A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:18:18 · Pablo Srugo, Yoav Vilner
[00:18:18] S0: Was it mainly focused on the problem side or did it – or how much was the solution even part of that video? I find, generally speaking, the problem is actually what resonates more. As long as you're like, “Yeah, that pisses me off,” you hit that like, you hit that share, was that how you structured it? [00:18:34] S1: Yeah, we didn't even talk about Walnut in that video. We had very successful ads, but this one was completely a problem. We just put a Walnut logo on it. The call to action was not even trial product. The call to action was sign up for more content. [00:18:53] S0: You're moving on to the second tactic.
00:18:56 · Yoav Vilner
[00:18:56] S1: The second tactic that we did early on and really low budget was we went to LinkedIn with a set of ads that – and I know we're talking about startups still being scrappy and not having a lot of budgets. We published on LinkedIn a set of ads that show a cat and a lion and the excess that before Walnut your product demo is a cat and after it's a lion. Now you're wondering what difference does that make? Everybody makes funny ads, but essentially, we were the first ones to use that format. Then today you see the top companies, the top enterprise companies, hundreds and hundreds of them just borrowing the same format. It was an annual conference. The CMO of LinkedIn went on live stage about, I think it was last year or two years ago. The first thing he showed on the screen, I think it was some pastry, like Walnut saying, before it's uncooked and after it's a cooked pastry. It got to all kinds of festivals on the main screen and people, and I heard from people that are students in some college that a professor was analyzing why Walnut did what they did with that ad. Honestly, I have to say we didn't do a lot. We thought it's going to be cool. We didn't know it's going to get there. What I'm trying to say is you don't need a lot of budgets when you're just going to market. At first you can be pretty good at just sensing what your audience is looking to see and are they trying – are they wanting to buy tools that are down to earth that are boring and professional? How are they going to react to humor and jokes? To us, it played out pretty early on.
00:20:41 · Pablo Srugo, Yoav Vilner
[00:20:41] S0: Then maybe moving on. You're building this wait list. You're creating content and I assume just spending a lot of time heads down building the product. How do you shift from there to actually putting the product in people's hands? When did that start happening and what did that look like? [00:20:58] S1: We worked with Design Partners and we started onboarding companies that were part of the wait list. We had a couple of hundreds of, like I said, of contacts on the wait list and we tried choosing companies where we thought it's going to be a fit and use cases where we thought it's going to be a fit. Because our way to a fast market fit is not going all in with everything that – with everything possible. You’ve got to try and make something valuable for the clients. Otherwise, you're the one that's starting off. They have nothing to lose and you can lose a lot of money and precious time. [00:21:37] S0: What did you think about, when you thought about, because I think that's critically important. Product market fit is partially about the product. It's also about the market and specifically the market you choose to start with. What were some of the elements you thought through when you decided, these customers are a fit, but these ones maybe not yet? [00:21:53] S1: First of all, the persona that reached out and signed up for the wait list, if we saw it as someone that can make an impact and help us drive success within the organization, that's one thing. The size of the company, of course, we tried to go enterprise and…
00:21:53 · Yoav Vilner, Pablo Srugo
[00:21:53] S1: First of all, the persona that reached out and signed up for the wait list, if we saw it as someone that can make an impact and help us drive success within the organization, that's one thing. The size of the company, of course, we tried to go enterprise and… [00:22:07] S0: You wanted bigger. You didn't want big market or SMB. You'd rather large enterprise to start. [00:22:13] S1: Yeah, which, overall, I think that we had a couple where – we actually had a mix. We had a couple of startup companies where the founders were making demos all day long. We had Fortune 100 companies. I think that this problem of showcasing the product is a cross vertical problem and a cross size problem. I tried to prove it by showing that we can drive value to initial companies in various stages. It played out completely. It's really not about the size of the company today. It's really a global problem, you might say. [00:22:48] S0: One of the things with enterprises, I find, is there's so much upside because the contract sizes can be so big when you get there, but one of the things that I've seen at least is this mismatch between speed. As a startup, every day matters, every week matters. As an enterprise, you're thinking in quarters maybe, but probably years. Did you find some of that or did you, for whatever reason at that time, find there was actually enough pull from these enterprise customers and they were moving at your speed?
00:22:48 · Pablo Srugo, Yoav Vilner
[00:22:48] S0: One of the things with enterprises, I find, is there's so much upside because the contract sizes can be so big when you get there, but one of the things that I've seen at least is this mismatch between speed. As a startup, every day matters, every week matters. As an enterprise, you're thinking in quarters maybe, but probably years. Did you find some of that or did you, for whatever reason at that time, find there was actually enough pull from these enterprise customers and they were moving at your speed? [00:23:18] S1: They were moving fast. We were obviously – you're starting at a price point where it's not too much of a complicated procurement process with enterprise companies, right? You never stop with a – you never start with a $200,000 ACV if you're a startup company. You always find the right – if you find the right guy within the company, then obviously you can decide together what's a financial agreement that he can move fast with, he can see value, then he can finally expand within the organization and try to go for everything that could get us traction and not scare off their CFOs. We grow our prices from there. I think you have to lose some dollars the first place in order to get those logos.
00:23:18 · Yoav Vilner, Pablo Srugo
[00:23:18] S1: They were moving fast. We were obviously – you're starting at a price point where it's not too much of a complicated procurement process with enterprise companies, right? You never stop with a – you never start with a $200,000 ACV if you're a startup company. You always find the right – if you find the right guy within the company, then obviously you can decide together what's a financial agreement that he can move fast with, he can see value, then he can finally expand within the organization and try to go for everything that could get us traction and not scare off their CFOs. We grow our prices from there. I think you have to lose some dollars the first place in order to get those logos. [00:24:03] S0: Maybe just the other thing, I don't know if this came up in conversations, I just am thinking in the back of my head, oftentimes startups are pitching this time saving ROI, whereas with you, I would assume that for a lot of these salespeople who are implementing it, it affected their own KPIs, close rate, and things like that. Is that accurate? Is that how they looked at, well, the demos don't crash, I'll close more deals and that's why it's so important to me?