Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
00:08:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:08:55] S1: Why are the second two so important, this idea of other options and why those are not working? Yeah. So you can [00:09:01] S0: you can imagine a case where, like, a product team, for example, they have a really important thing that the... That has been mandated down. They have a really important feature they need to build or something that's an unavoidable project on their to do list, but they're gonna do it themselves. So they don't need anything. They won't buy anything unless they... Their existing options aren't good enough. And so it really, really is important that it's not just I'm trying to do something, and I can do it myself, or I can do it with a with a kind of category leader. I can do it with whatever tool is is out there. It has to be something where my existing options are not good enough, so I am, like, stuck. I'm I'm blocked. [00:09:44] S1: Let's do an example to make this even more real. What's like a product or a company that gives us a sense of what... I basically use this as a template. It's like a Mad Libsy thing where it's just like p u l l, and you fill it out. So let's go give us an example.
00:09:44 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:09:44] S1: Let's do an example to make this even more real. What's like a product or a company that gives us a sense of what... I basically use this as a template. It's like a Mad Libsy thing where it's just like p u l l, and you fill it out. So let's go give us an example. [00:09:56] S0: Yeah. So my friends are at a company called Jump, which is an AI notetaker for financial advisers. Very interesting space. They did the same thing I did, by the way. They spent eighteen months just hitting their head against the wall and then finally found Pole, tried to sell, and figured it out. But what they found was that financial advisers have a project on their to do list that is to minimize the amount of time they spend taking notes for client meetings and putting those notes into their CRMs. It's a project on their to do list. The you, the unavoidable, is if they don't take notes and put them into their CRMs, they could go to jail. So they have to take those notes, but when they're taking the notes, they don't wanna be doing that. And so so they wanna minimize the amount of time because they don't enjoy doing that. It's it's not a not a fun thing. So the list of options they considered to minimize the amount of time were, [00:10:55] S1: you know,
00:10:55 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:10:55] S1: you know, [00:10:55] S0: like a generic AI notetaker. You're you're kind of there's a list of of all of those out there. But those AI notetakers were not good enough because they didn't integrate with the financial adviser CRMs, and it wasn't clear if they were compliant with the SEC's regulations on this. And so there's a list of options they they really couldn't use. And so when JuMP showed up and found that poll, people ripped the product out of their hands. Well, I think one person literally said, this must be how Alexander Graham Bell felt when he invented the telephone. Like, that's a weird thing to say about a product for financial advisers. Amazing. [00:11:34] S1: That's a great testimonial to stick on our website. [00:11:36] S0: Yeah. [00:11:37] S1: Okay. What would be, like, a bad version of this? Like, what would it look like if it wasn't... If there wasn't pull?
00:11:37 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:11:37] S1: Okay. What would be, like, a bad version of this? Like, what would it look like if it wasn't... If there wasn't pull? [00:11:42] S0: Yeah. So fun conversation with the with the jump team about... They they said, okay. Cool. Financial advisers. They have this project. You know who else meets with clients all the time? Insurance agents. So maybe we just go and talk to them. And it turns out they also have the project on their to do list of minimizing the amount of time they spend taking meeting notes. But the you isn't there because they don't have to... They're required to put meeting notes into their CRM. So their existing options, the first l, are not taking meeting notes, which they were already doing. And so you can see the framework kinda doesn't fill out for them or does... There's not... The force isn't there. They're fine. [00:12:24] S1: That... An avoidable piece, I see why that is so important. And this is an example. Basically basically, you need all four here. Yes. So that's a good lesson here is all four need to exist for real pull. In the first example, that you do, to me doesn't feel like it's a to do they just wrote down. It's kind of this general to do, just generally save time. Is that an okay P for a project to be able to do just the... Was this specifically at every financial advisor's to do list?
00:12:24 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:12:24] S1: That... An avoidable piece, I see why that is so important. And this is an example. Basically basically, you need all four here. Yes. So that's a good lesson here is all four need to exist for real pull. In the first example, that you do, to me doesn't feel like it's a to do they just wrote down. It's kind of this general to do, just generally save time. Is that an okay P for a project to be able to do just the... Was this specifically at every financial advisor's to do list? [00:12:52] S0: Yeah. So it was a thing that... I wouldn't say it's, like, actually something they wrote down on their to do list, but it was, like, a thing they were doing all the time. It was a part of their workflow. And while they were doing it, they were trying not to do it. I think there's the action I'm doing right now on my calendar, and then the project is my intention while I'm doing it. So while I'm doing it, the project on my mental to do list was spend the least amount of time doing this annoying thing. [00:13:19] S1: Got it. And so if a founder or product team is listening to this and are struggling with their product, it's probably one of these four is not there. Yeah. You need
00:13:19 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[00:13:19] S1: Got it. And so if a founder or product team is listening to this and are struggling with their product, it's probably one of these four is not there. Yeah. You need [00:13:28] S0: all four at once. If you find p without u and in the l's, so you find something that somebody's trying to do kind of, but they're not actually trying to do it right now, and their existing options aren't good enough, what they'll do is they'll complain and they won't buy. If they have p and u, but their l's are good enough, they're gonna say, yeah. That's exactly what we're doing right now. And working with Claude Code on it, we're gonna figure it out. [00:13:53] S1: Something along these lines that you talk about is that this pull exists. It's like this thing that's already there, and you're just kind of this, like, I don't know, hunter looking for the pull and discovering it. Talk a bit about that. [00:14:05] S0: Yeah. This was super liberating when I, like, realized this because I always thought that I was incompetent. I wasn't good at convincing the market to want my product. And it was from that perspective of, okay, I'm building something that's really valuable and people aren't buying. How do I convince them to want it to buy? And it turns out this poll, this project on their to do list exists before and independent of me, which means I just have to go out there and find it. I don't have to convince people to have poll. And it's like, I haven't quite figured out how to do that, but I think it's very, very hard to do if it's possible at all.