The Physics of Startups
00:13:57 · S0
[00:13:57] S0: Fascinating. Great question, Sayed. I'm glad you glad you asked that. Um uh, let's um maybe hit one more. Uh, this one's from founders feed. Um, would love it if you also oh, and this is on uh the episode five lessons from 50 startups that reached 1 million ARR, um uh the comment or the questionnaire. Would love it if you also talked about CPG uh or business to consumer brands uh and how much your framework applies there. See the success of native deodorant, liquid death, grooms, Tesla, etc. Um, so what would you say about B2C here?
00:14:35 · Rob Snyder
[00:14:35] S1: Yeah, what's been interesting is that we've had, so I mostly focus on B2B. Um I would love to focus a little bit more on B2C, but I just don't know a bunch of B2C founders. Um, but I had a couple come in bound, and one specifically has been using the pull framework to sell a kind of D2C subscription thing, doing meta ads to a kind of eventually self-serve checkout flow. But what he has said is that using the pull framework and having these kinds of sales conversations with people early on has helped them speed run the process of figuring it out. What a lot of these B2C brands might do sometimes is like um either from their own personal experience, they're gonna say, okay, here's what I think the product needs to be, here's who I think it's for, and they'll go out and just like start, you know, running ads on that and just kind of like hope it works. Um, or they will spend a ton of money on ads to like let AI figure out what the market needs, kind of is is kind of roughly how it's how it's been described to me. And so he says, and and hopefully at some point we'll be be able to do a case study and talk about it more, but um but he says this has basically allowed him to not raise a ton of money to spend a bunch on ads and wait to learn. And his learning cycle has been super, super fast because he's talking to basically every um customer, uh, you know, interviewing every customer or talking to them and trying to fill out the poll framework and compare and contrast the people who buy with the people who don't. Um, and so it does it works there too. The mechanics are obviously different, but like I work with a bunch of B2B brands who are doing a bunch through through meta ads as well. And so I don't know how different it actually is.
00:16:18 · S0
[00:16:18] S0: Yeah, two two thoughts on that. One, um, not it it feels actually very similar to a B2B uh startup that is targeting PLG, which is you know, you're essentially you're just you're just trying, but you know, the unique thing about B2C is is not not just like where the money is coming from, but it's that it's at a scale that you cannot interact individually frequently. You can't interact individually with everyone for these like more in-depth things. And that's what that's what uh product-led growth uh startups are also trying to do. Um, and so you know, that's I I think in watching you know your your advice with uh startup, you know, a founder that comes to you and says, I want to do PLG, your advice is always like, okay, what's the pull? It's like, you know, you still need to early on, you still need to be selling, you need to have a clear understanding of PLG.
00:17:04 · Rob Snyder, S0
[00:17:04] S1: If you want to do PLG eventually, you have like PLG is harder than sales led. Like it's harder because it's sales led, we can talk to each other, and I can kind of tailor what I'm saying. That's not how PLG works, that's not how BSC works. I can't do that one-to-one with each person. So when something is harder, you like need to be better at this, uh understanding what customers actually want. And a way to do that that I've found to be very helpful is these one-on-one conversations. So when I work with PLG startups, it's still very much a like, cool, we're just gonna sell to these people, like we're gonna do sales for sure. We're gonna have sales calls, or if if they're already signing up, we're gonna have calls with them after they've signed up to try to figure out what caused them to buy. And we're gonna and that's gonna be our learning loop because just looking at analytics tells you nothing. [00:18:02] S0: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, they bring up um in the comment native deodorant, liquid death, grunts, Tesla. Um, you've talked about Tesla. Is it you know, any of these other ones, um, like I I see I feel like all of these you could look at and develop a theory of what the what the pull is kind of behind it, but is it how is that different from uh when you're doing a B2C? Or is it different to develop a theory of pool, or do they have a theory of pull?
00:18:29 · Rob Snyder
[00:18:29] S1: Like what's the I I so I don't know, I don't like doing this outside in. The reason I can do this for work day is because I've actually talked to HR buyers to understand why they choose workday when everybody hates it. And it's like, oh, that makes a lot more sense. Um uh I don't like doing this from the outside in. If you're doing this for a D to C brand, do it based on your own experience as a customer for a D2C brand where you've seen something and been like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that exists, right? Go explore that. And and and that's how you'll find pull. Uh you'll understand at least what your poll was for that and what they're trying to do. And I think uh if if you just approach it that way, right, don't don't try to do it for a brand you haven't purchased, um uh and that that like you only understand kind of theoretically. Go for something that actually spoke to you, that actually moved you, and like think through okay, what were the other options that I considered? What was what was actually the project on my to-do list? And and you'll see from doing that that okay, cool. There, I I had poll for it, and and they are targeting that poll correctly.
00:19:33 · S0
[00:19:33] S0: Yeah. Cool. Um, you know, on uh one last note on that one. Uh at my company, Kubernetes Media, we do uh like family programs. Um, and we uh about 75% of our revenue is B2B, like we'll we'll sell projects, uh, you know, production-based lead projects for to or universities, nonprofits, et cetera. Um, but 25% of our revenue does come from parents and families. And I use I use pool actively. Um, I look for pool signal from parents like that are that are purchasing from us, what are they asking for? Like sometimes I'll get confusing or surprising interactions from parents that are asking for things, and I'm immediately like, okay, what's going on in that customer or that parent's uh individual life, that interaction with their child, what's the pool there? And what would I, if I were designing a solution for that, um, what what would I put in front of them? And do I think that that's like broad enough? So I I use pull actively with the the direct or the business to consumer uh part of what we do at Cumbra as well. Um, anyways, I think I think this was cool. Uh keep submitting uh questions, comments, things you want us to talk about. And hopefully we'll if y'all like this EMA AMA format, then uh hopefully we can uh hit more of them going forward. Uh with no further ado, we'll see everybody soon. Bye.