Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:11:37 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:11:37] S1: Okay. What would be, like, a bad version of this? Like, what would it look like if it wasn't... If there wasn't pull? [00:11:42] S0: Yeah. So fun conversation with the with the jump team about... They they said, okay. Cool. Financial advisers. They have this project. You know who else meets with clients all the time? Insurance agents. So maybe we just go and talk to them. And it turns out they also have the project on their to do list of minimizing the amount of time they spend taking meeting notes. But the you isn't there because they don't have to... They're required to put meeting notes into their CRM. So their existing options, the first l, are not taking meeting notes, which they were already doing. And so you can see the framework kinda doesn't fill out for them or does... There's not... The force isn't there. They're fine. [00:12:24] S1: That... An avoidable piece, I see why that is so important. And this is an example. Basically basically, you need all four here. Yes. So that's a good lesson here is all four need to exist for real pull. In the first example, that you do, to me doesn't feel like it's a to do they just wrote down. It's kind of this general to do, just generally save time. Is that an okay P for a project to be able to do just the... Was this specifically at every financial advisor's to do list?
00:12:24 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:12:24] S1: That... An avoidable piece, I see why that is so important. And this is an example. Basically basically, you need all four here. Yes. So that's a good lesson here is all four need to exist for real pull. In the first example, that you do, to me doesn't feel like it's a to do they just wrote down. It's kind of this general to do, just generally save time. Is that an okay P for a project to be able to do just the... Was this specifically at every financial advisor's to do list? [00:12:52] S0: Yeah. So it was a thing that... I wouldn't say it's, like, actually something they wrote down on their to do list, but it was, like, a thing they were doing all the time. It was a part of their workflow. And while they were doing it, they were trying not to do it. I think there's the action I'm doing right now on my calendar, and then the project is my intention while I'm doing it. So while I'm doing it, the project on my mental to do list was spend the least amount of time doing this annoying thing. [00:13:19] S1: Got it. And so if a founder or product team is listening to this and are struggling with their product, it's probably one of these four is not there. Yeah. You need
00:13:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:13:19] S1: Got it. And so if a founder or product team is listening to this and are struggling with their product, it's probably one of these four is not there. Yeah. You need [00:13:28] S0: all four at once. If you find p without u and in the l's, so you find something that somebody's trying to do kind of, but they're not actually trying to do it right now, and their existing options aren't good enough, what they'll do is they'll complain and they won't buy. If they have p and u, but their l's are good enough, they're gonna say, yeah. That's exactly what we're doing right now. And working with Claude Code on it, we're gonna figure it out. [00:13:53] S1: Something along these lines that you talk about is that this pull exists. It's like this thing that's already there, and you're just kind of this, like, I don't know, hunter looking for the pull and discovering it. Talk a bit about that. [00:14:05] S0: Yeah. This was super liberating when I, like, realized this because I always thought that I was incompetent. I wasn't good at convincing the market to want my product. And it was from that perspective of, okay, I'm building something that's really valuable and people aren't buying. How do I convince them to want it to buy? And it turns out this poll, this project on their to do list exists before and independent of me, which means I just have to go out there and find it. I don't have to convince people to have poll. And it's like, I haven't quite figured out how to do that, but I think it's very, very hard to do if it's possible at all.
00:14:05 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:14:05] S0: Yeah. This was super liberating when I, like, realized this because I always thought that I was incompetent. I wasn't good at convincing the market to want my product. And it was from that perspective of, okay, I'm building something that's really valuable and people aren't buying. How do I convince them to want it to buy? And it turns out this poll, this project on their to do list exists before and independent of me, which means I just have to go out there and find it. I don't have to convince people to have poll. And it's like, I haven't quite figured out how to do that, but I think it's very, very hard to do if it's possible at all. [00:14:44] S1: That feels very familiar. Just trying to convince people. Look, this is so great. It's gonna solve so many of problems. And I love these ideas. This like... I just love how very specific and concrete it makes all of these general pieces of advice around finding product market fit, coming up with ideas. It just tells you exactly what it looks like. Something else you talked about, you mentioned this earlier, this idea that it needs to feel weird for them not to buy it. That's like the sign that this is right. That it's like, it's weird. Why aren't you buying this?
00:14:44 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:14:44] S1: That feels very familiar. Just trying to convince people. Look, this is so great. It's gonna solve so many of problems. And I love these ideas. This like... I just love how very specific and concrete it makes all of these general pieces of advice around finding product market fit, coming up with ideas. It just tells you exactly what it looks like. Something else you talked about, you mentioned this earlier, this idea that it needs to feel weird for them not to buy it. That's like the sign that this is right. That it's like, it's weird. Why aren't you buying this? [00:15:13] S0: Talk a bit about that. Most people, most of the time, are, like, fine. It would be weird if they bought our product given what's on their to do list, given what they have, given their options. Like, so it'd be weird if they bought. But a person with pull is weird not to buy. They should actually pull the product out of your hands because they are like that coiled spring. And so if you talk to somebody who has pull, the conversation should basically go like, wait a second. You can do what? Okay. How do we get started? Does the product exist yet? Like, do how do we get onboarded? Where basically every other conversation you have with somebody who doesn't have pull can have anything other than that. They can be enthusiastic and nice and say, wow. That's amazing. That's super interesting. That's totally the future of our industry. Wow. I can see how that would save us so much money. But they're not saying, I need this right now. And that's how you know they actually have pull.
00:15:13 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:15:13] S0: Talk a bit about that. Most people, most of the time, are, like, fine. It would be weird if they bought our product given what's on their to do list, given what they have, given their options. Like, so it'd be weird if they bought. But a person with pull is weird not to buy. They should actually pull the product out of your hands because they are like that coiled spring. And so if you talk to somebody who has pull, the conversation should basically go like, wait a second. You can do what? Okay. How do we get started? Does the product exist yet? Like, do how do we get onboarded? Where basically every other conversation you have with somebody who doesn't have pull can have anything other than that. They can be enthusiastic and nice and say, wow. That's amazing. That's super interesting. That's totally the future of our industry. Wow. I can see how that would save us so much money. But they're not saying, I need this right now. And that's how you know they actually have pull. [00:16:06] S1: Those conversations sound very familiar. Okay. So before we get into the kind of the whole journey of the startup process and how you can use this framework in that journey, anything else around just the general idea of the pull framework that's important to share?