Violet’s Four-Year Bridge to Product-Market Fit: Why They Stayed in Stealth Despite Investor Interest
Sometimes the hardest part of building isn’t the building – it’s resisting the pressure to scale too soon. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Brandon Schulz shares why Violet spent four years perfecting their product despite ongoing investor interest, and how they knew when they were finally ready to scale.
The Unconventional Choice
For most founders, the standard playbook is clear: raise money early to accelerate growth. But Brandon took a different path. “First thing I would say is, do not spend any time trying to raise money,” he reflects. “That was one of my biggest early mistakes. Our time spent on investment was driven by investor interest as opposed to a rigorous approach to how and when we will raise money.”
The Reality of Early Rejections
The journey wasn’t easy. “We didn’t have much of a past in fundraising and even don’t have much of a super compelling resume on paper. But we knew we had a great product and we knew we could build great product,” Brandon shares.
This conviction was tested through countless investor meetings. “You walk away from a conversation with an investor, and they are basically telling you that you’re wrong,” Brandon explains. “If they believed you and thought that you were right, they would absolutely give you money.”
Finding Signal Through Noise
The breakthrough came when they signed their first major customer. “At the end of year three, we signed a contract with Instagram, actually, to have to work on some of the early iterations of Instagram checkout,” Brandon reveals. “And I think had that not happened, it would have been also much tougher. But that was a huge form of signal and a big part of our learning and our growth.”
The Moment Everything Changed
The transition from struggling to raise to being oversubscribed happened almost overnight. Brandon recalls, “Four years of intense, brutal output and then over the space of two weeks, I was pitching sequoia a16z greylock, like firms that I would idolize five years before this.”
The speed of the transition was disorienting: “We ended up closing a seed round 60 days later. And then we raised a series A 90 days after that. And I just sort of looked at it all. It’s like, what the hell? I put in all this time?”
The Key Indicators
Several specific metrics signaled they were ready:
- Sales conversations shifted from explanation to implementation
- Their customer base tripled in twelve months
- Q4 transaction volume maintained through Q1, showing sustainable growth
Brandon notes, “We actually doubled by 100% from Q3 to Q4, which was well above kind of the industry standard for what happens in the holiday season.”
Lessons for Founders
The key insight? Product-market fit isn’t a gradual progression – it’s often a step change. As Brandon puts it, “It wasn’t like for every additional hour of hard work I put in, I received back in yield an hour of output, not how it works. And instead it was about the way that the pieces all fit together.”
For technical founders, especially those building infrastructure products, Violet’s journey offers a compelling alternative to the “raise fast, scale faster” mindset. Sometimes, the path to sustainable growth requires the patience to perfect your product and the conviction to wait for the right moment to scale.
When that moment comes, it’s unmistakable. As Brandon discovered, four years of rejection can turn into overnight success when product-market fit truly clicks into place.