A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:00:00 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:00:00] S0: Well we're doing something a bit different, a bit special, today. Last episode, I spoke about the story around – part of it was around Gymtrack, my last startup, but really specifically talking about how it almost got acquired. I almost became a millionaire. And then, obviously I didn't <laugh>. That actually resonated maybe more than I thought. What I decided is we've been doing these episodes with Rob Woodbridge, who was for the second half of Gymtrack. He was the CEO that we brought in. And I thought, well, why not bring my co-founder Lee Silverstone, who's the person I started Gymtrack with in the first place. Let's pull on some threads and just tell some of the Gymtrack stories because it's fun to do it <laugh>, for us, selfishly. And second of all I think there's going to be some pretty interesting observations, lessons, lessons learned, wh [00:00:59] S1: Man, thank you, it's nice to be on, finally. I like it. You made it, dude. This is like, I made it. This is it. This is the, this is the pinnacle of my career. I'm finally on the Product Market Fit. [00:01:11] S0: Welcome to the Product Market Fit show, brought to you by Mistral, a seed stage firm based in Canada. I'm Pablo. I'm a founder turned VC. My goal is to help early stage founders, like you find product market fit. I should say I think different perspectives now. Lee, after Gymtrack, started a few other startups. Now he's starting another startup. He's in the very early – this is pre-seed, a month into it. Rob is – [00:01:43] S1: Three months, three months into it.
00:01:43 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo
[00:01:43] S1: Three months, three months into it. [00:01:44] S0: Three months into it, three months into it. [00:01:45] S1: We're super far along now. [00:01:48] S0: That's it. Everything's already done. Product market fit, the accomplish. Then Rob is COO of a startup. That's probably more like series A stage and then obviously me on the VC side. It'll be interesting to get different perspectives. Anyways, let's jump in, Lee. I think a good place to start, because I actually haven't done this on the show, is talking about – and this is an episode I've done with so many other founders, we just haven't done it with Gymtrack, which is how we came up with the idea in the first place. Let's jump into that. How was Gymtrack born? [00:02:17] S1: Man, I think it was – it was honestly you and me sitting in – we lived in this house, this college house together, this university house together, which is where we started our first business together. That's where we started My Tutor. We were using it as our home slash office. Do you remember there was that one room upstairs that maybe used to be a bedroom, but then it was and we turned it into an office? We went to Home Depot when we bought this massive piece of plastic that we turned into a whiteboard. do you remember that? [00:02:53] S0: Oh man, it was the cheapest whiteboard. Whiteboards were too expensive. They were too expensive.
00:02:53 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:02:53] S0: Oh man, it was the cheapest whiteboard. Whiteboards were too expensive. They were too expensive. [00:02:58] S1: Whiteboards were too expensive. We had gone to Office Depot, and we were like that's how much a whiteboard costs. It's crazy. So we googled that. You could buy this, I don't know, it's called RFP maybe, or like, I don't know, some sort of – [00:03:09] S0: It’s plastic like bathrooms or something. I don't know. It's a huge – [00:03:11] S1: Yeah, it was this material they would use for construction projects, but you could use it as a whiteboard also. We went to Home Depot. Actually, now that I'm talking about this, remember we tied it to the – [00:03:23] S0: That's what I was going to say. We also didn't want to pay for the truck to bring it, so we put on your Civic. [00:03:29] S1: We’re holding this piece of plastic to the roof of your car. Oh, and it was flapping in the wind like crazy. We drove back home, and we drilled it into the wall. Every single day we would sit in that office, and we would whiteboard ideas. [00:03:44] S0: We would try, which by the way might be the worst. I remember listening to Paul Graham back then. His thing is you want to – and I forget the exact quote. You want to focus on things that are important to you, dive deep into problems with people that, that interest you. Like that's how you come up organically with startups. And we're like, fuck that. We're pushing our way to this. I don't care. [00:04:00] S1: Yeah, yeah, we're like, we are going to whiteboard our way to a billion dollar company. [00:04:11] S0: That's right.
00:04:11 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:04:11] S0: That's right. [00:04:12] S1: We would – I don't know. We'd probably have the show Entourage or something on in the background or listening to hip hop music and just whiteboarding ideas. We came up with a few. There were a few ideas that we came up with. One of them, which I think you talked about in the PMF show once before, you talked about in a LinkedIn post was this idea of doing delivery for restaurants before greet was a thing. That was one of the ideas we whiteboarded. We had the same playbook. We'd whiteboard an idea, you would look at the market size and see if it was big enough. I would go print a bunch of business cards for the business. Then I would go door to door, and I would come back and report what the people said. That was our playbook. [00:04:52] S0: Just to be clear because I was way too scared to call customers back then. That's plain and simple. I was like, Lee, you go knock on doors, dude. [00:05:02] S1: If I had business cards, I felt like I was the king of the world. I could walk in anywhere. I had a business card. Everyone had to talk to me. We were going to these restaurants doing that. I know people were like, dude, get out of here. Who are you? We're like, yeah, like that's a terrible idea. I think we talked to the guys at – I forget the one that Skip the Dishes. They were like, yeah, we're doing that exact same thing. We're like, oh no, we're going to get crushed. We dropped it. Literally, someone very high up at Skip the Dishes we talked to.
00:05:02 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo
[00:05:02] S1: If I had business cards, I felt like I was the king of the world. I could walk in anywhere. I had a business card. Everyone had to talk to me. We were going to these restaurants doing that. I know people were like, dude, get out of here. Who are you? We're like, yeah, like that's a terrible idea. I think we talked to the guys at – I forget the one that Skip the Dishes. They were like, yeah, we're doing that exact same thing. We're like, oh no, we're going to get crushed. We dropped it. Literally, someone very high up at Skip the Dishes we talked to. [00:05:31] S0: They were seed too. They were literally five, six months old, and they were unfunded. [00:05:35] S1: Yeah, and it was one of the founders or something. And he was like, yeah, we're doing the same thing. Get out of here. Then we did the same thing for Gymtrack. Pablo and I both go to the gym. We still do. It's still a huge part of my life. It was a huge part of my life then. It still is a huge part of my life now. I spend probably 10 hours at the gym a week. We were like, you know what sucks, writing stuff down with pen and paper. That was it. That was the impetus for the whole thing. And then it was like, well, wouldn't it be cool if you could track everything automatically? Well, how could you do that? And it just started, we just started drawing it.
00:05:35 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo
[00:05:35] S1: Yeah, and it was one of the founders or something. And he was like, yeah, we're doing the same thing. Get out of here. Then we did the same thing for Gymtrack. Pablo and I both go to the gym. We still do. It's still a huge part of my life. It was a huge part of my life then. It still is a huge part of my life now. I spend probably 10 hours at the gym a week. We were like, you know what sucks, writing stuff down with pen and paper. That was it. That was the impetus for the whole thing. And then it was like, well, wouldn't it be cool if you could track everything automatically? Well, how could you do that? And it just started, we just started drawing it. [00:06:09] S0: Actually, by the way, you're missing one step. You came home one day and you're like, man, wouldn't it be cool if you could – people don’t know how to do exercises. You could scan a QR code and it would tell you how to do the exercise. I was like, no, that's not cool. It is cool? [00:06:23] S1: I don't remember that. I don't, that's funny. I don't remember that. That's awesome. [00:06:29] S0: Then it became, yeah, what would be cool is not having to track your reps. The first iteration, at least the way I remember was this is what I'm saying. I have an aside. One of the, let's say, findings, even just through the show, is if an idea starts with people who know nothing about an industry saying wouldn't it be cool if? [00:06:53] S1: It's probably – [00:06:54] S0: It's not leading to somewhere that you want it to lead to. [00:06:56] S1: Yeah.