A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:39:02 · Pablo Srugo
[00:39:02] S0: So let's get specific. Like, again, let's say that in in, you know, now you have more of a brand, so it's a little different. But, you know, a few years back when you were still not, let's say, known, and you had a name on there that, you know, of a bank that you wanted to close, how do you kinda split that up? How do you look at the org chart of that business and decides who to go after, who goes after who, cadence, etcetera. Like, you know, just... Again, imagine you're thinking of someone, you're talking to a founder who's selling to enterprise, has a product, maybe has a few customers, but they've yet to really crack, like, a consistent repeatable enterprise motion.
00:39:36 · Hermann Frank
[00:39:36] S1: I'd say one of the other things that has worked really well for us is hire people who came up with the people working at your target customers. We hire a lot of ex stripes. The Stripe Mafia is everywhere. Right? Like they work in pretty much every company. One of the decision makers there. So if you have someone who can go to 30, 50% of your target list, and they are well known and respected and trusted, everybody's gonna take a call, everybody's gonna listen. And if you're in a competitive process, you might have an advantage on trust as well. This multi threading, multi altitude, in combination with having people who came up with the people that you wanna work with, is why we win as many deals as we do. And I mean, you need to have an amazing product, because people are not stupid. Right? Like, so I'm assuming that's that's what the listener will have. But like, if you have a great product, have the best product in the market, and do these things, worked really well for us.
00:40:40 · Pablo Srugo
[00:40:40] S0: So assuming you... Let's say you go in, you have an... You're an enterprise, you you split it up, you look at different groups that need to be part of it, like you said, c level, exec level, the owner, the champion, the devs, etcetera, and then you kinda split it up. How do you how do you go after them? Like, everybody's just hitting everybody up, trying to set up meetings, or trying to find what conference is gonna speak at and, like, run into them. Like, what are some of the the specific tactics that you use to just have many of these discussions happening, you know, either at once or over a series of months?
00:41:05 · Hermann Frank
[00:41:05] S1: Two paths mainly. One, the same argument as before, hire the people who came up with them, so you kind of get your first one or two touch points this way. And then if you're on an enterprise deal, you wanna find out very quickly if the guy you're talking to is a lone wolf. Are they trying to just figure things out? Is this like exploratory? Right? So the quicker you ask the team you're working with to introduce other participants in the company, first you find out if this is real and if this is serious. Second, it allows you to build those connections. And then they introduce it to their engineers, they bring the engineers on board, or if if it's engineering originated, they introduce like their marketing people, their product people, and then you put them together. That is definitely a very effective way to find it out. But like, yeah, it's mostly it's mostly working the network, really utilizing the network. Who knows whom, and then working internally for them to open up their own teammates. Because it's the best sign. Like, if someone is open to, like, bring their engineers into the call, into the next call, bring their marketers into the next call, you kind of know there's a lot of goodwill there, and there is real intention to do something because they don't have resources to waste.
00:42:23 · Pablo Srugo, Hermann Frank
[00:42:23] S0: Any hacks or tactics? Like, I I know of people that, you know, they have, like, dinner series that they'll do and they'll invite these enterprise type customers, or, you know, they'll say, oh, I'm just in the area. You know, it'd be great to grapple. You know, like, mean, like, classic kinda little hacks that people tend to do. Anything like that that's worked for you? [00:42:38] S1: So we just started to do a dinner series. So we do like... We've now done it in London, New York, Paris. It's it's relatively new motion for us, and we invite a combination of existing customers, prospects, and people we think might be helpful to everyone from the industry. Could be an investor, could be like a device manufacturer, like and we keep them small. Right? We we have a couple gigsters at each of those dinners, and we invite between like ten and fourteen outsiders. And like that has great feedback so far. It's... I would say it's too young for me to tell like, oh, this has worked wonders on our go to market. [00:43:21] S0: Perfect. Well, let's stop it there. What would be like one last piece of advice that you wanna share with a founder that's, you know, in the early stages of finding product market fit?
00:43:28 · Hermann Frank
[00:43:28] S1: As with everything, starting a company, just be ready to take a lot of notes. But like listen to why, right? Like you also need to iterate. But it's it's tough. It's especially tough getting started. And when you don't have reputation, when you don't have references, it is just you. It's gonna be your your sales craft, your conviction. You need to believe a 100%. Like you when you talk, people need to hear, like, with every fiber of your being. You believe in your product, and you will do everything you possibly can to satisfy them as a customer, because literally your life depends on it. So it's a sheer force of will to get past these initial conversations, and do not exit sales too early as a founder. Like, I'm a massive believer in founder led sales, and to a point where maybe others are telling you, you shouldn't be doing this anymore. Like, do it past that point, but not like forever. But the more you are, like the moment we started exiting process, like you see entropy creep in. And like, no one is gonna be as convincing and as quick on their feet as the founder, you kind of need to sell a little bit ahead of time. And no one has the mandate to do it more than the founder. Right? You you know which risk you're willing to take. You know how far you're gonna bend reality on that particular sales call, and it's on you. Your employees, right, your sales will... Like, the very good ones will know how to emulate your bullishness or your your balls, but like most people won't. And so if you wanna achieve the maximum outcomes, stay on there as long as you can, and as long as it makes sense for the business, because no one will be a better salesperson than you.