Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:30:10 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:30:10] S1: That's awesome. So the advice here is just sometimes feel free to just ask what problem can we solve for you. [00:30:16] S0: Yeah. And that leads to how to think about sales. Well, I'll just give a little... And we can dig into this if it's interesting. But I always was kind of nervous to sell as a mega introvert and overthinker. It just feels like a lot of pressure, and it... Like, I need to convince you to buy. And so that question feels uncomfortable. But if you kind of reframe it in your own head of, no. I'm just seeing if they need help with anything that they are stuck on. And if they don't, that's fine. But if they do, cool. We can explore if it... If I can help. Then it kinda changes your orientation towards sales. [00:30:54] S1: I I am in the same boat as you, and that's a really nice way of thinking about it. I'm just trying to solve someone's problem. Yeah. That's why why is it so hard? Before we get to the next step, which is getting your first sales call, finding... Basically finding someone to talk to that you don't already know. Are there any anti patterns or just kind of signals or just like traps people fall into when they're coming up with ideas?
00:30:54 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:30:54] S1: I I am in the same boat as you, and that's a really nice way of thinking about it. I'm just trying to solve someone's problem. Yeah. That's why why is it so hard? Before we get to the next step, which is getting your first sales call, finding... Basically finding someone to talk to that you don't already know. Are there any anti patterns or just kind of signals or just like traps people fall into when they're coming up with ideas? [00:31:15] S0: Yeah. The infinite. But the but the the main ones that I have seen that are, like, really, really brutal are feeling like you need to build it yourself first. So you come up with an idea, you're like, I don't think this is ready for prime time, or I think people have to see it to get it. And then you go heads down and build it. Now now with AI, you can kinda get that out of your system in a... In hopefully a couple weeks instead of, you know, months or not, but you do not... You you wanna face the cold wind of reality as soon as possible. And so don't delay the customer conversations where you can actually find pull. [00:31:58] S1: You're also not a fan of design design partners Oh, no. Which is... Okay. Say more because this is typically very standard advice to find design partners.
00:31:58 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:31:58] S1: You're also not a fan of design design partners Oh, no. Which is... Okay. Say more because this is typically very standard advice to find design partners. [00:32:07] S0: Yeah. The... I don't know. Maybe in some context, it's helpful. I have yet to see it help... Be helpful. What I've seen in basically every single time I've seen somebody with a design partner is that you recruit a design partner who, quote, unquote, buys into your vision for the product, and they give a bunch of feedback and never buy from you. They never buy. And you realize that all of their feedback was just like them playing Steve Jobs. And there's like, I'm gonna help this startup versus I have something I'm actually trying to get done. And if you think about it, like, the people who actually have something really important they're trying to get done, they don't wanna be a design partner. They just want that thing done.
00:32:07 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:32:07] S0: Yeah. The... I don't know. Maybe in some context, it's helpful. I have yet to see it help... Be helpful. What I've seen in basically every single time I've seen somebody with a design partner is that you recruit a design partner who, quote, unquote, buys into your vision for the product, and they give a bunch of feedback and never buy from you. They never buy. And you realize that all of their feedback was just like them playing Steve Jobs. And there's like, I'm gonna help this startup versus I have something I'm actually trying to get done. And if you think about it, like, the people who actually have something really important they're trying to get done, they don't wanna be a design partner. They just want that thing done. [00:32:49] S1: I love that. Okay. So so your advice is don't set up a bunch of design partners, and we'll go through kind of the process you actually recommend. Okay. So I guess just to think about this coming up with an idea step, the core moment is some insight based on being hands on living with the people that you will be helping. The term I've heard to describe this idea, I think it was a VC floodgate that uses this. You're basically looking for an earned secret. Yes. And your advice here is the way to find that earned secret, either it's you have lived it at a company, say Amazon gave this AWS example, or you're on the ground working side by side with the people dealing with it and just looking for problems that they have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:49 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:32:49] S1: I love that. Okay. So so your advice is don't set up a bunch of design partners, and we'll go through kind of the process you actually recommend. Okay. So I guess just to think about this coming up with an idea step, the core moment is some insight based on being hands on living with the people that you will be helping. The term I've heard to describe this idea, I think it was a VC floodgate that uses this. You're basically looking for an earned secret. Yes. And your advice here is the way to find that earned secret, either it's you have lived it at a company, say Amazon gave this AWS example, or you're on the ground working side by side with the people dealing with it and just looking for problems that they have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:33:39] S0: Cool. And you get... Like, the method kind of doesn't matter. It might come to you in an Ayahuasca retreat. Like, I... You get... You could get that secret from anywhere, but the things that are most likely to actually work are, like, getting your hands dirty and and learning it from reality versus from theory. [00:33:55] S1: So just to follow that thread, say there's, like, a pie chart of of the, say, 50 companies you've worked with where their idea came from. What would be, like, the biggest chunks of the pie chart? [00:34:06] S0: I would say 10% own experience, 90% going and getting firsthand, like, experience. And within that, it's been a bit of, like... Some of them sold the wrong product to figure out what the right product was, but most of them actually go and do the thing firsthand.
00:34:06 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:34:06] S0: I would say 10% own experience, 90% going and getting firsthand, like, experience. And within that, it's been a bit of, like... Some of them sold the wrong product to figure out what the right product was, but most of them actually go and do the thing firsthand. [00:34:28] S1: And then what percentage Ayahuasca retreat? There's no room for that one. [00:34:30] S0: 100%. So that's that's mandatory as part of me advising you. [00:34:34] S1: That's the the pull hypothesis. Okay. Sweet. Okay. So say at this point, you've got a pull hypothesis. There's signs that maybe there's something really good here. The next phase in my eyes is finding someone to talk to and sell it to. So basically landing a first sales call. [00:34:54] S0: Talk [00:34:55] S1: about how you go about landing that call and what happens kind of... And then we'll talk about actually running the call, but before we get there, like, finding people to talk to.