Zero To $1 BILLION In Payments In Just One Year: How To Crush Product-Market-Fit w/ Joshua Silver

Zero To $1 BILLION In Payments In Just One Year: How To Crush Product-Market-Fit w/ Joshua Silver

From The IO Podcast: Investor + Operator by Sterling Snow and Tyler Hogge

September 30, 2025 · 28 min · Season 2 · Episode 13

About this episode

Joshua Silver discusses how Rainforest achieved over $1 billion in transactions in its first year by identifying a market gap in the payments space.

Usually small startups fail when trying to take on big companies. Rainforest, however, is a different story. In the payments space dominated by Stripe and PayPal, founder Joshua Silver saw a gap no one was paying attention to. The result? Over $1 Billion in transactions in their first year! In this convo, Joshua explains how he found the opportunity, the steps he took to dominate it, and his mindset when it comes to nailing product-market-fit in a crowded space. Chapters: (00:00:00) Intro (00:00:56) Payment Processing's Role in SaaS Revenue (00:02:07) How Rainforest Succeeded So Quickly (00:05:42) Strategy For Breaking Into The Market (00:15:17) How They Beat The Competition (00:17:50) The 1 Metric To Focus On (00:21:49) The Best Thing He Did While Fundraising —— Subscribe for more startup content! Check out Rainforest: https://www.rainforestpay.com/ Check out PELION: https://pelionvp.com/

People in this episode

Hosts: Sterling Snow, Tyler Hogge

Guest: Joshua Silver

Topics covered

  • payments
  • startup success
  • product-market fit
  • entrepreneurship
  • market strategy

Keywords

  • payments
  • startup
  • product-market fit
  • entrepreneurship
  • market strategy
  • Rainforest
  • Joshua Silver

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Rainforest, Stripe, PayPal, PELION

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