The Startup Playbook Podcast

Insights and lessons from the world's best entrepreneurs and investors

Ep194 – Jon Gregory (Founder & CEO – Vitruvian) on product led growth and relentless positivity

My guest for Ep194 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was Jon Gregory.

Jon is the Founder & CEO of Vitruvian.

Vitruvian is an all-in-one digital home gym that uses AI to adjust resistance in real time to help users get the most out of their workout.

Since launching in 2018, they have gone on to raise USD$27M, with customers all around the world and working with a number of athletes such as Olympian and world champion sprinter, Justin Gatlin and the worlds strongest man, Thor Bjornsson.

We covered a wide range of topics in this interview including:

  • The value in doing hard things
  • The challenges around building and raising capital for hardware products
  • How to build using product led growth
  • & much more

Timestamps:

  • 2:28 Jon’s background
  • 6:08 How his science background helped him think through business problems
  • 7:49 The initial idea for Vitruvian
  • 16:35 Going from idea to product and iterating
  • 18:55 The early days of Vitruvian, attracting customers, partners and investors
  • 23:40 How COVID affected the business
  • 28:34 Having a product led philosophy
  • 30:52 Making decisions as a founder
  • 36:53 Having a community focus early on in the business
  • 40:38 Product led growth in practice for Vitruvian
  • 44:05 Fundraising tips for hardware startups
  • 46:48 Challenges building a global business from Perth
  • 50:35 The future of hardware and AI
  • 54:25 Developing a positive mindset

Our partners:

A big thank you to Weibke Hensen for her help with this interview!

Also a big shout out to our partners for the show:

Scendar 

Scendar is the OG startup accounting firm in Australia catering to all stages of your business’ life. If you’re busy running your startup, you don’t have time to do your own books and forecast. Instead, fully outsource your finance function, giving you time and resources back to focus on what you do best in growing your business. Find out more at Scendar.com

Vanta

Vanta helps businesses get — and stay — compliant by automating up to 90% of the work for the most in-demand compliance frameworks. And with over 300 integrations, you can easily monitor and secure the tools your business relies on.
Join over six thousand fast-growing companies that use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time.

Startup Playbook Podcast listeners get access to an exclusive offer of USD$1000 off their plans. Head over tvanta.com/playbook to get access to this exclusive discount.

Links mentioned:

8 year podcast event:

Giveaway:

Jon’s links:

People mentioned:

Companies mentioned:

Feedback/connect/say hello:

[email protected]
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

Find all of the links for the podcast on Linktree here