Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
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?
00:54:23 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:54:23] S0: Yeah. So it it kinda gonna depend on the size of the deal, but you want to come back with some sort of a concept and some sort of a plan. Examples of this... So the pharma company that I mentioned earlier, the company selling into pharma, he showed up and just threw a Hail Mary on an intro to a pharma exec. Exec was like, oh my gosh. Thank you so much for asking. Our current market research is da da da da da. We're trying... It's just so bad. It's so slow. And the founder was like, okay. I don't even have slides here. I'm just hearing this for the first time. And so it sounds like you're looking for faster market research that looks like the current research you're getting, but kind of... I don't know. It's just better in these kinds of ways. Is that roughly right? And the exec was like, Yes, that's exactly it. And so the founder was like, Okay, let's do this. What if I come back to you in a couple of days with a mock up of what I think that could look like? And then we can discuss if that fits what you're really looking for and then decide if we want to move forward. And so in that case, no slides, no nothing, goes in VibeCodes' rough layout of what this would look like, gets some feedback on it, says, Okay, based on that, is there anything else you need to know to decide whether this is a fit that you want to bring into your organization? Says, like, yeah, with the price. And then there's a there's a little talk track you can use for price, but that's basically it. [00:55:48] S1: Okay. Tell me more about this price talk track.
00:55:48 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:55:48] S1: Okay. Tell me more about this price talk track. [00:55:51] S0: Yeah. The interesting thing about the PUL framework is that it can help you set the bounds for pricing. What's the value of getting the project done? Or what are the cost of the alternatives? So the the Ls. So you can... What's the value of getting this market research faster? Or what is the cost you're currently spending with your with your market research consultants? Both of those can tell you, okay. The value of market research is like x. The cost with consultants is, I don't know, $50,000 per per year. And so that gives me a rough boundary to say, okay. What if we charged $50,000 a year, the same price as your current market research consultants? It it kind of gives a frame on price that that makes it intuitive to your potential customers. Awesome. [00:56:42] S1: Okay. So the way you've kind of written about this closing step, there's kinda like two parts. There's the fit of just like, is this a fit? And then it's just a bunch of project management to get the deal closed. So we've spent a lot of time, I think, on the FIT. The project management, is there anything there important to talk about?