Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
01:16:02 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:16:02] S0: Yeah. Totally. And and the good news is if you have the pull framework, then you just describe, here's how we helped them and what they accomplished, and you have a case study. [01:16:12] S1: Amazing. Okay. There's a couple things I wanna touch on because this is the end of the process basically. Yes. There's a few things I wanna touch on that came out of the community and things you mentioned real quick. One is you... Yeah, this term hell yes customers. Say more about that. You mentioned it of like when you're looking for someone to buy it and then use it, there's this idea of they want them to be hell yes. [01:16:34] S0: Yeah. It's it's basically somebody who pulls the product out of your hands before they buy. And then afterwards, they use it as if it is addictive. And so they they might literally say hell yes, But what matters is they're weird not to buy and weird to churn, and that process is mostly them pulling versus you pushing. That's your perfect fit customer. Your job is just to find more who are basically clones of them. Okay. [01:17:02] S1: The other kind of point I wanna reinforce is you recommend no pilots, no point... Proof of concepts, no design partners. Just go straight to, we're gonna sell this to you and roll it out, it's gonna be amazing. [01:17:12] S0: Yep. And and, like, sometimes you're gonna do that and they say, okay. But the way we buy here is we actually need to pilot it. Okay. Cool. But don't proactively
01:17:12 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:17:12] S0: Yep. And and, like, sometimes you're gonna do that and they say, okay. But the way we buy here is we actually need to pilot it. Okay. Cool. But don't proactively [01:17:21] S1: I see. Offer. Awesome. Okay. Another big question that came out of the community is from an external perspective, this feels like this just for startups and founders, but this actually applies for, and we mentioned this at the beginning, but just to reinforce this point, for larger companies that are working on new feature, new business lines sort of thing. Talk about just if there's anything that you would think about differently through this process if you're at a mature company building a new product. [01:17:46] S0: I'm hoping a couple companies launch their second product. And what they are doing is actually the founders are like, cool, we're doing it again. We're running it back. And the founders are taking this approach to existing customers because they're going to try to upsell them, and they are actually selling new features before they've built them. Another example at existing companies is, I can't share the name, but a company was... A new product leader at a company was telling me, Hey, yeah, the way we get our ideas, all of the ideas that have worked have come from sales calls where they said, Cool, yeah, you can do X, but could you also do this other thing for us? And the products that came out of the customer in the sales calls asking for something that could do that project for them all worked. All the ones they whiteboarded never worked.
01:17:46 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:17:46] S0: I'm hoping a couple companies launch their second product. And what they are doing is actually the founders are like, cool, we're doing it again. We're running it back. And the founders are taking this approach to existing customers because they're going to try to upsell them, and they are actually selling new features before they've built them. Another example at existing companies is, I can't share the name, but a company was... A new product leader at a company was telling me, Hey, yeah, the way we get our ideas, all of the ideas that have worked have come from sales calls where they said, Cool, yeah, you can do X, but could you also do this other thing for us? And the products that came out of the customer in the sales calls asking for something that could do that project for them all worked. All the ones they whiteboarded never worked. [01:18:34] S1: So the idea here is you have a product, you're hearing, you're basically finding these little nuggets of this could be a thing, and what I'm imagining is then you go through this whole poll hypothesis step by step, just like put up that hypothesis, talk to five of your existing customers, look for that poll, see if they're gonna actually buy it, and then kind of go through the same process. And an important wrinkle here that we haven't reinforced enough maybe is that it's the founders that should be doing this, especially in a startup. But it's interesting you said even at a mature company, if it's a new product, the founders ideally are doing that selling.
01:18:34 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[01:18:34] S1: So the idea here is you have a product, you're hearing, you're basically finding these little nuggets of this could be a thing, and what I'm imagining is then you go through this whole poll hypothesis step by step, just like put up that hypothesis, talk to five of your existing customers, look for that poll, see if they're gonna actually buy it, and then kind of go through the same process. And an important wrinkle here that we haven't reinforced enough maybe is that it's the founders that should be doing this, especially in a startup. But it's interesting you said even at a mature company, if it's a new product, the founders ideally are doing that selling. [01:19:09] S0: Yeah. Ideally, not always the case. Yeah. There are people who are who are doing zero to one stuff, but I just recommend if you're in that situation and you're a non founder, really focus on trying to sell the thing and learning through selling because there's a lot of ways to get lost in zero to one. [01:19:26] S1: Awesome. And then again, if things aren't working, there's this idea you should have goblin mode of just like, okay. Just try a bunch of stuff. Talk to as many people. Get on planes. Go have 20 meetings, and just look for something.
01:19:26 · Lenny Rachitsky, Rob Snyder
[01:19:26] S1: Awesome. And then again, if things aren't working, there's this idea you should have goblin mode of just like, okay. Just try a bunch of stuff. Talk to as many people. Get on planes. Go have 20 meetings, and just look for something. [01:19:38] S0: Yes. Yeah. Hail Mary, goblin mode. Like, all of these things are just the... Your great class in case of emergency. Time is really valuable, and, like, staying suck... Stuck is awful. If you're in this, like, pain cave of zero to one, it's, like, the worst time of your life, and you just don't wanna prolong that. So just get on a plane, go to the office, go in person, do whatever it takes to find something. [01:20:04] S1: Rob, we did it. We went through everything. That was amazing. Is there anything else that you think is important to share or anything you wanna, I don't know, double down on before we get to our very exciting lightning round? [01:20:14] S0: Hopefully, what's come across is kind of how simple this is. Pull framework, show to people, see if they pull. There's a lot of ways to overcomplicate this, and there's a lot of ways where we try to solve every variable in our head in advance. And I've found that just pull framework, sell, see if they try to buy, and think of less in that process, it will get you there.
01:20:14 · Rob Snyder, Lenny Rachitsky
[01:20:14] S0: Hopefully, what's come across is kind of how simple this is. Pull framework, show to people, see if they pull. There's a lot of ways to overcomplicate this, and there's a lot of ways where we try to solve every variable in our head in advance. And I've found that just pull framework, sell, see if they try to buy, and think of less in that process, it will get you there. [01:20:44] S1: Awesome. That sounds very simple. And I think it's important to note, this is very actually not... It's hard to find an idea that actually works, and this is all here to help you save a lot of pain and suffering and building and be kind of being disillusioned... Not disillusioned, miss... Feeling like there's something there wasting a lot of your life doing something that's not gonna work. [01:21:05] S0: Yeah. Think of it as like a... You know, like a metal detector on a beach. Like this is just giving you a metal detector. You might not find metal where you're looking right now, but at least I'm not giving you a spoon. [01:21:16] S1: At least I'm not giving you a spoon, meaning... [01:21:19] S0: For the beach, right? Like, it's a