Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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.
00:38:10 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:38:10] S0: Yeah. [00:38:11] S1: Okay. And then what's your take on AI emailing a bunch of people versus individually reaching out and thinking about some unique message per person? [00:38:21] S0: I have not seen AI personalization work at this stage. Usually, what it does is it tells them something they already know about themselves, and they're like, that looks like Claude wrote it. And so I don't usually recommend that. I also don't... I haven't seen personalization be super important here. These messages that I... I said the entire message that I would send. You don't need to actually have a ton of personalization in it or like, hey. I'm going to xConference. We're gonna be pitching. Would you be open to chat? Like, something like that can be good enough without any personalization at all. [00:38:54] S1: All the examples you shared are very simple and don't have anything to do with them and just say something interesting, basically. And what you what you don't recommend is is base... Yeah. The idea you're not trying to sell them immediately. You just wanna have a call. [00:39:10] S0: Yeah. And on the call, we'll see if you have poll. If you do, you're gonna turn it into a sales call. If you don't, nothing I do is gonna change that. [00:39:18] S1: Okay. How many emails slash LinkedIn posts should you start with, say, you're just getting started to try to find some calls?
00:39:18 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:39:18] S1: Okay. How many emails slash LinkedIn posts should you start with, say, you're just getting started to try to find some calls? [00:39:26] S0: Yeah. So I tend to start on LinkedIn because the kind of person who you and I, like, talk to, they have interesting LinkedIns. And so if you're reaching out to someone, they're gonna say, oh, okay. That... So that's gonna do a lot of lifting. You can just get started. And so you can add a 100, 150 people on LinkedIn per week. Go for that. Add 20 a day, and then message them when they accept the connection request. And if you're sending... Like, if you're connecting with... I don't know. Let's say you connect with a 100 people per week or you you send a 150. My typical targets for that are, like, 30 to 40% of them should accept your connection request. And then of them, 30 to 50 should... Percent should reply, and a subset of them should say yes. The majority of them should say, yeah. [00:40:11] S1: Sure. Why not? Okay. That's an awesome benchmark. So if you're not at that level, basically, your interesting email is not is not working. You should find some more interesting. [00:40:20] S0: Is is... It's... Could be your profile if people aren't accepting your request. Like, they might look at you and say, you don't look like somebody. I should accept this request. Or it looks like you're about to pitch me. Right? Or something like that. Or your message just isn't interesting if you're getting 30 to 40% accepts, and then people aren't replying.
00:40:20 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:40:20] S0: Is is... It's... Could be your profile if people aren't accepting your request. Like, they might look at you and say, you don't look like somebody. I should accept this request. Or it looks like you're about to pitch me. Right? Or something like that. Or your message just isn't interesting if you're getting 30 to 40% accepts, and then people aren't replying. [00:40:37] S1: This season's supporting sponsor is DX. Now that everybody at your company is finally using AI, the question that engineering leaders face is no longer are we using AI, but is it paying off? With DX, you can measure and benchmark the impact of AI adoption across your full product lifecycle. DX shows you where AI is helping developers and where it's creating new bottlenecks. You can also use it to evaluate AI vendors, monitor costs and licenses, and see exactly what's limiting your agents. That's why hundreds of enterprises, including Snowflake, Sony, and BNY use the DX platform to measure AI's impact on developer productivity. Visit getdx.com/leni to get a demo of d x. That's getdx.com/leni. So say you've landed a call and you're gonna do a sales call, say your first one, what is your advice for doing a great job on that... On the sales call?