How Clay used Slack to grow to $1.25B
The Step by Step Slack Strategy Clay Used to grow to $1.25B
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Product Market Fit newsletter!
In this article I’m going to share:
Clay’s Path to Product Market Fit
The Step by Step Slack Strategy Clay Used to grow to $1.25B
You’ve probably heard about Clay everywhere — even under rocks.
But… why?
Clay was founded 7 years ago and in just two months scaled from $0 to $30M in ARR, reaching a valuation of $1.25B in January 2025.
The Path to Product Market Fit
1. Understanding what’s Product Market Fit
When the need is large enough, people will buy your product even if it's still very early and wait for you to build the rest of the features.
That's the main indicator that you have something worthwhile (Product Market Fit)
Having early on love for the product is a great pmf indicator.
2. From horizontal positioning to vertical positioning and product market fit
In 2017, Kareem Amin and Nicolae Rusan — two technical entrepreneurs who had already sold a startup — founded Clay with the intention of making data work by itself.
Their original vision was a magical spreadsheet — basically, like Notion connected to all your external sources and auto-filled.
For the first few years, they gained no traction.
Obviously, Clay was powerful, but nobody knew what to use it for. It was a great product, but without a clear narrative and lacking vertical focus.
In 2021, Varun Anand — a startup operator who had even worked on U.S. presidential campaigns — came across a live Clay demo in a no-code community.
No one had joined the demo, only him.
Still, he stayed, fell in love with the idea instantly, and joined as a co-founder — a brilliant decision.
As soon as he joined, he made one thing clear: kill the unfocused, narrative-less version and double down on solving the most painful problem:
“Searching, enriching, and contacting leads is a massive waste of time. Let’s automate all of it.”
That changed everything.
How a Slack channel sparked Growth 🔥
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Product Market Fit to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.