A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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?
00:53:47 · Jonathan Awad
[00:53:47] S0: Yeah. So why would they share their data first is a really good question. And a lot of it was gathering the interest from a large group where no one is actually first. And then along the way of the conversation, you're like, well, what else would you like as well once you do share this? What score? What calculation? What other data? And then we picked up so many other products that by the time we really like launched, we launched with a compound complex product suite. We launched with five products at once. And we launched with like, call it 15 customers at once, basically, right? And that's what it really worked. You just have to, you know, strategy is so difficult for most people because we don't actually know what it is. It's a word. It means nothing. And that's a really fun part about it. The fact that most people don't know what the word strategy means. They don't actually have a strategy. One of my favorite books of all time is my strategy. I think there's like one really excellent book. It's Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. It's the best book any founder listening to this. Listen to that book. You listen to that book and like, because I did the audio. You can read it, but the audio books are, I think, better. 20 minutes in, you're like, I don't have a strategy at all. Dang it. Like, it's just one of those moments that just punches you in the face of like, because it just, it starts with, this is all of the bad ways to think about strategy. This is if you don't have a strategy. This is what you think. This is what you do. And it gives all these examples of all the times there was no strategy. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And then you're like, wait, it sounded like me. And then you just, boom, punch in the face. And if you get through the whole thing, it then tells you how to do a good strategy, obviously. And now it's even better. You could put it into Claude. That's what we did at a strategy offsite. Throw it in the Claude and do a whole like, offsite with this exercise. And it was awesome. We did it multiple, we've done it multiple times. Now, like this most recent one in May with Claude, basically. And I have this really good guide if anyone wants it, you can hit me up. And it worked really well. So in the beginning of like, we talk, talk, talk, talk, and we're like, eh, no one wants to go first.
00:55:44 · Jonathan Awad, Pablo Srugo
Let's get like 15, 20 of you at once. And then what other products do you want at the same time? Because you don't want to implement just for like, this thing. Because it would be kind of empty of a thing. It's only 15 or 20 institutions. It's not as valuable, but like, what else do you want? It was a moment to get all these other pieces of information. [00:56:02] S1: And did you refer like, hey, these guys are doing it. So like, you'll be part of it. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. That's the key. It's kind of like when you're throwing an event, right? And they're like, why would I go? Like, well, this person, that person's going. And you don't know that person's that person, but you just tell them all like, hey, all these people are going. And ultimately, you deliver the truth because they're all going because they're all going and they all show up, you know?
00:56:18 · Jonathan Awad
[00:56:18] S0: The truth of the matter is, and it is what it is, and we're past this point, so I'm happy to say it. The truth of the matter is, if you're not willing, if you're selling a product like this, like a network product, or hey, who's using it? Oh, I say, who's using your product? Who else uses it? If you're not willing to massage the truth a little, you will never succeed. Just, that's it. I'm going to say it. A lot of people said it in private. I'll say it in public. You will never succeed because your product could be amazing, but a lot of people make a decision who have used it. So if the answer is a catch-22, circular loop, you will never get out of the loop. So you have to massage the truth a little bit, but it's because you've had so many conversations. A lot of people are interested. Do that for customer stuff. I don't think you should do it for investor stuff. I think a lot of founders get caught up lying about the investor side of things. I think that's a huge mistake because all these investors talk so easily. Never name drop an investor who's not actually in your round when you're trying to raise your round because it will come back so fast and you're able to buy you in the ass. Definitely never, ever do that. First off, never name drop an investor you're talking to ever anyway, but very different, in my opinion, on the customer side because these institutions are so big. You're like, yeah, we're talking to Stripe. Who are you talking to Stripe? Who knows? It kind of doesn't matter, right? So that's the type of thing. There's ways to massage it. There's ways that it's super useful and it works. Who is, are you talking to Stripe? Yeah, you could imply that they're working with you. And it's like, oh, it's fine. It's kind of like a simple thing to do and it works super, super, super well and it has never bitten me in the ass. I'm going to say it. It is what it is. On the investor side, never do it. I learned the hard way from my friends. A bunch of my friends did it. It totally backfired and I heard it through other investors. Never do that huge faux pas.