Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:35:04 · Rob Snyder
[00:35:04] S0: Yeah. This is a fun one. So my goal is actually, like, I wanna have two to three conversations per day with potential customers. But to get there, you have to first get your first conversation. So you can do warm intrudes. You can do all that kind of stuff. We'll just talk about if you don't have any of that and you need to get people to talk to you cold. The way I typically recommend founders start is to just reach out to your potential customers on LinkedIn or via email, and it's with a very specific kind of message. That is not a, hey. Do you have x y z pain points? Would you like to buy our game changing solution? Like, no template you get online is going to get you any responses except for, like, leave me alone. And so I call it founder magic kind of outreach at this stage, which is basically like, you're interesting. I'm interesting. Let's chat and see. And this is totally acceptable. Like, one of the startups that I helped, their message was, hey. Snoop Dogg invested in us, and I thought you'd find it interesting too. Would you be open to chat? That's a fun message. Everyone has their own version of that. Everyone who listens to this or everyone who's a founder has an interesting message you can send, and you don't have to convince them in the message to buy your product. You just get them to talk with you. This pull exists out there on their to do list. And so the message doesn't do anything about that. It just... It's just to get them to talk to you. So just say something interesting to cause them to meet with you.
00:36:35 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:36:35] S1: Okay. And this is really helpful. So your advice here is don't craft, like, a whole value prop pitch, problem identification. Don't tell them how much pain you're gonna solve. It's just, like, get their attention with something interesting. [00:36:47] S0: Yes. [00:36:48] S1: The Snoop Dogg example is awesome. Any other any other examples, any other kind of ways of thinking about what might be interesting to someone?
00:36:48 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:36:48] S1: The Snoop Dogg example is awesome. Any other any other examples, any other kind of ways of thinking about what might be interesting to someone? [00:36:55] S0: There's there's been a variety of ones that I've seen. Random ones that are like, hey. I dropped out of my PhD, and I'm now working on something for content marketers. Right? Like, something something that's just kind of interesting enough there that's not super magical. You can have... There's a variety of different things I've seen from... I, you know, I was, you know, Sam Altman's chief of staff. Right? That... You know, if anybody sends that message, that will work quite well. It doesn't matter what the rest of the message says. I thought you'd be interesting and open to chat. And so it's finding something interesting that's, like, worth a conversation with them. Yeah. What what I'd say is it really depends on your end customer too because if you're doing outreach to, like, for example, HVAC companies saying, hey. I'm Sam Altman's former chief of staff. Thought you might find it interesting. We're gonna say, buddy, I have no idea what the words in this message mean. So it could be like, hey. I was at my dad... Like, I worked at my family's plumbing company in in high school, and now I'm do... Working on this kind of interesting thing. Thought you might find it interesting. Would you be open to chat? [00:38:06] S1: An implicit element of this is keep it very short. Sounds like it's just like a sentence or two. [00:38:10] S0: Yeah.