A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:41:51 · Pablo Srugo
[00:41:51] S1: the analogy that comes to mind, and I've always thought this, like, about startups, and the amount of work required to get things going is like, imagine like a truck, like a big, big truck, right? That's your startup. You go and you try and push that truck, it's not moving. It's not going to go anywhere. And default is, it's not going to move. If you give it a little push one day, and then you come back the next day, give it another push, it's still not going to move. It's not going anywhere. You got to push it, and then as soon as it starts rolling, you got to go more, and more, and more. And it's just like, if you stop, it's going to stop. And that's the thing about a startup, unlike a company that has legs, default is, nothing happens. Like, nothing will happen, because nobody knows you, you are nothing, you have nothing. You've got to put in so much effort to get the ball rolling, and at some point, you're going to feel, like, momentum. And like, even if you let go, like, things are going to still go forward, but for a long time, the second you let go, the second you stop, it all just dies off. It's, it's, it's just, it's painful that way. Great Sam Altman quote on that exact thing.
00:42:45 · Jonathan Awad
[00:42:45] S0: CEO's job is to build and sustain momentum. I totally agree. And if I'm messaging so many people, my calendar's so stacked, everyone, we're talking to everyone, we're going here, we're going there, we're posting on LinkedIn, we're going on Twitter, we're doing an event, we're doing this, it just feels like, whoa, so much is going on, whoa. Oh my God, Jonathan's is tornado. And then people get excited. And then the excitement breeds excitement. It inspires more work. And when I'm grinding and they see me late nights, they see me doing so much. Then when I say, hey, like, can we do it today? Then they're like, all right, we'll do it today. Like, fine, we'll do it today. There's so many people on our team. And, you know, I got to credit so many people. Juan on our team, Solutions Engineer Lead and one of our core products focus people. I'm telling you, this man had worked so hard for so long on our team. Shout out to Juan. And you don't have to tell him, probably have to do a late night on this one. Like, you kind of have to. It's like, hey, like, here's a bunch of things. Do you think we can get it all by Wednesday? And it's like way too many things for most people. And he's like, yeah, let's do it. And then he, on his own, shout out. That's why I'm giving him shout out. And we've given him many raises and we love Juan. He's just, he sometimes does a very late, four or five a.m. night or an all-nighter on his own. I never have to ask him to do it. He just knows that urgency is everything. Time is everything. If you get more done now, we're going to learn if we all put in the effort, if we all really care. And I think for top of funnel for early stage founders, whatever you think you're doing, if you 10X it, wouldn't that be much better?
00:44:18 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:44:18] S1: Yes, yes, yes, yes. [00:44:19] S0: It's kind of the mentality. I'm like, well, if you add like tons more people on LinkedIn and you try to engage with them in the comments, engage on them on the posts and you try to see like, oh, you're mutual with that person, you're mutual with that person, you ask that person, you teach it to that person. And you know, like if you kind of just keep doing more and more and more and more, wouldn't that be way better? Of course it is. There's no answer besides obviously yes. And I think that people just have to face reality, like face yourself in the mirror. Do you want this or not? Like that's it. That's definitely the advice that I always give people. And most people just don't do it. It's like, [00:44:52] S1: what do you mean? [00:44:52] S0: That sounds really difficult. So that's top of funnel. [00:44:56] S1: The other thing we want to dive into because you've got some pretty crazy hacks there is the bottom of funnel. This is now you've met people, you figured out who might be able to help, who might not be able to help. And now you've got some people that like genuinely, you know, could be buyers or could influence like a real buying decision. You're a startup, you have no trust, you're selling to pretty big companies and credibility is like the thing. How did you manage to really win over these champions to win their trust and have them kind of do that work for you? What I realized very early on, it actually touches a little bit
00:45:26 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
[00:45:26] S0: of the top of funnel method is there's so much power in your network. There's so much power there that you can have so many assets to play with and to use and to be valuable. And at the end of the day, buyers don't typically, and I'm going to throw up a random stat, like this is a fake stat, but it's directionally correct. 80% of the time, 90% of the time, they're not going to get paid to buy your thing. If they buy your thing, they don't make more money. You don't always get promoted. And very frequently, such as a fairly safe startup, they can get fired. So they're taking this huge risk on you, this huge bet on you. And maybe you move an OKR for them. And maybe that's tied to their comp. And maybe it's valuable. But likely, this is what happens. They try your thing. They have to convince a ton of people. They're nervous half the time. And if anything goes wrong, immediately they're like, who did this? If anything goes catastrophically wrong, they could get fired. Especially if it's more than like a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars, whatever. Ten figure, you know, five figure thing, six figure thing. Like, yeah, [00:46:22] S1: think about it. Hey, we spent 50k on this. We spent like four months implementing it. It's completely useless. Like, wait, what? Get out of here.
00:46:22 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:46:22] S1: think about it. Hey, we spent 50k on this. We spent like four months implementing it. It's completely useless. Like, wait, what? Get out of here. [00:46:29] S0: Pablo, did you just make us this? Why did you just make us this? What's wrong with you? So that type of thing. How do you overcome that? You connect. You get them to actually trust you. People in the beginning are buying the founder. They're buying you. So if you're just only talking about your product, or you only spend time talking about their product, [00:46:44] S1: they're like,
00:46:45 · Jonathan Awad
[00:46:45] S0: well, I don't know you that well. I don't trust you. You're going to be there for me. You're going to respond in two minutes. And I'm going to duck and dive and cover. I don't know you. So all I ever did when I really kind of realized this reciprocity in humans was I was like, well, if I become as close as possible to as many buyers as possible, and I'm valuable to them, and I give them something outside of just our product, they'll give us a chance. And then you kind of look around here. What do I have? What can I give you? And I think humans are all the same. It's money powerful. That's kind of it. You can't just hand people money, but you can give things that are super valuable. Your network is super valuable. Your connections are super powerful. And so I saw this thing where I was like, well, a lot of people really love talking to me. And it was a little different when I was an AE, you know, a salesperson versus founder. They seem like they just like there's something fun about talking to a founder, something fun about, you know, going to these events and meeting VCs and, you know, feeling like, ooh, maybe I could be a founder too. Like maybe I could see myself in Jonathan C. And I kind of hit. That's why the great thing about doing the approach of just meeting as many people as possible is you could do events, bring a lot of people together, and then you could bring the VC. Bring the partner at Goldman who isn't a buyer for you necessarily, but it's just like a cool person to know. You could bring the person who's an exec at like LVMH. I know a lot of people in fashion and modeling randomly, right? Like you could bring all these cool people together. And that's really interesting. But a hack I did, and I haven't done it recently in like all like the last six months because I think you're going to scale past it. So I don't mind sharing this. Easy, like one of the easiest methods I found is just getting really deep with someone very quickly. And just saying like, hey, have you ever thought about being a founder? You have any ideas? And these are the buyers, like the person who could sign and the person who influences, et cetera. And so many of them were like, actually, yeah, I totally have. I have the dream. I have the vision. Like there's always been this little itch I always wanted to scratch.