The Physics of Startups
00:09:18 · S0, Rob Snyder
[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. [00:09:24] S1: You're always the you were always the feelings guy, and I was always the exact opposite of this. I I'm being dragged into this kicking and screwing. [00:09:31] S0: Yeah, well, welcome to my world, Ralph. It's we we're welcoming you with open arms, and we're gonna talk about our feelings while you're here. Um Rob, uh it's not it's not that you're saying that analytics uh or an analytical mindset is always wrong. No. Um like you've you've created the case study factory. When you think about outbound, it's it's a system, there's percentages, there's, you know, like you use analytics and an analytical approach for a lot of startups. So when is what do you think about um an analytical mindset as being helpful? And when do you think about it as being like it's actually count, it's uh either counterproductive or not the right frame to take to a problem?
00:10:15 · Rob Snyder
[00:10:15] S1: Yeah, so the analytical approach is good for basically everything other than what's in the customer's mind. It's good for it's good for everything other than minds. And so the case study factory, I've finally figured out how to make people care about it. Um the case study factory is is a model of business that is basically the only way to grow as fast as possible. If you look at your business as a case study factory and think about throughput in the factory and just attack the bottleneck, there is not a faster way to grow than to do that. Because that is guaranteeing that you are focusing on the thing that's going to make your startup growing grow as fast as possible out of the infinite things that could possibly that you could possibly focus on. That is an analytical exercise, deeply analytical. And all of that works only if it like all rests on the foundation of what is in the customer's mind. What are they trying to do? And so I think of it as there is a foundation of knowledge in in business that you have to understand the customer's mind, which is like maybe it's like one percent, maybe it's what whatever, like I don't know what percentage it is, but it is the percent that is holding up all of the other pieces. And so whether it's like you're in sales, like a lot of sales is tactics and like scripts and stuff and processes, but the most important part is not because you have to understand what's in a customer's mind, what's the difference between what's in a customer's mind when they don't buy and when they do buy, and what causes a change. How does that work? And building a new product, right? A lot of it is like, okay, how do we like architect the thing? How do we put it together? Like all that kind of stuff is analytical stuff. And it's, you know, it can be deeply rational. It can be all the kind of things that that people like me, not people like you, like. Um uh um, but it all rests. It whether it works or not depends on what's in the customer's mind, which can't be analyzed the same way we analyze a machine.
00:12:35 · S0
[00:12:35] S0: Yeah, uh to me, it almost it almost feels like there's um uh like an engine that is powering the factory, and that factory is built on, or excuse me, that engine is is like the the feeling that you're trying to tap into here with uh with me-search. Um how do you uh Rob, you know, you write about uh having like read a bunch of sales methodology books and frameworks and blogs and like just consumed all that, and noticing that this was absent from it, but there were tactics um that were that were part of it. It's you know, creating urgency, it's about challenging, it's about you know, all these other uh methodologies that are their tactics. How is that different from understanding like what's going on in a customer's mind? Where is it the same? Or like what, yeah, what are you doing what's the difference that you're teaching there?
00:13:24 · Rob Snyder
[00:13:24] S1: Yeah, so I mean this is this is a honestly, this is a kind of realization I've had in the past couple of days. And I'm I am it's all downstream of like actually thinking about what Hayek is saying in the counter-revolution of science, and then realizing holy cow, this is a massive thing that is missing. I didn't know this was missing until this week. It's it's just so crazy to me. And so when you um so now when you look at like startup books and sales books and business books, what you'll see is that they take this analytical approach to customers, right? To understanding customers. And so what that leads to is them describing basically customers as uh I would say annoying machines, like machine, defective machines that don't do what we want them to do. And so they give you, they give you kind of like these simple user manuals to the machines that are um that are like, I don't know, here's here's what worked with this stupid machine, right? Like here's here's what works with this stupid machine, here's how this stupid machine works, and um it's annoying, it's kind of getting in your way. And so, right, like on the path to your greatness, here's how to deal with these stupid machines that you have to deal with. And um And so it does. It and like if you look at stuff, it's basically like, okay, here's how to poke at the machine, right? Like the machine really the the these machines respond well if you challenge them, right? Like that's that's a um uh and and or or like you know, here's how these machines should behave. You know what? If if the machine sees 10x ROI, it's illogical for the machine not to to buy it, right? That's that's like Homo economicus, right? Like that's that's the kind of theory like uh theory of person as as rational uh uh you know, whatever. And so all of these are just bad in bad instruction manuals for a machine when the thing we're analyzing is not a machine and can't be understood like a machine.
00:15:35 · S0, Rob Snyder
[00:15:35] S0: Yeah, yeah, fascinating. It's I have you know, I've uh I said economics in an undergrad, and then obviously through um uh through business school, it's like yeah, there there was like this this like weird way that you would talk about people, and this is probably what Hayek is getting at as an economist, but it's like there's the the rational, like when consumers behave rationally, this is what they do. But there's all these instances where they behave irrationally, and and it's like, oh, you're no, you're just you're just not explaining it correctly. [00:16:04] S1: Like uh, right, right, right. Yeah, the whole thing on like behavioral economics and all the biases and all this kind of stuff, it's like, okay, cool, we're describing a rational mind and deviations from that. None of that is actually relevant. Like, none of it, like this is all a kind of like path down a dumb uh down in a dumb direction. I promise you, if I can't describe this well, if you read Hayek, well well, Hayek is like basically impossible to read. If you read an AI summary of Hayek and have a conversation with your AI of choice to like dumb it down to like our levels or your level if you uh uh it it will change your view of the world. It is so useful.
00:16:04 · Rob Snyder, S0
[00:16:04] S1: Like uh, right, right, right. Yeah, the whole thing on like behavioral economics and all the biases and all this kind of stuff, it's like, okay, cool, we're describing a rational mind and deviations from that. None of that is actually relevant. Like, none of it, like this is all a kind of like path down a dumb uh down in a dumb direction. I promise you, if I can't describe this well, if you read Hayek, well well, Hayek is like basically impossible to read. If you read an AI summary of Hayek and have a conversation with your AI of choice to like dumb it down to like our levels or your level if you uh uh it it will change your view of the world. It is so useful. [00:16:49] S0: Awesome. Uh let's let's make this practical before we uh before we wrap Rum. How should a founder do me search properly? Like what help help pretend that I'm an idiot. Uh pretend that I'm one of the stupid machines. Help help me uh like do me search in a way that you find useful and and that's gonna give me the lessons that I need in order to better sell to customers, to better design products for customers, et cetera.