A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:17:42 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:17:42] S0: I think he did. [00:17:42] S1: He did give in. He was like, okay, we can accept those changes. He gets up and he walks away. We're walking away. Then the Real Ventures team stops me. They're like, don't go to 500 Startups. We'll make you a competitive offer to come do Family. We're like, no. We're negotiating that, whatever. Why would you go to San Francisco? And you know I forgot that.
00:18:04 · Pablo Srugo
[00:18:04] S0: I'll tell you. Like, you know, so I think there are two things I noticed from there. One is, and I've seen this so many times, the early rounds. The reality is you read a Series B or a Series C, or whatever, you're doing it methodically. You have certain numbers. You're going to go after certain investors. You're going to run a process and people are going to look at real things. When you're raising a pre-seed angel round there's probably nothing there. There's very little true signal. That's just the reality of it. Serendipity plays a huge role because you can't go out and be like, hey, here's a list of 50 angels. I'm going to talk to them. I'm going to run this process. You have no momentum, you have no FOMO, nothing. This idea that you basically let – yeah, you’ve got to do some stuff purposefully. Then serendipity has to play a role. That's why I think ultimately looking back – these networking events or other situations like this can create catalysts. Nobody could have predicted Dave McClure. We already had done Big Let Work getting a bunch of angel investors close to the line where they were like, yeah, it's really interesting. I like you guys. I could do something. There was nothing we could say to be like, okay, now or never, nothing until this catalyst event happened. We had that. Then we got into 500 Startups. I think we'd raised half a million dollars before getting in. Back then, that was a lot of money. Today it's nothing. We were one of the most funded startups in 500 because of that mix of doing the work but then also generating situations where serendipity can help you create this kind of catalyst event.
00:19:30 · Rob Woodbridge
[00:19:30] S2: One of the questions that always comes up, especially at that stage, right, because it's the awkward stage. It is like you're 15, you've never asked a girl out, you've never kissed a girl, whatever it might be. Then you're thrust into the – you are right there trying to do this for the first time without looking like an idiot. You really only have one chance to not look like an idiot in front of an investor at that early stage and really hit on every note that you have to hit for them to be interested or at least show that that they want to work with you. That's ultimately they have the confidence in you. It's that first step. You're right, serendipity. There's old VC in Ottawa from the nineties, Pat DiPietro who invested billions of dollars in in the Ottawa economy in a bunch of startups in that time period. He would always tell me, always, he would say, listen, what you're doing here relies on serendipity, as you said, but it's just called shit luck. It's shit luck, yeah. What happened with Dave McClure is shit luck, but you took advantage of it. You see a lot of startups.
00:20:35 · Lee Silverstone
[00:20:35] S1: There's two sides to that coin, right? I agree 100% it is luck. But you got to put yourself in the situations to get lucky, right? People like, oh they just got lucky. No, but yeah man, I was hustling and grinding and going to all these events. We had probably been to a bunch of events before that had no results – that yielded no results and were a huge waste of time. It would be so easy to just be like, wow, whatever. I'm just going to sit behind my laptop and just type away and whatever. But I think you got to put yourself in those situations. You got to do the hard work to get lucky. It doesn't mean you're always going to get lucky, and it doesn't mean that the hard work is going to equate your results. But sometimes if you put in the hard work, you find these opportunities to get lucky.
00:21:16 · Pablo Srugo, Rob Woodbridge, Lee Silverstone
[00:21:16] S0: I think that's true. I think that's true. But we optimized a lot around fundraising at that. I was thinking back to the days and I'm like, man, it's true in the early days of Gymtrack. That's what I was saying before. I was working on grants. Literally, our mindset was how do we get money? How do we get money? How do we – it was all to deliver value. It was just how do we get money? One of the stories that came to mind, which I think would be good to refine a bit was going to gyms. I remember we're like, okay, we want to raise money because this is where it all started. We need validation. We really need validation. I remember coming across and I think it was just like out of Eric Ries lean Startup, this idea of a letter of intent. That just changed. And I was like, oh man, no one would sign a contract with us because we have nothing. People would sign a completely meaningless letter that just says these guys are cool, and I like the product. Why not? This is where you come in because again, I wasn't calling customers back then. [00:22:12] S2: What were you doing, Pablo? [00:22:17] S0: I was coming up with the big ideas, man. [00:22:19] S1: Pablo was the puppet master. He would be like, Lee, go call customers. I would be like, yes sir, I'm on it. [00:22:30] S0: Lee was more than happy to do it. That was his skill set, and he was obviously really good at it. Do you remember any of those? Like specific gym –
00:22:30 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone, Rob Woodbridge
[00:22:30] S0: Lee was more than happy to do it. That was his skill set, and he was obviously really good at it. Do you remember any of those? Like specific gym – [00:22:37] S1: Dude, I have two funny stories. One is a hundred percent I remember that. I remember going to the gyms. It was the wintertime, and I don't think I had a car at the time. I think you had a Toyota Tercel. We were like embarrassed pulling up to these. [00:22:54] S0: That was barely a car. I remember when I upgraded to a Civic . You were like, now you have an actual car because that one just floated in the winter. It would just float, truly would float. [00:23:00] S1: Your Tercel was like a nine – it was like a 1991 Toyota Tercel. We would pull up to these customer meetings. We were so embarrassed of the car. We would park far away and walk because you didn't want them to see a car pulling up, which is just so funny to me. I think back on this – Your Tercel was like a nine – it was like a 1991 Toyota Tercel. We would pull up to these customer meetings. We were so embarrassed of the car. We would park far away and walk because you didn't want them to see a car pulling up, which is just so funny to me. I think back on this – [00:23:19] S2: This is every startup cliche I've ever heard all so far. It’s the best.