Speaker 0:  so let's talk about product market fit. how did you validate loft's concept and identify product market fit, and what would you tell other founders struggling to get to their product market fit?

Speaker 1:  yeah. so i mentioned this at the beginning, right, with the history of loft. it was based on selfish goals. i mean, my product market bit was i was bookending my meetings, and i was trying to do a meeting in a coffee shop, or i was trying to do a meeting on the go. and i had this idea, and and we said, hey. listen. let's let's try this because we've been consultants. you know, everyone on our team, we were consultants. and we know consultants. we know people who are freelancers, and they have this problem. right? now having said that, once you get into it, we validated it by client feedback and actually paying attention to how people were using this space and what they needed. right? so people would tell us, like, when we first launched our first location, i think we had seventeen desks because we thought it would be developers and individuals just, you know, typing away like you would in a coffee shop. right? and we had two work rooms, and that was it. the clients basically told us very quickly, hey. we need some privacy. like, we need offices. we need, you know, that boardroom. and so we had to install these things in the next location. so i think what happens is maybe to get product fit is sometimes as an entrepreneur, you've just gotta go with your gut to start. but what you need to do is don't get so caught up in the first iteration. it really is sort of being present and grounding yourself in the reality of what people are telling you, the feedback, and then saying, okay. how do we improve the experience? and we really keyed in on experience. right? and we validated it from our users. our users were the ones that told us exactly what they needed to pay for. like, they would say, get us this and we'll pay for it. right? so if you keep listening to what people will pay for, then i think you do have an opportunity to rework your business.