Robert Chatwani on product-market fit
From Building Great Companies - AI or Not! | Fireside Chat with Robert Chatwani and Vinod Muthukrishnan · · Inventus Capital Partners
“You often see the trap of technology in search of a problem — if you build phenomenal technology without answering foundational questions about who you're solving for, it quickly gets commoditized.”
On , Robert Chatwani, President & GM of Growth at DOCUSIGN INC, spoke about product-market fit during Building Great Companies - AI or Not! | Fireside Chat with Robert Chatwani and Vinod Muthukrishnan on Inventus Capital Partners.
About Robert Chatwani
Robert Chatwani, President and General Manager of Growth at DocuSign, has discussed the potential for marketing teams to achieve significantly higher output without additional resources. In a December 2025 podcast, he stated that companies should expect "2x, 3x, 5x, maybe even 10x output from the marketing team without increasing the input, without increasing the resources, the budget." He attributed this possibility to the use of AI agents for hyper-personalized prospecting and the adoption of agile growth squads that operate like engineering teams. Chatwani also noted that customer acquisition costs have risen 60% since the start of the pandemic. Chatwani has spoken about the role of AI in business, describing it as "foundational to everything you'll build going forward" but cautioning that being "an 'AI startup' doesn't differentiate you; AI is a means to an end, not the product or category itself." He has emphasized that the fundamentals of building a company remain unchanged, including understanding the problem being solved and the category being created. At DocuSign, he said the company is building an "agreement language model" (ALM) to improve the signing and post-signature management of agreements, and estimated that combining generative capabilities with human intelligence could free up 20–40% of capacity. Chatwani has also discussed DocuSign's growth, noting that its revenue rose from approximately $500–800 million pre-pandemic to $2.5 billion within 36 months, and that the company has committed to building an engineering center in Bangalore, India. He has described India as a "more favorable place to do business" compared to China, citing factors such as foreign direct investment, intellectual property control, and the regulatory environment.