A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:34:10 · Pablo Srugo, Alex Back
[00:34:10] S1: Boom, I love that. Yeah, makes perfect sense. Maybe that's a pretty good endpoint actually. Let me ask the two questions that we always close on. The first one is, I'm actually really curious how it fits in here. When did you feel like you had true product market fit? [00:34:27] S0: I think we knew early on that we had product market fit light, I would say, in the sense that we figured out that there was a gap in the marketplace that we were filling. Literally price points and product that people were like – everybody who bought our stuff was like, oh, this is a really good value. We found product market fit initially in our curation of the right product at the right price point. Then I think it was when we started shipping nationally and realized that people outside of our word of mouth, like LA community, were actually interested in buying this product that we had. We were offering product and a service being an online business. You can buy furniture and we'll deliver it into your house and set it up for you and everything so you don't have to lift a finger, that people were really looking for at the time. They were looking for this convenience. Yeah, in 2013 when we flipped that switch and took off our little zip code checker, our first order was in Florida I remember and I'm like, oh, perfect, literally the furthest place we could go to aside from Maine. We figured it out and that was a real unlock for us.
00:35:43 · Pablo Srugo
[00:35:43] S1: There's something special about getting out of your own backyard. I can tell you I've heard that before from other founders and even for me, with this podcast, you see people listening from the UK or different places like Spain, different places in Europe, and you're like, it's crazy. It's just a similar feeling. It's one thing to sell in an area. Even though you don't know the people you're selling to obviously, but it's like, okay, it's my area and all of a sudden you're selling in Florida, you're selling in New York, you're selling Boston, whatever it is. Yeah, it's definitely a zero to one experience. Let me ask the the second question, which is, now you're starting another company called couch.com in a related space. The question is, and really applies to you, if you could go back to when you were starting up to be with one piece of advice, or maybe now that you're starting couch.com, what piece of advice have you transferred over to this new venture?
00:36:30 · Alex Back, Pablo Srugo
[00:36:30] S0: I have a pretty nuanced specific answer there. I don't know. It was very much an aha moment for me. This past year I've been immersing myself in the world of SEO and content marketing and man, we were one of the early players in the online furniture space. I feel like if we really invested in that early on, and I think this applies on a more macro level too, investing in something about your business that isn't going to produce immediate cash, even if you have to raise or do something uncomfortable to lay that foundation. I can see now how much that would've paid dividends in actual dollars. There's all these things about your business you're like, oh, I don't want to do this. It's going to be so annoying. I would have to spend all this money and all this time, let's just say the course. Sometimes I think, and this is a good example of that, sometimes it pays to make that investment and do the thing that everyone tells you, you should do but you're like, okay, because man, we should have invested in that. I mean, that company would've been, I don't know, five times the size of what it is right now probably just based on organic traffic alone. [00:37:45] S1: That's perfect. Thanks a lot, Alex. I appreciate you coming to the show. It's been an amazing journey. Frankly simple idea, but just at the right time, executed it the right way and turned out to be a huge success. Thanks for sharing the story with us. [00:38:02] S0: Thank you, Pablo . I appreciate it.
00:38:02 · Alex Back, Pablo Srugo
[00:38:02] S0: Thank you, Pablo . I appreciate it. [00:38:04] S1: I just gave you content that you like so much. You actually listened to the end. Guess what? You didn't pay a single dollar. Not only that, I didn't even put any ads in your face, so you just got a bunch of content for free. Now that I've delivered that value, I'm asking for something in return. Open your app, open Apple Podcasts, open Spotify, open whatever app you use to listen to this and hit that follow button. It's actually going to help you because it's going to help you make sure you don't miss out on the next episode which you like so much that you listen to the whole thing.