A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
00:48:38 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
And really easily, I was like, well, we have a lot of VCs. I have a lot of friend VCs. Do you want to meet any? And I'm telling you, whenever they say yes, it's 100% of the time we work together. It's never failed. Not one time. I've done it, call it like 40 times or something. Wow. Like 40 times. And you give like one VC intro or like a bunch? [00:48:55] S1: Like what's the approach usually? [00:48:57] S0: It depends. It basically is like, I hit up, call it 20 VCs and 10 of them are investors in Baselayer. And I'm like, hey, here's this person. Here's their profile. Here's their, you know, vague interest of an idea. We'd love for you guys to meet them. Just hear it out. Like, see what's going on. You know, make the connection, see what happens. And, you know, I ended up scouting for a couple funds as a result of this method. Funny enough, there's actually kind of a poofer. And I've invested in a bunch of them. Funny enough, and there's a bunch of angel investments on my LinkedIn. So you can see that. But a bunch are always like, wait, yeah, cool. Because these buyers are like senior people. [00:49:31] S1: Yeah, they're legit.
00:49:31 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:49:31] S1: Yeah, they're legit. [00:49:33] S0: These are legit people. And it's so interesting. It's such a simple hack. Founders have Nisees and really cool other founder friends and, you know, things like that, that buyers totally would love to meet and be interested in exploring. And like, they'd be super valuable to them. I mean, I've done a lot of things. I've done like crazy events. Like, I'll bring a ton of people to my events. And I've definitely introduced some people to their spouses. Like, straight up. Like, hey, girlfriend, boyfriend,
00:49:59 · Pablo Srugo
[00:49:59] S1: here you go. Like, you know what's funny about the VC thing? I don't know if you watched Always Sunny. You ever watched that? Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Remember the, the implications, right? It's like, you make the intro and you're in the middle of that until that person gets funded, which they're not getting funded anytime soon because they're an exec somewhere. They're not like quitting tomorrow. And so it's not just that you did a favor for them, which on its own is already valued. There's no quit pro quo. Like, you're just doing it to do it. Then later on, so they're like, oh, John, I like Johnny. You know, he introduced me to like three VCs. Awesome. The other thing is like, man, and whether they think this explicitly or not, it's like, if John doesn't think highly of me, like, I need John to think highly of me, you know, because he's the reason I met these five VCs. So if ever I want to like get money from these five VCs, like, you know, they might ask John, like, hey, what do you think about this person? He's the one that made the intro. And if I'm like, oh, if John's like, yeah, this person, you know, they told me they could buy and like, actually they had no power and they couldn't do anything and like ultimately didn't buy, waste my time. Not great. Right. I'd rather impress John and keep him on my, you know what I mean? So like, that's, that's also playing into this psychologically, I think. A little bit too.
00:51:02 · Jonathan Awad
[00:51:02] S0: And it's funny cool. Fine. I look into your product. Wait, your product's pretty good. They try the product. Wait, the product's really good. They buy it. And then they're like, oh, like maybe I do want to be a founder one day. All right. I got to be cool. And then we get more and more customers and then we get bigger and bigger and then we raise more and more money. And then now I'm an even more valuable person. So you can create your own reality. Basically like that. This is self-fulfilling prophecy of success. Like if you just keep introing, you get all these customers, you raise more money, you're even more valuable. Then the implication is, no, now I'm a very valuable founder reference for this person who knows a ton of VCs. And as you know, we've raised a ton of money at this point. So it's like it's very good loop. And because startup world moves so fast, it's a loop that works really quickly. And for some reason, no one has ever recommended this to me. I've never heard this on a podcast. I've never started anyone writing it down. Like no one's ever said it. I think it's because it feels like maybe a little dirty, but I would love for anyone to listen to this to realize like you just have to do it in a really chill way and know tons of people and be super valuable to them because there's a lot of other things. Hey, want to be on, you know, at this conference, want to be on a panel with me. Hey, I know a bunch of like much bigger companies than us and we're going to do an event together. Want to be on this panel. Want to be on a webinar. Yeah.