Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:44:51 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:44:51] S1: How many of these calls should you do before you're like, okay, there's no pull here. Time to move on. [00:44:56] S0: I don't have a hard... Like, what I tend to do is if you have five calls and everybody's leaned back and you learn nothing, then there's a sign that something's wrong. If you have... And I've seen people do, like, hundreds of calls where they still don't... How could they... So do five and then check-in and see what you've learned from the calls. Was there any pull there? Did we learn anything interesting? Like, I... At the start of I was just helping out. They had done, like, five calls into banking, and they just felt nothing. But they got an intro from one of the people. This is... Yeah. This doesn't seem relevant to me, but you might consider defense companies. And they got an intro into that. They know nothing about defense. In the first conversation in defense, the person's like, holy. Are you serious? And they're like, okay. Maybe there's something here, and they changed their poll hypothesis. [00:45:45] S1: It feels like a big part of this... Of your of your framework and approach is to just, like, be brutally honest with yourself whether there's something here. I imagine a lot of founders are just like so excited and convinced this is real. And your approach is just like, here's, here's a way to validate that and be really real with what's working or not.
00:45:45 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:45:45] S1: It feels like a big part of this... Of your of your framework and approach is to just, like, be brutally honest with yourself whether there's something here. I imagine a lot of founders are just like so excited and convinced this is real. And your approach is just like, here's, here's a way to validate that and be really real with what's working or not. [00:46:03] S0: Yeah, and I think it's thinking of it as we're selling to learn, not really to push something. Yeah, not to push. We're going to learn and we're seeing if they try to buy. If they don't, cool, we've learned something, we can kind of keep iterating from there. If they do, okay, great. Now we might have something, let's see if it repeats. [00:46:25] S1: The whole idea of calling us pull is so smart, because you always hear product market fit is you're feeling pull, you're feeling pull, this boulder is pulling you down, the wind is pushing you. And so not only is it this acronym of what you look for, but it's this reminder. What you're looking for is pull, something pulling. [00:46:43] S0: Yeah. And you can also tell, like, do I feel like I'm pushing right now? Do I feel like I'm convincing? That's a red flag that something either in your mind or in the conversation is off. And like, okay. Cool. Let's figure out what that is. [00:46:56] S1: Is there an example that comes to mind when you think about if a good sales call, what that kind of feels like, looks like, what a pitch would be?
00:46:56 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:46:56] S1: Is there an example that comes to mind when you think about if a good sales call, what that kind of feels like, looks like, what a pitch would be? [00:47:03] S0: Yeah. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to get, again, get the poll out of them. And so they say, I'm trying to make a website. But one of those typical point and click website design things are just too much effort for me. So you have something about pull there. You've pulled that out of them. They've described that. And so the kind of interesting thing is that once you have pull, your pitch is quite simple. What you're not trying to do here is you're not trying to describe this massive product vision or your theory of the problem. You know that they're trying to do X but blocked because of Y. And so your pitch in that case is, Okay, so it sounds like you're looking for something to make a website without all the hassle of a point and click thing. Is that roughly it? You describe it in a really, really small and simple way, not a really big way. You describe it in a small way, and they say, yeah. That's... That sounds like it. How exactly does that work? Like, tell me more. They're pulling more information out of you. And that's when you know you're, like, starting to be onto something. [00:48:15] S1: And are you in your head thinking through the pull framework of these four points and just thinking through, like, okay. Is this actually something we need right now and unavoidable? Are there... What are their alternatives and kinda thinking through all Yeah.
00:48:15 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:48:15] S1: And are you in your head thinking through the pull framework of these four points and just thinking through, like, okay. Is this actually something we need right now and unavoidable? Are there... What are their alternatives and kinda thinking through all Yeah. [00:48:27] S0: Those are, like, actually the questions I will ask too, which is, like, if I... If they don't tell me at the very beginning when I say, why'd you take the call? Then I'm asking a question that's kinda like, is there anything as it relates to, I don't know, your QA process and they're filling it out live. And it's like, I don't think I have the you. And then you ask a question, you're like, Okay. But is it okay if you don't do that now? Is there some reason you have to do this now, or is this okay to do another time? [00:49:26] S1: And you're scared to almost ask. Oh, no. It's not gonna work. [00:49:29] S0: Oh, and the scariest one is to say, well, what have you... I'm sure you've looked into other options. Are they good enough? And to hear that one when they're like, actually, yeah, we can do it ourselves, and that's good enough. But it prevents you from, again, pushing a more... Product the market doesn't want. [00:49:46] S1: And just spending years of your life trying to make it work. [00:49:49] S0: Yeah. I... Which is There's a reason I look like I'm 60, and I'm 35. Right? Like, don't push. You look great, Rob. You look great. Filters.
00:49:49 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:49:49] S0: Yeah. I... Which is There's a reason I look like I'm 60, and I'm 35. Right? Like, don't push. You look great, Rob. You look great. Filters. [00:49:59] S1: Oh, man. So this touches on a... Like, we haven't actually addressed the specific challenge, which is that there's a lot you have to get over for people to decide to try something new and to buy something new. The status quo is generally fine. They have so many priorities. They have so many things they're dealing with. Just like the bar to get over for people to be like, I want this. I'm gonna buy it now is really high. And the idea here of this framework is to get over that hump. [00:50:25] S0: Well, it's to find the people for whom stat... The status quo is not okay. Right? It's to find the people... You know, everyone says like change is hard and all this kind of stuff. Well, you're looking for the people who are already trying to change, who don't need convincing. [00:50:39] S1: There's this idea that your product has to be 10 times better than the existing solution for anyone to care. Do you feel like like... How do you think about, okay. This is better. They tried alternatives. None of them do it. Or some of them do it okay. Like, how much better does this have to be for them to care? Or is it okay if it's just like, you know, just a little bit better?
00:50:39 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:50:39] S1: There's this idea that your product has to be 10 times better than the existing solution for anyone to care. Do you feel like like... How do you think about, okay. This is better. They tried alternatives. None of them do it. Or some of them do it okay. Like, how much better does this have to be for them to care? Or is it okay if it's just like, you know, just a little bit better? [00:50:57] S0: The example with JMP, I think, the AI notetaker for financial advisors is a good one. How much better are they than the other generic AI notetakers? Well, if those notetakers don't get the job done, and we do, they are infinitely better. They unblock something. And so that's kind of how I think about how stuck are they with their existing options. And so I don't know about 10x. That thing doesn't quite register in my head. It's really, are they a coiled spring, and how do they respond when I show up? [00:51:27] S1: So I think about a company like Linear who competes with Jira. I don't know if you know. Do you know Linear? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just curious if it applies through this framework. So in my understanding, linear wins over Jira often because the experience is just better. It's just like a beautiful, smooth, you know, well crafted experience. And so they win a lot of customers because it just feels nice, and engineers really like using it. Do you feel like that works through the pull framework, is there something else going on there?