From False Peaks to Escape Velocity

Hey builders - it’s Firas again!

This one is from my Inside the Silicon Mind episode with Justin Fitzhugh.

There’s a moment Justin describes that perfectly captures the emotional whiplash of building in Silicon Valley.

At Snowflake’s IPO in September 2020 - the largest software IPO in history - he’s sitting at home on Zoom, mid-pandemic, stock ripping, years of pressure finally released. Excitement. Disbelief. Relief. Gratitude. A once-in-a-lifetime outcome.

And yet, that moment only makes sense when you understand the one that came before it.

Because just a few years earlier, Justin was deep inside a very different story at Instart Logic - a company with world-class talent, marquee customers, massive valuations, and all the surface-level signals of success… that ultimately didn’t make it.

This edition of The PMF Playbook isn’t about celebrating the peak. It’s about understanding the difference between looking like you have product-market fit and actually having it and why Snowflake crossed that chasm while so many others don’t.

Justin is careful not to rewrite history at Instart as a simple failure. In many ways, the company did a lot right. The idea was strong. The execution was strong. The team scaled. Customers trusted them with mission-critical infrastructure where seconds of downtime meant millions of dollars lost.

But the subtle mistake - and the dangerous one - was letting valuation become the leading indicator instead of the trailing one.

At a certain point, funding rounds and paper valuations started to create a false sense of security. The company looked like a winner. It was talked about as a top portfolio asset. And when that happens, it becomes easier - almost unconsciously - to let momentum replace scrutiny.

The hardest part, Justin admits, is that when you’re inside it, you want to believe. You’ve invested years of your life. Your identity, your future, your relationships are tied to the company. So when warning signs appear - delayed rounds, valuations stalling, markets shifting - it’s incredibly difficult to look at them objectively.

Outsiders can see the curve bending long before insiders can.

The lesson here is uncomfortable but fundamental: valuation is not validation. In fact, high valuations often increase pressure before fundamentals are ready to support it. Expectations rise faster than revenue. Growth targets accelerate. Optionality disappears.

Instart didn’t fail because the team wasn’t good enough. It failed because the market commoditized faster than the company adapted and because course correction came too late.

One of the most important ideas Justin returns to again and again is that product-market fit isn’t something you “achieve” and move on from.

At Instart, product direction was set and then left largely untouched for too long. Engineering, product, and customers weren’t always tightly coupled. Engineers didn’t consistently hear feedback directly. Market shifts - particularly rapid price compression in the CDN space - weren’t acted on aggressively enough.

The takeaway is sharp: PMF decays.

Markets move. Customers evolve. Commoditization creeps in. If you’re not constantly re-validating your assumptions - monthly, not annually - you’re slowly drifting out of alignment while convincing yourself everything is fine.

Justin’s advice to founders is almost deceptively simple: stay brutally close to customers, let engineers talk to them directly, and be willing to kill sacred cows. Sunk cost bias is one of the most expensive habits in startups.

Sometimes the bravest move isn’t pushing harder - it’s stopping, resetting, and pivoting before the window closes.

When Justin joined Snowflake, the contrast was immediate.

Within two sentences, the founders could articulate exactly why Snowflake was different: they disaggregated compute and storage and built natively for the cloud. That clarity wasn’t marketing polish — it was architectural conviction.

This is a defining PMF insight: category-defining companies don’t just compete better, they change the rules.

Snowflake didn’t try to out-Oracle Oracle. It redefined how data platforms should work. Storage became cheap and ubiquitous. Compute became elastic and value-aligned. Complexity disappeared for the customer.

And the result was something Justin had never seen before: frictionless sales. Sales teams didn’t “sell” - customers pulled the product in. Demand outpaced the organization’s ability to scale.

That’s real product-market fit. When growth becomes operationally terrifying rather than commercially uncertain.

What looks effortless from the outside was anything but inside Snowflake.

Justin’s role - spanning cloud engineering, product security, observability, and release - existed to solve a single problem: how do you keep up when demand compounds faster than your systems?

Snowflake had to repeatedly reinvent how it operated. DevOps became software engineering. Humans managing infrastructure became software managing infrastructure. Entire cultural shifts were required - new skills, new hires, new ways of thinking.

This is a subtle but critical PMF lesson: success creates its own failure modes. The systems that get you to $100M ARR will break at $500M. The org design that worked at one scale becomes a bottleneck at the next.

Snowflake survived these transitions because leadership was willing to make painful step-function changes early - even when things looked good.

Justin’s reflections on leadership - particularly Frank Slootman’s - are striking in their consistency.

What made Snowflake work wasn’t charisma or hype. It was directness.

Frank was explicit about what was working and what wasn’t. He didn’t overpromise to customers. He didn’t sugarcoat internally. If something failed, he said so. If the company needed to pivot, he explained why.

That kind of honesty builds trust - with employees, with customers, and with the market.

And trust compounds.

The same principle shows up in Justin’s own leadership philosophy: clarity beats comfort. Teams don’t need protection from hard truths. They need alignment around reality.

Looking at Justin’s journey - Instart to Snowflake - the contrast becomes clear.

Instart hit a false peak: high valuation, strong narrative, but weakening fundamentals underneath.

Snowflake hit escape velocity: undeniable pull from the market, structural advantage, and systems built to scale into it.

Both moments felt exciting in real time. Only one endured.

For founders, this is the heart of PMF: don’t confuse momentum with inevitability. Don’t let valuation outrun learning. And don’t assume fit is permanent just because it once existed.

The market never stops moving. The job is to move with it - faster, clearer, and more honestly than everyone else.

Until next time,

Firas Sozan
Your Cloud, Data & AI Search & Venture Partner

Find me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/firassozan/
Personal website: https://firassozan.com/
Company website: https://www.harrisonclarke.com/
Venture capital fund: https://harrisonclarkeventures.com/
‘Inside the Silicon Mind’ podcast: https://insidethesiliconmind.com/