Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:00:57 · Rob Snyder
[01:00:57] S0: Yeah. So early on I'm really more testing willingness to transact versus willingness to pay. And so I don't care about pricing a ton in the early couple of customers. That said, I was just working with a company that's... Their first deal is Enterprise, and they've got a big demo day coming up. And so they're like, How do we get the most possible revenue out of this so we can look like that for demo day? Totally valid thing to do. In that case, what you do is you throw out a number in a way that doesn't get you slapped. And the specific approach that I'd recommend for that is almost like using a case study as a, hey, react to this kind of case study. And so you'd say, when we talk to others, the way they've... Everyone's kind of done pricing differently. Some of them have been... Sometimes it's been a small project for $80,000 Other times, it's been up to a million dollars in terms of, right, and these are kind of the levers here. And some people... A lot of people wind up in the middle. You tell me, how are you thinking about this? And so what you're doing is you're not like me on this side proposing pricing to you on this side. It's both of us looking at, like, an example, a kind of semi real example of what you've heard from others as how they think about this and letting them throw up on that.
01:02:16 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[01:02:16] S1: Throw up on that. I like that. I know this case study concept is actually an important part of this whole framework. I'm gonna come back to it. But okay, so let's talk about the next steps. So say you have the sales call in BF2, what kind of comes next after this first batch of sales calls that you're doing? [01:02:31] S0: Yeah, this is where the paths might diverge. So hopefully you're right. These people have pull. Great, you now have customers. Time to deliver and start repeating this and start figuring out how to automate things and just systematize this. You're on the right path. A lot of the times you get kind of a weird set of responses. You learn that the people you thought were weird not to buy are actually weird to buy. It'd be weird if they did buy. They're not behaving in a way where they have pull. And in that case, what I tend to recommend is you just analyze, you go back and review the calls, and you say, okay. Did one actually have pull? Did zero? Like, what have we learned here? And then you craft a new hypothesis and run it again. [01:03:19] S1: Got it. And imagine most of the time, it's not it's not there. And is that your experience, or what's kind of the pie chart of yes, success versus not at this stage?
01:03:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[01:03:19] S1: Got it. And imagine most of the time, it's not it's not there. And is that your experience, or what's kind of the pie chart of yes, success versus not at this stage? [01:03:29] S0: Yeah. I've seen, like, maybe once or twice where it was there Mhmm. From the beginning, And that's magical. Like, you feel like a hero when you when you get it right the first time. A lot of times it is it is... Like, we're so wrong and backwards that we don't know. And so you just ask a Hail Mary a couple times, and that gets you on the right path. Or you, like, do something crazy where a friend just, like, went to a conference and scheduled 20 meetings and just was like, I don't know what to do. You tell me what to build you or or something like that. I call that goblin mode where you just just going all out and doing unhealthy things to see, like, who will buy something from me right now to then generate your hypothesis out of. [01:04:12] S1: Say more about goblin mode. This is amazing. [01:04:14] S0: Yeah. You know, like, when when dogs do the... Like, get the zoomies. Right? And they just, like, that's that's the thing I have in my mind for what goblin mode is as a founder where it's like [01:04:23] S1: And this is a good thing or not a good thing?
01:04:23 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[01:04:23] S1: And this is a good thing or not a good thing? [01:04:25] S0: It's a it's a break glass in case of emergency thing Mhmm. Where it's... And I think some founders actually operate like this all the time where it's like, okay. There's actually a conference tomorrow in Europe that has these potential customers there. I can't get them to talk to me, so looks like I'm gonna get on a plane right now and go there. Right? It's just doing kind of somewhat crazy things with the goal of getting in front of customers right now. And, yeah, like, some people can do this all the time. Others like me who are getting old, like, I can I can pull this out once in a while? [01:05:02] S1: Get that goblin mode out sometimes. Yeah. So the idea there's... And you're saying this sometime. This can work. Just like going nuts. Just like going talking to everyone looking for these earned secrets. [01:05:12] S0: Yeah. And one example of this, like, it's kind of a crazy example, but a friend's building a a company called Tiro, which does dental staffing for for dental hygienists. And he... His version of goblin mode was his parents went door to door to different dental offices to just get people to to talk to him about about being customers, and that worked. And so it's just like weird stuff like that can work.
01:05:12 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:05:12] S0: Yeah. And one example of this, like, it's kind of a crazy example, but a friend's building a a company called Tiro, which does dental staffing for for dental hygienists. And he... His version of goblin mode was his parents went door to door to different dental offices to just get people to to talk to him about about being customers, and that worked. And so it's just like weird stuff like that can work. [01:05:36] S1: Amazing. Okay. So you say do a couple sales calls, they do five. Is that is that kind of the idea? Do like five and assess? Is that rough heuristic? Okay. So say, to your point, most times you'll find, okay, this is not... There's no pull here. Sorry. What do you do? Do you go back to the beginning, go hands hands on with some other small business sort of thing, or what do you recommend? [01:05:55] S0: Yeah. So different pathways there. Hopefully, you've asked the Hail Mary question, and you've learned something there that's, like, worth double clicking into. [01:06:03] S1: And the Hail Mary question is just like, what what is there anything that we can do to... With... Yeah. Right now that is a problem on your to do list? [01:06:10] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's... And and so you've generated some new information that you can then use to do another set of five. If not, then yeah. You just go back, get some firsthand knowledge, try it again.
01:06:10 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:06:10] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's... And and so you've generated some new information that you can then use to do another set of five. If not, then yeah. You just go back, get some firsthand knowledge, try it again. [01:06:24] S1: Awesome. Okay. So this process is very straightforward. Have a pull hypothesis, fill out this template, schedule, basically, cold outbound with a surprising message that'll get people's attention, think you're interesting. Do five calls roughly, get a sense as they're pull or not. If there's not pull, throw out some hail Mary questions, maybe enter goblin mode to look for something, come up with another pull hypothesis, do five more calls, and repeat until you're like, oh, wow. We've got this pull. [01:06:52] S0: Yep. And then you have a business. [01:06:53] S1: There we go. Off to the races. Okay. So say you actually found something, something that is pulling and people are like, I need this now. What comes next? What do you kind of the... There's kind of like the building onboarding process and then just keeping them happy. What's that process like? What advice do you have there?