Business Model First, Product Second: Thirty Years of Building Smarter | Steve Subar, Ep 40
Episode Summary
Steve Subar, serial entrepreneur and inventor of MatFresher, discusses his business-model-first approach to building companies. After 30+ years founding and exiting ventures including Open Kernel Labs (acquired by General Dynamics), Subar explains how he validated product-market fit for MatFresher—an automated yoga mat cleaning machine—by manually cleaning mats at studios before building the product. He emphasizes innovating business models alongside technology, the importance of experience over information, and why wisdom beats rapid iteration.
Pull Quotes
“I started with what if I could create a business model for whatever that business would be. What would be the business model I'd want to build? So I thought about building a business model first and a company second.”
“It turns out that you can actually get a lot of market sounding, a lot of feedback, a lot of knowledge, a lot of validation, early validation of product market fit without investing very much in the product at all.”
“Information is not the same as wisdom. And learning from making mistakes is not the same as good decision making. If you take information and you add experience, then that equals wisdom.”
“Why does a great new business need to be about solving a problem? It doesn't. The flip side of that coin is a great opportunity.”
On finding unconventional paths to market
“It's the person who looks peripherally left and right and sees another door that might be open, but nobody's using totally legit entrance. Walks up, opens the door, and goes right in. So it's that kind of in through the outdoor thinking that I think is fundamental in being successful.”
Transcript
Hi, welcome to Tales from the Sky Lounge. It's a podcast about business, consulting, and venture investing. We get out there in the world and we talk to people who are making it happen and we get their stories. If you can like and subscribe, our producer, James, gets really happy about that. So, today's guest in the Sky Lounge, Steve Subar. Hi, Steve.
Hello, Todd. How are you?
Hey, doing well. So, Steve, who are you and what are you working on?
At present, this doesn't make great cocktail conversation. I'm the inventor and patent holder of the world's first fully automated yoga mat cleaning machine.
That's awesome. And you're an entrepreneur and you can't get away from it, right? It's truly a disease where you kind of have to go back to the well and start companies. But tell us about Matt Fresher.
Want to go deeper?
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