S 01 Ep 16 | Cracking the Code : Achieving Product - Market Fit with Customer Centric Solutions Kevin Mahaffey co - founded Lookout , built it into a mobile security leader , and has since invested in over a hundred early - stage companies , ten of which became unicorns . This episode traces the full arc of building a consumer product that used green logos and reassuring language at a time when every competitor was trying to scare people into buying . The design philosophy behind that decision that trust compounds and fear doesn ' t , turns out to apply well beyond security software . Kevin draws a clean line between analyzing , which is what public market investors do with past metrics , and underwriting , which is what early - stage investing actually requires . He walks through what he was underwriting when he backed Airtable , and why bottom - up thinking about individual customers is a more reliable signal than top - down market size estimates . Kevin makes a case that the principles of a good business have not changed , and that the historical record on technology and human prosperity is a lot more encouraging than the current anxiety cycle suggests .