Before It Clicked

Where do great business ideas come from? "Before It Clicked" takes you inside the minds of successful business owners to find out. Join us as we interview entrepreneurs about their "aha!" moment, the origins of their innovative ideas, and the journey of building their products from scratch. Gain insights and inspiration for your own entrepreneurial path.

Before It Clicked is a business podcast hosted by Sunny Rekhi, with 12 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Sunny Rekhi hosts Before It Clicked, a business show with 12 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Before It Clicked

  How Raj Suri Got the Idea for Presto — and Validated It by Working in a Restaurant

  Apr 22, 202646 minS0

  <p>Raj Suri built Presto after one painfully slow restaurant bill split turned into an obsession. In this episode, he breaks down how he got the idea, why he worked inside a restaurant before building, how he found his first customer, and what founders get wrong about picking markets vs products. This is a sharp episode on idea formation, validation, founder conviction, and surviving when you’re too early.</p><p><br></p><p>Timestamps:00:00 How Raj got the idea for Presto from a restaurant bill split01:48 What Presto became and why restaurants felt broken04:20 Leaving an MIT PhD to go...

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  Before It Clicked

  10 Years of Near-Death to a $200M Uber Exit — Ryan Rzepecki (Jump Bikes)

  Mar 6, 20261h 9mS0

  <p>Ryan Rzepecki had no hardware background and no software background. But in 2008, he saw the Paris bike share system, thought the $5,000-per-bike infrastructure cost was insane, and started building a smarter alternative — a smart lock on a bike, unlocked with your phone.</p><p>What followed was a 10-year journey of product pivots, near-bankruptcy, and relentless grinding. His parents mortgaged their house. His girlfriend put in her career savings. He ran the "apology tour" to customers while shipping late hardware. And just when billions of VC dollars started flooding into micromobility, none of it flowed to him.</p><p>In...

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  Before It Clicked

  100 Customer Interviews to a $1B Exit to Stripe | Metronome's Story

  Feb 25, 202656 minS0

  <p>Scott Woody left Dropbox with no idea, no code, and no product. What followed was months of deliberate exploration — a LIDAR startup, a nanny company, workflow software — before a random conversation with HashiCorp unlocked the wedge that became Metronome, a billing infrastructure company that just sold to Stripe for $1 billion.</p><p>In this episode, Scott breaks down the exact methodology he used to find the idea: 100 customer interviews in 6 weeks, why universal pain isn't enough (it has to converge), and how an offhand comment about "the metering problem" changed everything. He also shares how he would ideate differently in 2...

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  Before It Clicked

  6 Pivots to $1.4b: PostHog Origin Story (and How They'd Do It In 2026)

  Feb 4, 20261h 19mS0

  <p>PostHog just raised $75M Series E at a ~$1.4B valuation—but the real story is what happened before it clicked.<br>In this episode, PostHog co-founder James Hawkins walks through the 6 pivots that came before PostHog: why early-stage is brutally hard, how they decided what to build next, and the exact moments that told them they were finally onto something.</p><p>We cover:</p><p>Why 0→1 is harder than $1M→$100M</p><p>The pivot framework they used to stop thrashing</p><p>Why selling to developers changed everything</p><p>The launch + distribution tactics that worked</p><p>How...

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  Before It Clicked

  From $15M to $1.8M and Back: How Dover Found PMF Twice (George Carollo)

  Jan 28, 20261h 11mS0

  <p>Dover is one of those YC companies that looks “obviously successful” from the outside. But the real story is way messier: they hit PMF with a product called Autopilot, scaled fast, and then the 2022 hiring crash basically deleted their market overnight.</p><p>In this episode of Before It Clicked, Sunny Rekhi sits down with George Carollo (cofounder of Dover) to unpack what it actually feels like to lose product-market fit, run experiments inside a ~30-person company, and claw your way back to growth. Today, Dover is a lean, profitable business doing ~ $6M in revenue, supporting ~50 recruiters on its mark...

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