A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
00:52:16 · Pablo Srugo, Jonathan Awad
[00:52:16] S1: The hack is like figure out what the person wants. Like you said, friends, VCs, you know, fame, panels, whatever. Deliver that ahead of the product and then see what happens. And in many cases, something's going to happen as a result. You have to do it ahead of the product. [00:52:31] S0: You have to just give and expect nothing. And that's the hack, if that makes sense. You just keep giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. The more you give, the more you get. The best way to get something out of somebody is to give them 10x more than what you want. And they're like, wow, this person's awesome. I'll give it a shot. But it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. That's really what it is. But it worked super well and I feel great about it. I've helped tons of people get new jobs. Buyers of mine have moved around, gone to a market, you know, different huge marketplaces, different banks, different lenders. I've gotten tons of people new jobs. And then they go to a place and they're like, wait, Jonathan just helped me get here. Like, he's been so good to me. Sure, we'll look at your product. And all I've done is help you get a new job. I'm not even asking. You don't have to ask though. You don't have to ask if you're that valuable and you work that hard and you do that much. [00:53:18] S1: It just comes back. [00:53:20] S0: It's a volume.
00:53:20 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
[00:53:20] S0: It's a volume. [00:53:21] S1: So then tying all this back, right, because the key question I have for you on the product is the nature of it is you got to get all these people to share data with you for it to even be valued. And it's one of these things like if everybody did it, it'd be awesome. But then for any given person, they're like, yeah, but not everybody is doing it. So why would I? Right? How do you get over? That's my key question on kind of go to market. Like you're doing all this stuff, creating serendipity, adding value. Great. But how do you get over that fact of why would I be first? Like why would I share my data first?