A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:35:00 · Pablo Srugo, Niklas Lindgren
[00:35:00] S2: How much would you say you spent, in those first few quarters? [00:35:00] S0: I think we spent maybe $150 something, $150k something. So building the first web, building the first sort of visuals and motion around the product, like before there is almost anything. And the reason why that was really good was that we got in touch with a lot of engineers that were excited about sort of the, at the time, fictional work that we were doing. But we could almost get them to sort of get a packaged feeling of what we were trying to create. More importantly, they can understand who we were as a company, what we stood for and our core values, and sort of who we were. We got an identity for those $150k and that was very, very important for us and it's paid off multiple times after. [00:36:22] S2: What would you say is the most, out of all. Because I'm sure you've tried different things. What were some of the most impactful brand assets that you built and why? [00:36:29] S0: I would say the website, definitely the website. [00:36:29] S2: Did you outsource that? [00:36:29] S0: We did, so there was a great creative agency in Stockholm called EW. They've been doing work for us. I think they did Legora after us, they did Sana. [00:36:46] S2: And what did they get right? I mean, regardless of whether somebody uses EW or not. They're like, okay, I'm gonna spend time, effort. Maybe I have $150k, maybe I don't, on my website. What did they get so right about your website?
00:36:46 · Pablo Srugo, Niklas Lindgren
[00:36:46] S2: And what did they get right? I mean, regardless of whether somebody uses EW or not. They're like, okay, I'm gonna spend time, effort. Maybe I have $150k, maybe I don't, on my website. What did they get so right about your website? [00:36:56] S0: So they got the story right. It doesn't really look like it does today, but early on it was more sort of scaled down and then we would be telling a story about the work that we did, why we did it, and they did this, in a very nice and compelling way. And they got that extremely right. And then we also produced product trailers for them. They were part of designing our first user interface before, you know, we almost had a product. So they helped us also on product user interface. So it was sort of very aligned with whatever we communicated on the website and in the other marketing assets that we were producing. And they were great, they were incredible. Really, really incredible, a small agency in Stockholm, EW is the name. [00:37:37] S2: So what would you recommend to someone who's thinking about investing in brand, whether they're going to hire a consultant or not. When you think about they got the story right. What's behind that? What do you have to do to get a story right? What does a good story look like?
00:37:37 · Pablo Srugo, Niklas Lindgren
[00:37:37] S2: So what would you recommend to someone who's thinking about investing in brand, whether they're going to hire a consultant or not. When you think about they got the story right. What's behind that? What do you have to do to get a story right? What does a good story look like? [00:37:47] S0: It's a good story always, to some extent. It has a start, a middle part and a finish, right? And we did kind of that as well. We were trying to explain to the industry, what is the current state? How are you guys working today? How are we planning to fix this? And what does the future of this industry look like and how you design buildings, right? So that was sort of what we were trying to create with these marketing assets, to create the storytelling around why are we doing this and what problems are we trying to solve. And the website, and all of the other assets that we created was instrumental in doing so. So people started believing in the work that we did. They were very excited about the work that we did and that's also how we got into very, very intimate discussions with the ICP early on as well. Because they frankly believed in the mission and the work that we did. [00:38:44] S2: How did you drive traffic? Because you have a website, it's great. How do you get people to actually see it? [00:38:47] S0: It was all word of mouth for us. So it was all driven by people telling other people and we had a wait list that we put out early on. [00:38:47] S2: But how did you kickstart that word of mouth?
00:38:47 · Pablo Srugo, Niklas Lindgren
[00:38:47] S2: But how did you kickstart that word of mouth? [00:38:47] S0: We were commenting on threads on Reddit and doing a bit of sort of shadow marketing. I know you shouldn't do that, by the way, on Reddit but we did early on in some threads. That was how we kickstarted it. [00:39:11] S2: You found that worked then? You made Reddit worked for you? [00:39:13] S0: Yeah, Reddit worked really well for us to get into a user base. To get into the decision maker was a bit trickier. Those were not on Reddit, but to get into the early users of this was definitely very good on Reddit and yeah, that was sort of how we kickstarted it. Then it was, you know, very organic from there and then, it just grew and grew, and grew over time. Various sort of big voices in this industry started recognizing us as a company. They posted about us on LinkedIn and so our LinkedIn followers grew as well. And then, we started posting on LinkedIn and we got them sort of to understand the work that we did. So that was how we started early on and also, sort of how these assets helped us tell the story and tell sort of the industry about the work that we did. [00:40:01] S2: And then moving to the second tactical area, you had a hiring principles document really early on. You used outbound on LinkedIn. Tell me a little bit about the hiring strategy. [00:40:10] S0: I think we set up these hiring principles after we were ten or eleven people and those have been incredibly important for us to navigate ourselves in hiring the first fifty people at least.
00:40:10 · Niklas Lindgren, Pablo Srugo
[00:40:10] S0: I think we set up these hiring principles after we were ten or eleven people and those have been incredibly important for us to navigate ourselves in hiring the first fifty people at least. [00:40:26] S2: What are some of those principles are that, for example. [00:40:29] S0: Some of those principles are that, for example, you should be a talent magnet, and if we are recruiting you. What other people are coming with you and it doesn't necessarily have to be that you're having multiple people with you but we want you to at least have access to other people. Because that signals that people want to work with you and that you're a good person, right? Then we have something that we call energy in, energy out and we want to have a net energy in from a person that sits in the room. And then we have, I think, ten total that we screen for and those guide us in how we hire people, and screen for people as well. [00:41:10] S2: How do you screen for that? For example, the talent magnet one.
00:41:10 · Pablo Srugo, Niklas Lindgren
[00:41:10] S2: How do you screen for that? For example, the talent magnet one. [00:41:13] S0: The talent magnet one is, so we don't screen for all of the ten. We screen for three or four of them and then we figure out the rest as the process goes. But we have a battery of questions, we leave a lot of the room to the talent that we're interviewing. We always ask them to tell their story, from early on. I always ask that question, like if you're applying for a role at Endra. I would ask you, Pablo, can you help me, tell me your story, from early on. Who were you as a child and who were you as a teenager and how are you getting into this position that you're having today. That we're sitting in this room and once someone starts talking from early days, and talking about their whole life, both personal and professional. As they tell you about their life, you can find very many different interesting points to screen for. [00:42:11] S2: I've always liked the life story as an interview guide. I know that Shopify was famous for doing that and once you draw that trend line. It gets a lot easier to make out who's exceptional and who isn't.