The Physics of Startups
00:11:31 · S0, Rob Snyder
[00:11:31] S0: Yeah. That's that's awesome. And uh congratulations to DJ on 85% close rate. That's uh that's super impressive. Um all right, let's hit um maybe one or two or a couple more. One is uh Did we hit the workday one? Yeah, let's hit the workday one. All right. This one is from uh Syed, and then that it continues. Um it's from uh it's a comment on uh your kind of like your longer lecture, notes on the physics of startups. Umed writes. Uh I would be so willing to understand the pull behind workday. It's the bane of everyone's existence, but we still can't get seem to get rid of it, neither employers nor candidates. [00:12:12] S1: Um and you know, Rob, maybe um how would you how would you characterize workday is an HR information system, HRIS. [00:12:20] S0: Yeah.
00:12:20 · S0, Rob Snyder
[00:12:20] S0: Yeah. [00:12:21] S1: That um is used in basically all big companies. Perfect. And so, yeah, and and the experience is awful for everyone. And that doesn't matter. That's totally irrelevant. I I have tried to build an HR system with uh uh to to like go and attack this market with under the theory that the user experience that everybody complained about was relevant. It isn't because what matters when you're buying an HR system is it has to work for all the relevant laws and all the relevant jurisdictions and all the places for everything that could possibly change. That's what matters, and that's how they make the purchase decision on it. There is a buyer who decides based on something like that, a checklist of things, but it basically is like, okay, cool. Um New York City is gonna pass this new stupid law, but we also need to our HR system to be able to reflect that so we can automatically comply with it and da-da-da-da-da. Right. And that happens everywhere. And that and each business requires a ton of customization to all of these kinds of things. And that is what causes the purchase, right? Like the most important thing with an HR information system is like is it is it gonna make sure we're doing things legally? Do we not get thrown in jail? User experience is irrelevant.
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?