A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:25:01 · Pablo Srugo, Keith Peiris
[00:25:01] S1: And the problem, the way it presented itself for those potential customers is they want to build agents. They want more AI agents doing more work for them, but they're prevented from doing so by the sort of stack that they're kind of working on top of. [00:25:13] S0: Yeah, exactly. That was the thinking. And then we just kept pulling the thread, you know, because obviously when we were speaking to, you know, we had some mid-market customers early on in the pivot. They were like, that sounds cool. We can't possibly change our system of record. So then we needed to go, honestly, a little earlier. You know, we started speaking to YC companies. You know, we started speaking to seed stage companies, speed run companies. And they were like, if you like solve this problem correctly on day one, that's awesome. One, I would pay you way more than I pay for like a HubSpot or an Attio. And two, you know, we would be inclined to stay on this thing as long as you can keep up with our demands. I think that was the first time we were like, oh, interesting. There's actually like a new kind of wedge to solve the problem we want to solve.
00:26:00 · Pablo Srugo
[00:26:00] S1: I mean, the fundamental of any company, except for a few, few, few, few exceptions, but almost every company is a problem that is top of mind today, right now. And understanding, kind of like meeting the market where it's at. So you've got a lot of people who know fundamentally that HubSpot, Salesforce, like they're kind of the old school CRM and they're, you know, they're trying to move into this AI world, but they're not quite there. So I can imagine, you know, 25 year old, 22 year old, whatever, like YC founder, there's a mismatch between their expectations and the way that, you know, HubSpot works and feels. So they're kind of like there. And then you've got the enterprises that maybe are not greenfield, but they want to deploy as many AI agents inside and automate as many workflows as they can. And they're seeing kind of how they might get handcuffed in different places because some tools don't play nice with the others and it just breaks somewhere kind of along that funnel of kind of getting an end-to-end workflow done. And you're coming in at that time saying, we can solve that problem. Like we can make this magic happen for you.
00:27:01 · Keith Peiris, Pablo Srugo
[00:27:01] S0: Yeah, exactly. In all honesty, we had that level of fidelity when we jumped into it and we found the true wedges six months in, you know, which is to say that, you know, now when we sell to a YC company, we're like, look, we're going to build out this whole system of record for you and the first problem we're going to solve for you that you care about is that we're going to help you do great pipeline generations by understanding the customers you have and helping you build relevant lists and helping you send compelling outreach to them. That's the first problem we're going to solve for you because you don't actually need a system of record right now. And then with our larger companies, we realize we solve different problems. It is the AI agents or in many cases, they're like, look, a big part of our company now is delivery, right, of, you know, implementation and we need perfect handoff between sales and implementation and Salesforce was never designed for FTEs. So I think, you know, now we've got that fidelity of like what pain do we attach to but we didn't quite have that at the moment of pivot. [00:28:03] S1: Walk me through, especially, I assume, did you start with YC founders? Like is that the group you deployed to? How did you, because that wedge that you just talked about, I mean, you know, go to market tools that build pipeline and clay and whatever, like all that world. What did you find that was still missing that you guys solved?
00:28:03 · Pablo Srugo, Keith Peiris
[00:28:03] S1: Walk me through, especially, I assume, did you start with YC founders? Like is that the group you deployed to? How did you, because that wedge that you just talked about, I mean, you know, go to market tools that build pipeline and clay and whatever, like all that world. What did you find that was still missing that you guys solved? [00:28:19] S0: Yeah, it was sort of funny. I mean, we're in such a saturated world, right? If you sell to tech companies, those tech companies are getting assaulted with outbound, right? We sort of had this realization of cold should be your last resort. Like your first resort should be go find everyone you've spoken to in the past two years, you know, and try to reactivate them, you know, and get time with them. Then we're like, second, you should go like mine your network and your VC's networks, ask for intros. Then we're like, third, you should go find people talking about the problem you're going to solve on social, you know, and then you sort of keep going through that and you realize, wait a minute, to do that, I can't just buy Clay. I actually need a sort of complete network system of record to approach the problem in this way. And I think that was, that sort of tied the pain and the approach to what we were doing.
00:28:19 · Keith Peiris, Pablo Srugo
[00:28:19] S0: Yeah, it was sort of funny. I mean, we're in such a saturated world, right? If you sell to tech companies, those tech companies are getting assaulted with outbound, right? We sort of had this realization of cold should be your last resort. Like your first resort should be go find everyone you've spoken to in the past two years, you know, and try to reactivate them, you know, and get time with them. Then we're like, second, you should go like mine your network and your VC's networks, ask for intros. Then we're like, third, you should go find people talking about the problem you're going to solve on social, you know, and then you sort of keep going through that and you realize, wait a minute, to do that, I can't just buy Clay. I actually need a sort of complete network system of record to approach the problem in this way. And I think that was, that sort of tied the pain and the approach to what we were doing. [00:29:13] S1: So it's, it's a bit of a different view of like Clay and all these tools, these modern things, like they're very set up for a cold outbound. Like there's like run the absolute best cold outbound campaign. Your idea was run a different outbound campaign, not necessarily run a hot outbound if you can or a warm and we'll help you do that. And that's kind of where, that's maybe a little bit of the difference.
00:29:13 · Pablo Srugo, Keith Peiris
[00:29:13] S1: So it's, it's a bit of a different view of like Clay and all these tools, these modern things, like they're very set up for a cold outbound. Like there's like run the absolute best cold outbound campaign. Your idea was run a different outbound campaign, not necessarily run a hot outbound if you can or a warm and we'll help you do that. And that's kind of where, that's maybe a little bit of the difference. [00:29:31] S0: Yeah, exactly. Like I think, I think building a startup, you know, it's a momentum game, right? We always tell folks, hey, if your company just raised a seed, you know, build momentum using every tool you have imaginable before you're relying on cold emails. You know, cold emails are something that works when you've got like a brand or if you're, you know, attacking a niche where other people aren't attacking. But we just sort of came up with this different approach while building out the system. [00:29:58] S1: So maybe it's a good point because we've got two kind of tactical areas we want to dive into. One of them is specifically how to sell into YC or Bay Area founders and it probably works for any kind of founder geography that you find yourself in. How to sell to founders. They're obviously a great set of early adopters for many different AI products. This is a strategy that could work for a lot of founders that are just starting off. But how did, how did you do it? What did you do special when it came to selling to these YC founders?