitting his business from 3 directions at once - and why that's actually good news. This episode is brought to you by: ThreatLocker - Book a demo: https://saasclub.io/threatlocker Gearheart - Book a free consult and get the first 20 hours free: https://saasclub.io/gearheart/book KEY LESSONS Validate With Real Money, Not Surveys: Girish paid for 10 compliance audits on a company with no product, using each one to stress-test demand and refine what needed to be built before committing to code. Product-Market Fit Shows Up in Behavior: RecruiterBox knew it had PMF when customers kept paying through a broken PayPal system with daily-depleting credits. The pain they tolerated was the signal. Harvest Demand Instead of Creating It: Of 20 GTM channels tested, only 3 worked - founder communities, VC portfolio programs, and Google - all places where buyers were already looking for compliance solutions. Sell When You Become the Bottleneck: Girish sold RecruiterBox at 2,500+ customers because he and his co-founder had become the constraint - a decision that freed them to build something bigger. AI Expands Your Market, Not Just Your Product: AI is creating new compliance threats that didn't exist two years ago, driving a wave of demand that makes Sprinto's market bigger rather than smaller. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction and favorite quote 01:00 What Sprinto does - autonomous trust platform 01:59 Business metrics - 3,000+ customers, 8-figure ARR 02:45 Failed ideas before RecruiterBox - job search engine and resume matcher 06:50 What kept them going through 2-3 years of no traction 08:56 RecruiterBox takes off - the PayPal payment hack that proved PMF 11:13 Growing RecruiterBox to 2,500+ customers 11:49 Why they sold a profitable, growing business 14:19 Where the Sprinto idea came from - SOC 2 pain at RecruiterBox 16:00 Finding product-market fit the second time - The Mom Test and interviews 21:16 Paying for 10 audits to validate the product could exist 23:28 Product risk vs market risk framework 27:45 Landing 30-40 customers quickly - harvesting existing demand 31:49 20 GTM channels tried, 3 worked 36:56 Different channels have different maturity periods 38:15 How AI impacts the business from three directions 42:40 Guardrails for AI - deterministic vs autonomous 46:43 Lightning round Full Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/478 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: https://saasclub.io/email #SaaS #ProductMarketFit #FounderStory #StartupValidation #SaaSGrowth