A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:43:14 · Pablo Srugo, Rand Fishkin
[00:43:14] S0: Oh, it was a great, yeah, it was a great book. Did you do it full time for that period or were , is it kind of on the side? [00:43:19] S1: It was on the side. It was kind of in lieu of blogging. If you look at that year of my blog posts on Moz, essentially I was still filming the video series, which, which was like an hour every week or whatever, but the blog posts kind of trickled to nothing. And I did almost all my publishing or all my writing for the book. [00:43:41] S0: And then let me ask this other question, which I don't know if you'll have ready my hand answers for, but one thing I've noticed in general for from repeat founders and , and I had this myself, is you go through it, you know, very little, you take all these punches to the face and at some point during that you're like, wow, if I was restarting right now, like, it would be so much easier, right? Because I would know this, I would know that, whatever. And , uh, obviously there was a lot of lessons like in your book and some of it that is true. Like there's always parts that are easier. I guess the question is like, which parts were you wrong on? Like, which parts were surprising? Where you were like, wow, I really thought this was gonna be easier. And it actually turns out it's almost just hard . [00:44:17] S1: Uh, do you mean for SparkToro after I'd learned the lessons at Moz? Correct. [00:44:21] S0: Yeah.
00:44:21 · Pablo Srugo, Rand Fishkin
[00:44:21] S0: Yeah. [00:44:22] S1: I think product building and product market fit or, or Hmm . I , I don't even believe that there is like one product market fit. I think think it's more of a scale, right? You are a better or worse fit than definitely [00:44:34] S0: Spectrum. I would agree.
00:44:35 · Rand Fishkin
[00:44:35] S1: Yeah. Spectrum, right? And so improving along that spectrum , uh, I think is not made easier by doing it multiple times <laugh> . And that's very frustrating. Um, and part of that I think could be , can be luck, right? It's kind of , I think Moz was a very lucky bet, like we hit, we hit a market at a time where there was tremendous need and nobody else liked that market. And everybody in 2006 thought SEO was spam and they kept believing that for another 10 years. And it, you know, it took forever for sort of a, a mature community of people to think that SEO was a real practice to think that Google was gonna become the behemoth that it became. Um, and so we had a huge advantage there. Um, and we knew our audience kind of better than other people did with SparkToro . I think it's, it's been a challenge in that the thing that we help people do, audience research is not a thing people are assigned to do very often, like most companies don't do, don't try and figure out, oh, which podcasts do , does do my customers listen to, and what videos they watch on YouTube and which channels they subscribe to, what subreddits are they on and which, which sources of media do they consume? What email newsletters are they subscribing to? All that kinda stuff. I think that's crucial. I think that is absolutely amazing. I think most marketers I talk to are like, oh , that would be so useful to know, but it's not part of their job description and it's not part of their tactical day-to-Day work. And so getting people to like adopt it as a practice has been really hard. Um, and then I think with Snack Bar , is the game gonna be fun? Is it gonna be deeply fun and addictive and enjoyable to play and rewarding? And that is gonna be a huge challenge. And I think, you know, I have no experience in that field, so I am taking a , a huge gamble. And I think the only thing that I've gotten much better at is I think I'm much better at I identifying and recruiting extraordinary talent who can do those things, right? So like, I, I think our game designer who has a, you know, history of like just dance and the squad and, and Assassin's Creed, he was the lead game designer for Assassin's Creed and a bunch of other , you know, a bunch of other games. I'm like, this guy can do that. I, I believe in you. I know you can do it.
00:46:42 · Rand Fishkin, Pablo Srugo
And, you know, our our lead developer Miriam's worked on a bunch of amazing games. Francesco's worked on a bunch of TV shows for like, Netflix and BBC, and like, yeah, you guys, you guys are going to do an amazing job at this, but it's, knock on wood, I'm sure I'm gonna learn things there that are tough and challenging. And that field, you know, the thing Pablo, about shipping anything like a book or a television show or a movie or a video game is, it's not like software as a service where you iterate and, you know, can keep selling it month over month. Like it's gotta pop day one. That's [00:47:14] S0: Right. You've built it and, and will they come , sort of thing. But it's, you know, you've said kind of product market fit. And I, and I take what you said as meaning like, at the end of the day, like building something people love delivering like great value. That's just never easy. It's just never easy. Like , and it's not, the other thing I had read, which I thought really resonated with me at least, is like a lot of things are kind of gameable. I mean, fundraising is a bit of a game. You can get better at fundraising, even hiring, like convincing people to join you, these sort of things. Part of market fit is just not gameable. Like you, it just <laugh> , you actually have to do the thing, right? And so, yeah, it doesn't get it . I'm sure there's pieces that get easier, but it doesn't actually get that much easier the second or third time around.
00:47:55 · Rand Fishkin, Pablo Srugo
[00:47:55] S1: Yeah. I think , um, there's elements of it that get much easier. For example, speed of iteration. Yes. Uh , I think, I think founders can get way better at testing and learning from , uh, the feedback that they get from people, from networking, right. Building, like we talked about earlier, building an audience of people who care about the problem that you're solving. That is a skill you can get way better at. And that, that's something, you know, that I, that I pride myself on, that I think I can be good at and try and help a lot of other people with that. Obviously SparkToro is built to do that, but I think that that fundamental, taking all those insights and learnings and turning them into a product that delights human beings and makes them, solves their problems, makes them happy, brings them joy, brings them entertainment or , uh, education solves, you know, thorny, tactical , uh, pain in the. Things that other things can't solve for them. There's no shortcut. No shortcut. [00:48:50] S0: Awesome. Well, Rand , this has been , uh, an amazing, amazing episode. Thank you very much for taking the time. Yeah, [00:48:56] S1: My pleasure, Pablo. Thanks for having me.
00:48:56 · Rand Fishkin, Pablo Srugo
[00:48:56] S1: My pleasure, Pablo. Thanks for having me. [00:48:59] S0: You just listened to the whole episode and let me ask you something. How much did it cost you? Oh , right, it was free. How many ads did you have to listen to? Oh , right . None. So guess what you owe me. So click follow, write a review, and you'll be helping not just me, but other founders, because every time you do that, the show continues to move up the rankings and more and more founders discover it.