The Physics of Startups
00:00:00 · S0, Rob Snyder
[00:00:00] S0: Hey Rob, good to see you, man. [00:00:01] S1: How's it going? Good, good, good, good. So I um yesterday I have a deadlift story for you, which is thank goodness. That went that yesterday, I was like, I am going to hit my 445 double or else. And guess what? I learned what or else means. So I blew out my back uh uh on the second one, I will say. Almost I almost got it. But it's good because good for two reasons. One is that um it means I was really trying, which you know, if you're not if you're not really pushing it to the edge, you're like, am I could I be doing like way more? The answer is no. Very much not. I couldn't even be doing what I was doing. Um and a second thing I've learned is you know what the cure for blowing out your back with deadlifts is? Uh Buffalo Bills. I have no idea. What is it? More deadlifts. I did a ton of deadlifts today, and I've done so many deadlifts, and my back feels great. It's insane. I didn't, I don't know. I have no idea. Um, so so this is not a medical medical disclaimer. Um but I feel great. [00:01:24] S0: Yeah, yeah. Please, please do not misconstrue us as understanding physiology in a meaningful way. Or uh this this podcast does not replace the relationship that you have with your personal care provider or medical provider. [00:01:38] S1: Also, I haven't been to a doctor in like six years and it's becoming a problem, but uh that's a this is very much not a medical uh podcast. Why don't we talk about something else?
00:01:38 · Rob Snyder, S0
[00:01:38] S1: Also, I haven't been to a doctor in like six years and it's becoming a problem, but uh that's a this is very much not a medical uh podcast. Why don't we talk about something else? [00:01:48] S0: Yeah, yeah. I love it. Okay, let's uh today we're talking about me search, um, which uh any any of our listeners who are kind of like the business school type, um, it's been drilled into your brain, most likely, that me search is what you should not do. And there's a um, and it's like, you know, research if it's a new word for you, research with me, take out re. Um, and you're just basically like looking inside yourself in order to extrapolate about a population. And where it goes wrong is when you've got like a Stanford NBA who uh is like, well, you know, thinking about how do I market Walmart to you know a population, but they grew up in in Connecticut or you know, in like uh some privileged environment. And so it doesn't, I'm I don't know. Sorry about everybody in Connecticut, like Stanford, I don't know what it was. [00:02:42] S1: This podcast is not for people in Connecticut. You stop listening right there.
00:02:42 · Rob Snyder, S0
[00:02:42] S1: This podcast is not for people in Connecticut. You stop listening right there. [00:02:47] S0: But there's yeah, so you're you know, you're you're basically taught like don't do me search, like look at the data, understand, uh, you know, get close to the customer. Like there's some parts of that that are that are actually good. But what what you're you're coming like basically hot in the defense of a specific application of me-search. Um so maybe Rob here, why don't you just that we this is something we we I think we hinted at it in a previous podcast, maybe even the last one. Um why don't you give us a little bit of context on why me-search is on your mind and yeah, like what maybe some of the misconceptions uh uh around it are.
00:03:23 · Rob Snyder
[00:03:23] S1: Yeah, so um like just uh running into so uh I I'm trying to help a bunch of startups take off. And uh like most of them use the pull framework and it it works, it kind of works, and they kind of like iterate their way to it working working well. Some some some get stuck for longer, some don't. And so I'm always looking for ways to make like to find pull faster. And I don't know how I got down this this rabbit hole, but I but I ran into Friedrich Hayek's like book from I don't know, 60, 70 years ago, something something like that, called The Counter-Revolution of Science. No idea how I got there. And it just slapped me in the face. Like the the book hit me like a ton of bricks because it you know, I I including a Claude summary, you can you can link to in in the in the newsletter. Um but it made me realize that the way that we business people look at just the the way that we see the world, the way that our uh our analytical minds approach the world or analytical uh you know tendencies is is that uh it is totally wrong for the specific uh task of figuring out what customers want or figuring out what their pull is. And so um I've just been kind of like I've been rereading and like rereading and just thinking and thinking about and and like exp and and trying to articulate this concept, and it turns out this is a concept that is either basically impossible to articulate with words, or it's above my IQ to articulate it with words. Both are equally like or like not, both are happening at the same time, yeah. And so, and so I'm just like I just am gonna encourage you to read the summary of high ex counter-revolution of science. Do the exercise that I suggest doing in this newsletter, which is basically to do some me search on on your own experiences purchasing and how you felt leading up to what was happening in your world, understanding the situation and how how just what your life was like, what it was like to be in your own mind leading up to a purchase. And if you do those things, I think you're gonna understand everything a lot better. And I think you're gonna be way, way, way better at understanding customers to be able to build something they want and applying the pull framework. Yeah.
00:06:21 · S0
[00:06:21] S0: We'll we'll get into an example or two of that to kind of kind of role model it. But basically, like the goal here, the the higher goal is uh pull is kind of abstract. It can be hard to wrap your brain around like what's actually going on, and especially because it's so counterintuitive relative to you know a push method, to popular sales methodology, to everything else. And so uh, you know, I think basically you're what you're saying is this is uh the like the purpose of this this post, of this podcast, is let's give you something that's highly practical to make uh pull visceral, to make it something that you like kind of understand in your bones. Um and then it's not it's not that your every single customer will go through that exact emotional experience with you, but you'll know what needs to happen or what's going on behind a purchase that motivates it, um, which will help you in you know intuit basically or recognize when you have pull and when you don't have pull. Um that's kind of how I'm interpreting this, Rob. Is that the right way to think about it?
00:07:25 · Rob Snyder, S0
[00:07:25] S1: Yeah, it's it's a way to know what you're looking for and what it feels like to be in the customer's side. So I'll give like two two quick stories on this. Um story one is that somebody, somebody we know, reached out to to me and was explaining how pull made sense to him. And this was months ago, and I just kind of like filed it away as something that was just an interesting anecdote. But he said, yeah, when I saw Pull, I started to pay more attention and think through the stories of when I had purchased something. And I realized that it was a much better description of my purchasing experiences of what was going on in my mind when I bought things, what was going on in my life and mind, um, than all the other descriptions out there. So that's one side of this. The other side of this is um helping a startup now with like the most kind of rational business thinker I've ever met, um, who is who is just bewildered that customers are not reacting to to what he's trying to sell to them. It's gonna save you so much money, and you're saying saving money is a priority. What is going on here? And it's like, and it's because we're he's approaching this from the outside in, not actually. And so we've we've been interviewing uh uh some people who haven't bought, and I've just been doing this to try to show him like the what's going on in their minds. And it is just a it is a very disorienting experience for somebody who is like super rational, super like logical. Yeah. [00:09:18] S0: Let's um uh one, I love feelings, and so I'm I'm glad that we're in in feeling hours.