The Mint Recap: Fireside Chat with Misha Esipov
It was a pleasure to host Misha Esipov as a special guest at The Mint last week.
Misha is the CEO and Founders of Nova Credit. Over the past nine years, he and the team found product-market fit and raised a major Series B—only to see the business come to a screeching halt just weeks later as COVID hit and disintegrated their core business. Despite that setback, they fought their way back, found PMF again, and eventually stabilized the company.
Misha shared some incredible insights from his journey at Nova. Here are a few key takeaways:
- You can only do one thing exceptionally well.
- Finding PMF is an iterative process of expanding and then narrowing focus.
- Understand your value when pricing your product.
- Ink on page means nothing.
- Always find the silver lining.
You can only do one thing exceptionally well.
You can only focus on one core priority at a time to succeed. Whether it’s choosing between B2B vs. B2C, different product lines, or market segments, trying to pursue multiple paths simultaneously will divide your attention, confuse your team, and likely lead to failure on all fronts—rather than success in one.
Misha shared how Nova initially flirted with being both a consumer and B2B business—a “huge mistake,” as he called it. Trying to learn how to acquire both businesses and consumers at the same time meant failing at doing either well. Eventually, they chose to go all-in on enterprise, recognizing that you can only do one thing exceptionally well.
Finding PMF is an iterative process of expanding and then narrowing focus.
Finding PMF starts with casting a wide net, but once you see real customer interest, you must ruthlessly narrow your focus to that opportunity. The biggest mistake is continuing to chase multiple directions instead of doubling down where you see genuine pull.
You can’t solve a problem for everyone. Not only is that a distraction, but it also prevents you from going deep enough into any one customer profile. If you spread your energy thin, you’ll end up running in circles.
Understand your value when pricing your product.
From day one, Nova had exceptionally strong pricing power. They could do this by deeply understanding and clearly communicating their value proposition. Rather than comparing themselves to existing credit bureau prices, they focused on the thousands in revenue they unlocked for customers—and framed their fee as just a small share of that new value. By anchoring conversations around value creation instead of cost, they turned pricing objections into ROI discussions.
Ink on page means nothing.
When Nova signed one of their biggest customers, Misha initially believed they had found product-market fit. But he quickly learned: “ink on page means nothing.” What actually matters is:
- Real product usage
- Delivering on what was promised
- Achieving meaningful results (in their case, loan cohorts performing as expected)
Simply signing big customers isn’t success—it’s about whether they actually use the product and get real value from it.
Always find the silver lining.
Misha said that as a founder, “you eat sh*t every day for years—if you’re lucky!” Founders face constant setbacks, and the key to surviving is learning to find opportunity in every failure. Seeing the silver lining builds resilience and keeps you moving forward.
When Nova had a big customer set back after many years of partnership, the team realized it was a blessing in disguise. They had been spending too much time and energy trying to fix an unsolvable customer problem rather than advancing their product offering or winning new business. Misha emphasized the importance of being honest about the situation, learning from it, and not wasting energy trying to salvage something that no longer makes sense.
