A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:30:39 · Andrew Tai
[00:30:39] S1: Part of it is actually just having the boldness to ask, right? I think there's almost this hesitancy to ask. It kind of goes to sales. Basically, you have to ask for the sale. That has to be anchored with the confidence that we'll be able to deliver it. And that it is something that the customer deeply wants. It goes hand in hand. If they don't really want to pay for it, you have to really ask yourself how big of an opportunity am I creating for them, or a problem am I – that I'm solving for them? It could either be an opportunity or a problem. You're either solving a problem or opening up an opportunity. I think there's a hesitancy to ask. Make the ask, be confident in your ability to deliver it. And if it's a no, then I think there's, serious reflection to be done there. Oftentimes, it's less about the initial idea. As long as you're in a space where there is going to be a change in your direction and you have a big macro problem to solve, how you exactly go about it almost matters less. It's just about, constantly putting one foot in front of the other, reflecting and adjusting, and reflecting and adjusting. So I don't regret the Unhaggle journey whatsoever. We wouldn't have gotten to Motoinsight if we didn't do the Unhaggle journey.
00:31:56 · Pablo Srugo
[00:31:56] S0: That's completely true. I mean, we summarize that by, you have to be in the market to win the market. And the reality is you can do all the customer discovery you want to do. And you should, because you're going to discover problems that are worth solving. You're going to waste, let's say, less time. But at some point, you're going to have to get in the market. And frankly, the unique insights that are going to lead to the actual final solution that truly gets product market fit, they can't be found without being in the market in the first place. So I totally buy that. The other thing I'll point out, actually, is to your point around you have to have the confidence to ask. Otherwise they're not going to pay. That's one of the things that's also, I think, a little bit paradoxical, which is – in a sense, it becomes a bit of an advantage, I think, to be bootstrapped because constraints set you free. The fact of the matter is you don't have the luxury to say, well, they're not buying, but it's because of blah, blah, blah. So let's just go build it and then they will buy it, right? If they're not paying, I'm not building, pretty simple. It actually is powerful. Because, again, it sets you free to only build stuff that clearly does have value and is validated through signatures on a check. Let me maybe like fast forward a little bit. You're going through this. You've kind of moved into this pivot. Describe to me if you think about the first six months or so of the marketplace, right? Of Unhaggle, which ultimately got traction, but not true clear product market fit, versus those first six months – and I'm using six months, could be three, could be nine, whatever, early days of the B2B SaaS, which is the Motoinsight product that ultimately really did get real product market fit, real traction. What are some of the notable differences? What are the – some of the things you start to see, whoa, this is a different world sort of thing?
00:33:34 · Andrew Tai
[00:33:34] S1: There's definitely a vibe difference that you can feel. When it's working, you feel it, right? That entire three years, every single step was a grind. This is not to say that, building a company isn't that it is easy. But it felt like we were fighting battles every single day, left, right, and center and the wins were just so micro whereas on the software side, the wins were just way more tangible. We get a new logo. We get a big check. It felt like a different kind of momentum for sure. So there's the vibe aspect to it. I think it's just, you start seeing more opportunities than challenges. In the marketplace days, especially in the early days, it just – it felt like we saw way more challenges than opportunities. Where in, when we were doing modal commerce, which was our SaaS platform at Motoinsight, these opportunities were far more in abundance. And it's simply maybe – as tactical, I was like, okay, well, I made one sale. And I have a list of other similar customers that I can call. And so I've got actionable tactical, like hey, I know exactly what to do. The next step always felt way more clear when we were doing vertical SaaS and, deep into Motoinsight versus when we were in the early marketplace where we had this really big grand idea, but how to actually put it into action was a lot of feeling around.
00:35:35 · Pablo Srugo
[00:35:35] S0: It's funny you describe it in these kind of nebulous terms. Because I think that's just much closer to what reality is. The reality, is zero to one, is always and has been, will be more art than science. Everybody wants a playbook. Everybody wants clear things to do or not to do, and they just don't exist. The picture I get when you're talking about it is the difference between pushing a rock up a hill, right? Classic, if you work at it, you will make progress. But it's always like you feel like if you just happen to sleep for one day too much, it just kind of comes right back down versus running down that hill, which, hey, you're going to trip up. It's not necessarily easy. You can't just not do anything. You got to go. But there's kind of this momentum, right, that keeps you going down as time progresses sort of thing. And yeah, it's hard to get more clear than that. So look, I think that really wraps it up, right? I mean, we've gone through the evolution, the struggles at the beginning, which I think are the important piece. Because as a founder, the hardest part of pivoting, frankly, is realizing that you need to pivot in the first place. That's the piece that I think founders struggle with more – most, is do I go another quarter? Because by the way – not giving up, right? That's the key. It's like you can't give up. And so sometimes you confuse that with not giving up means, oh, if it's hard, it's supposed to be hard and we just got to keep going. And there's some truth to that. Because if you give up too easily on a go to market or in a certain delivery, you're never going to see the other side. You're never going to get to success, right? At the same time, you've always got – every quarter or so, you do have to think about, am I pushing a boulder up a hill, right? And is there some other way to shift things around as you did shift the go-to market around to get a little bit more tailwind, a little bit more momentum? Let me ask two questions that we always end with. The first one, and we kind of alluded to this but maybe you had a bit more time to think about it as we chatted, which is, when was the first time that you felt like you had true product market fit?
00:37:45 · Andrew Tai
[00:37:45] S1: The memory that comes to mind was I was at my desk at this dingy office that we had rented and got a call back, one of the automakers that we had been pitching. And I can't remember if this was maybe the third one. Basically, it was like, hey, yeah, we're in, right? I got the call back that hey, we want to do this, right? And there was still some details that had to be ironed out. It's one – maybe it's luck, right? If you can get some – one customer, maybe it's luck. You get two, it's like, oh. And then you get three. It's like, that's it. That's the pattern now, right? I remember the moment, getting that call. It was like one of those entrepreneurial moments that I live for. I don't know if you golf. But it's kind of like one of those things where when hit that one perfect shot, it keeps you coming back for more. That's the mountain top for me as a founder, as a CEO, as an entrepreneur where we felt breakthrough, or I felt breakthrough in that moment where we – I knew we were doing something valuable because a third customer, major customer just decided to send me a lot of money for a solution that we're delivering. And we knew we were on the right track at that point.
00:39:17 · Pablo Srugo
[00:39:17] S0: I love that. I mean, being a founder fundamentally is all about turning an idea to reality. And that happens once customers buy and adopt the product. So the feeling you get when that happens is irreplaceable. Last question is, if you could go back and kind of – maybe you're doing this because you're starting a second one. But if you could go back to the early days taking everything now, what's one piece of advice you would give yourself 11, 12 years ago?