Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
00:51:27 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[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? [00:51:59] S0: Again, if we use the pull framework to to analyze that situation, what would have to be true is there is a certain kind of person who is trying to do their issue tracking, but they're trying to do something around issue tracking, and something about Jira's experience is blocking them from doing it the way. Such that Linear's way better experience is actually relevant to them. So I've made the mistake of taking that analogy and being like, Okay, so I can just come into a category with way better UX, way better experience, and I'm going to crush it. And try that in HR software. And I tried it in HR software, and it turned out the user experience was not relevant to the buyer. And so they didn't have poll... They didn't care that their systems look like they're still on COBOL or whatever it is. So it wasn't relevant there. But, again, the poll theory would say that basically in in the case of Jira... Jira versus Winear, that there was a kind of person who was kind of blocked by Jira's experience.
00:51:59 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:51:59] S0: Again, if we use the pull framework to to analyze that situation, what would have to be true is there is a certain kind of person who is trying to do their issue tracking, but they're trying to do something around issue tracking, and something about Jira's experience is blocking them from doing it the way. Such that Linear's way better experience is actually relevant to them. So I've made the mistake of taking that analogy and being like, Okay, so I can just come into a category with way better UX, way better experience, and I'm going to crush it. And try that in HR software. And I tried it in HR software, and it turned out the user experience was not relevant to the buyer. And so they didn't have poll... They didn't care that their systems look like they're still on COBOL or whatever it is. So it wasn't relevant there. But, again, the poll theory would say that basically in in the case of Jira... Jira versus Winear, that there was a kind of person who was kind of blocked by Jira's experience. [00:53:08] S1: And I imagine the stronger the pull, the faster all this stuff happens in rows. I know Linear took them a long time to get get people using it, to trust it, to switch. And so maybe the pull... Because of... Maybe there wasn't as much of that blocking and as more of just like, okay. I can just move faster, be happier. It took longer. Is that... Do you find that just, like, the stronger the pull, the faster the company grows? Is that Yeah. I've seen a bunch
00:53:08 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:53:08] S1: And I imagine the stronger the pull, the faster all this stuff happens in rows. I know Linear took them a long time to get get people using it, to trust it, to switch. And so maybe the pull... Because of... Maybe there wasn't as much of that blocking and as more of just like, okay. I can just move faster, be happier. It took longer. Is that... Do you find that just, like, the stronger the pull, the faster the company grows? Is that Yeah. I've seen a bunch [00:53:30] S0: of startups where, like, they go zero to whatever. Like, everyone now is going zero to infinity super fast, and and it's, like, not... It's because they have found these, like, pockets of pull where people will rip a product out of their hands. And it's like, people will see these AI pitches now, and it's like, wait a sec. It can do x and buy basically instantly. And I've seen that happen in enterprise. I saw an enterprise deal close in two weeks. And it's just like that thing did... When I was growing up, enterprise deals took eighteen months. Like, what what the heck? [00:54:06] S1: That's growing up. I like that. Okay. So let's move on to the next step. So at this point, we... You had your first sales call. I imagine the next step is closing the deal, and I... It's interesting because it's still early. You may not even have a product. What does that look like going from, okay, I wanna buy it now. What do you what do you do next?