A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:27:56 · Pablo Srugo
[00:27:56] S0: It's one of the hardest things I think to get right, which is this balance between you want to be adaptable, but you also want to be focused. If you're not focused, you don't have enough resources, you're just not going to do anything well enough that it matters, but if you don't stay adaptable, you might miss, you're kind of ramping up this hill and there might be an even bigger hill over there if only you would've seen it. I think this thing you're talking about, which is these tight feedback loops, which is staying really close to the customer, small data, right? Seeing these little things helps you navigate that, right? You've got the whole business on, let's say, the original ricing model, right? You've got the whole business on free delivery, free delivery matters. This is just how we do it, but because you're also kind of in the business, right? You're doing all these little pieces of it, you're seeing all the little insights, until you realize, wait a second, what if, right? Wait a second, there's people that just can't resonate with this pricing model. What if we tried this space plan thing? That's the adaptability piece. Going back and forth between those two, I think is really hard, as you say, if you almost scale the team too fast, right? If you professionalize and polish everything too fast, then you're going to the hierarchy that a big company runs at, and you're missing out on the adaptability that you need.
00:29:09 · Mark
[00:29:09] S1: Look, I love to cook. I'm going to use a food analogy. I can cook a mean steak, a killer vegetable side, and some awesome potato bravas, and have a good meal. I don't need to specialize in just searing and cooking steak, and I don't need another specialist for the potatoes. I don't need another specialist for the vegetables. It's good enough to have one person put that whole meal together and see that project through end-to-end and have an enjoyable meal for you and a buddy or friend. You don't need a Michelin star-grade line cook set up to have a good outcome. Early days, 80/20 rule needs to apply. You don't have the resources to seek perfection. I think that's a problem with sometimes early founders think that, "Hey, this is my personal brand, everything needs to be perfect because I'm being graded against these other companies." If you wake up and smell the coffee, these other companies, they don't always get it right either. In fact, you're probably going to do a much better job just because you care. I just remember all the things that we used to do in the early days, whether it was, we had a negative Google review, we'd call the person right away and say, "Hey, we're going to make this right, we're going to give your credit on your next month storage, we're going to do this that the other." They're like, "Oh my God. I was just writing this to vent, but the fact that you took the time to call me and respond and do something about it and change a policy or do some training, that means so much to me. In fact, I'm going to change my review to a five-star." We have like 7,000 five-star reviews on Google now, and we continue that practice even in logistics, which is the hardest thing to maintain positive reviews with. It's important to understand 80/20 rule is very real in the early days. In fact, it's probably more aggressive and that it doesn't need to be perfect. Good is probably good enough in that regard.
00:30:51 · Pablo Srugo, Mark
[00:30:51] S0: At this point, it sounds like everything's going pretty well. You've expanded your market step by step. You've made these pivots, the micro pivots, really, these tweaks, really, these optimization tweaks along the way to change your pricing, to expand your market, and so on, and demand seems to be flourishing. I'm curious, how do you go from there to such a big pivot or rebrand? [00:31:15] S1: Yeah, it's a really good question. Things were generally going well. We had raised another $2 million seed round extension, and we expanded to Vancouver. We actually achieved cash flow positivity, and then we started to notice that our power users were using us an insane amount. We had people that were using us consistently, but going to downtown addresses or commercial addresses, and we're like, what the hell is going on? We picked up the phone and called them, and these were actually businesses, the people that use us for their personal life that had a really great experience and said, "Hey, we want to use you for our company." Whether it was Chanel, WeWork, or BMW, the decision makers at those businesses used us on a personal capacity and said, "Hey, I had such a great experience, I want to use you for my business. Can I do that?" They started to use the service and hack it to solve this business logistics problem. What turned us on to doing more of that or exploring it more intellectually was, well, if a consumer stores and picks up their stuff once every 12 months or 18 months, but these people are doing it frequent, like many times a week or many times a month.
00:31:15 · Mark, Pablo Srugo
[00:31:15] S1: Yeah, it's a really good question. Things were generally going well. We had raised another $2 million seed round extension, and we expanded to Vancouver. We actually achieved cash flow positivity, and then we started to notice that our power users were using us an insane amount. We had people that were using us consistently, but going to downtown addresses or commercial addresses, and we're like, what the hell is going on? We picked up the phone and called them, and these were actually businesses, the people that use us for their personal life that had a really great experience and said, "Hey, we want to use you for our company." Whether it was Chanel, WeWork, or BMW, the decision makers at those businesses used us on a personal capacity and said, "Hey, I had such a great experience, I want to use you for my business. Can I do that?" They started to use the service and hack it to solve this business logistics problem. What turned us on to doing more of that or exploring it more intellectually was, well, if a consumer stores and picks up their stuff once every 12 months or 18 months, but these people are doing it frequent, like many times a week or many times a month. [00:32:20] S0: Take BMW or take any of these examples. What exactly were they doing?
00:32:20 · Pablo Srugo, Mark
[00:32:20] S0: Take BMW or take any of these examples. What exactly were they doing? [00:32:25] S1: We work with storing their excess furniture because Instagram didn't want 20 desks in this little room. They wanted five and they wanted some sofas, but then Pinterest wanted at this other location, two more desks and two chairs, or this chair was broken, so take it away and dispose of it and put this one in. They were using us to manage physical stuff, and it was all digital. They had photos of their stuff, QR codes to everything. You could literally just go online at 3:00 AM and click everything you wanted to have happen, and then it could happen as early as the next day. For them, it was magic. It was super simple. That simplicity is something we've carried forward to how we kind of operate today for our customers. For instance, just to go down a rabbit hole for a sec, we allow you to schedule your time slot in as far in advance as two months. If you are doing a little reno, but you ordered some stuff that we're delivering, you can book 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM on Saturday, November 13th, 2023 if you wanted. Then on the day before, we're going to send you a real-time truck tracking link with a prediction down to the minute of when we'll arrive. You now don't have to be shackled to your house for this delivery slot. The industry today just tells you the day before, whether you're an AM or a PM delivery, and it's like a six-hour window.
00:33:36 · Pablo Srugo
[00:33:36] S0: Yeah, by the way, how are you doing that? Actually, we just bought a home and so we bought a bunch of couches and it's like, delivery, it's tomorrow seven to seven and we'll give you a four-hour window hours before. I'm like, are you serious?