A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:13:22 · Mike Murchison
[00:13:22] S1: A great question. I remember. So we, we had, but Boris and Angela from version one Ventures led our l uh , led our pre-seed rounds at the time was a $500,000 round into volley . And, you know, we are about two years into volley , and David and I look at each other in one day, and we go, you know, we're, we've just spent 15 hours doing customer service all day. Like, we're not building volley right now. Like, we're off trying to do, figure something out. It's clear that vol , we've done this for long enough , it's clear that volley isn't really working. There came a time where early in this transition where of course I needed to communicate to , uh, our investors that, you know, we were, the original idea they invested in was not something that we were currently pursuing anymore. And I, I distinctly remember going to , uh, tell Boris this Boris words , and who, by the way, is still on ADA's board today. Uh , so he's seen the full, the full journey. But at the time when we were volley , I was so nervous as a founder about telling him our lead investor that we were essentially had failed and are moving on to work on something new. And we didn't know what that was yet. We haven't read a single line of code for this new thing. In fact, we're just doing customer service manually for a bunch of different companies. And I, I wrote , I was so nervous. I wrote out, I was , I didn't trust myself to be able to convey what I wanted to convey just through memory. So I've printed out a speech that I wanted to read to Boris. We met up for lunch on Spadina . We sat down and Boris asked , how are things going with Volley ? And , uh, the waiter comes by before I can answer and, and says, do you want anything to order? And I said, no, <laugh> and I, and I take out my piece of paper, and I, I am like, Boris, if you don't mind, I just wanna read this to you. I start reading to him how, you know, we, we started on this journey to reimagine search. We learned a ton about scale, trying to learn a lot about user engagement, rapid feedback loops between product and engineering teams and customers. And it wasn't working like we thought it would. I had this whole, the whole part of the speech was all about, you know , I totally understanding what your money back. I'm so sorry to disappoint you.
00:15:41 · Mike Murchison
You know, I get how like, if, if this is like no longer aligned with what your investment thesis is, like, whatever that means , I , I didn't know any better. And Boris looks at the paper, pushes it to the side and says, no problem. What are our ideas? What are we gonna do next? That's awesome. I start talking to him about, look, we're doing this customer service. We think there's something in this space. You know, we think it's really important to understand the problem really intimately at a like, really, really deeply, you know, a couple minutes later, Boris . Okay , sounds , seems interesting. Um, you should talk to, So-and-So , um, he made an introduction to someone who , uh, worked at Shopify because at the time, Shopify, of course was scaling super quickly and had customer service problems. And sure enough , um, you know, fast forward , ADA is born, Shopify is a customer of Ada . And , um, you know, we , we , um, we made it through a successful pivot, which I'm sure we'll get into more about how that actually happened in detail. But the , the point is that the, for me, there was such a profound lesson there about what it really means to be founder friendly as an investor, and how I think some of the most difficult challenges associated with entrepreneurship, namely changing your core idea and what your core pursuit is , your core identity. They really do require a certain amount of breathing room and just support, you know, the last thing that would've been helpful in that situation would've been, you know, are you sure you don't want to , you sure you want to make this move would be to challenge the idea or force us to lean into, you know, what we had originally pursued, you know, or to, you know, or to just to , to bow out and not be supportive. But that was a core moment in our company's history. And, you know , it's a core reason why , um, you know, I'm so grateful to be, to be partnered with, with Boris and Angela.
00:17:40 · Pablo Srugo
[00:17:40] S0: There's this concept of not giving up right. Within, within entrepreneurship. And it's , it is really important. And relentlessness is , is obviously an important trait, but at the same time, it's not, not necessarily the answer. I mean, sometimes you have to give up fully on an idea 'cause it's not gonna work, and you're wasting your time and sometimes you gotta give something up to, to work on something else as you did with, with volume ada, was that a tough thing to, to go through? Did you feel at one point, like you mentioned failure, right? But did you feel like it was sort of, was that a battle internally, right? Like, oh , are we giving up on this? Should we just double down on volley and just push harder and maybe growth will come? Mm-Hmm,
00:18:12 · Mike Murchison
[00:18:12] S1: <affirmative>, absolutely. You know, I think, you know , one of the experience, one of the things that, that volley taught me , uh, about as a, as a founder is , is really the difference between commitment and attachment. You know, I learned that looking back on that experience, that I was so attached to a particular vision for the future. That attachment, I think really blinded me to the different ways that, that you can solve a problem. I really struggled with that transition as a result. You know, I felt like a personal failure. I felt like, you know, as our CEOI need to be the, the , the keeper of the vision. And I need to be right. And I need to, you know , the reason people are investing is because of the clarity of this vision and where we're going. And it's, it's hard to sort of understand the relationship between conviction, vision , you know, success. I , I think those are, I think those are really complicated , uh, concepts to understand the relationship between, you know, what , what I, what I learned, you know, based on that experience is that for me, I believe it's tremendously important to be committed, but not attached. I, I think that, you know, I , I am, I am with ada. I am so committed to forever elevating the quality of customer experience that we as consumers can expect from brands. Like, I just believe that that experience bar is so fundamentally low right now. And that the eyes of history, it'll be, it'll be laughable how low it was. And I'm so committed to Ada being the company that forever elevates what we can expect from brands. And my , I'm no longer an entrepreneur who's attached to how we get there. And in fact, I think that what's been core to our success at ADA is a belief that you actually, there's so much value in not being attached. In fact, there's this openness, there's this, there's this excitement, there's this creativity that comes from being committed but not attached because you start to view the world differently and you start to be much more open to different solutions. And so that, that was really the, that was really the lesson. I mean , I think the, the, the, the, the psychology of what was going on for me , uh, when I thought about the, the , the transition from volley to what became ada ,
00:20:32 · Pablo Srugo
[00:20:32] S0: Is there anything that ties at any level that ties Volley and ADA together? Like you think about, you know, the Twitter story? Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , and it was always about sharing ideas. At least it went from podcast to Twitter. Yeah . Whatever. Is there something like that here?
00:20:47 · Mike Murchison, Pablo Srugo
[00:20:47] S1: Oh, absolutely. I mean, volley was fundamentally about helping people. You know, it was, volley was a, was a, the way Volley worked is you, you know, it was a community built on requests. You put a request out. I'm looking for, I'm looking for help building a, a refining my user onboarding experience. Does anyone know any product designers that are really skilled at B2B SaaS onboarding experience, whatever. And Volley job was to connect you with the , the , the best expert through your network who could help you with that. Not that dissimilar from a customer service inquiry. <laugh> . That's true. You know , I'm looking, it's a , this a , it was a B2C incarnation of, you know , what ended up being a B2B business for us. But yeah, many similarities. I think, you know , they go, they run deep. I mean, I , I've never worked on a B2B company , uh, a B2B SaaS company before starting ada . And I think a lot of our successes come from a lot of conviction and ex and expertise in building B2C software , um, prior to ada and Volley is a good example then we, we just fundamentally believe in the craft of software. I would even say like a obsession with great customer experience, great user experience has been a real, a real asset. That that was definitely something that we carried from, from Volley . [00:21:59] S0: As you, you spent 15 hours a day of being agents. Mm-Hmm . What were some of the things that you learned that you then decided to build a product around ?