A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
00:23:19 · Rob Woodbridge, Lee Silverstone
[00:23:19] S2: This is every startup cliche I've ever heard all so far. It’s the best. [00:23:24] S1: Yeah, it's all together. Yeah, and we were just – we would print off these letters. I think we actually had a printer. We would print off these physical letters. We would put their logos on the top. We'd walk into the gym, 3D printed pin, or whatever we had. We would talk to the owners, these owners, and we would say, wouldn't it be cool if it'd go off on this pitch about how we're going to automatically track everything. If I think back and, and remember on it, I think we were – we made all of the mistakes that you shouldn't make. Every single mistake that you could make we made, which was – wouldn't it be cool. If not, hey, we're going to solve a real problem for you. How much would you pay for it? Is this a real pain point? Do you think about this every single day? Doing real customer interviews, we were just, wouldn't it be cool if – and on top of that we were like, would you just sign this thing? We need it for fundraising. We want to go raise money to build this thing. If you sign it, it will help us do that. We're like, sure, we'll help out these two 20 something year old kids, 21-year-old kids. Letters of intent, I think, generally speaking, don't carry a lot of weight in my opinion. I'm sure some people disagree with me, but I don't think they do. Then made them even less knowledgeable because we got people to sign them under the worst pretenses. They were meaningless.
00:24:44 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:24:44] S0: Well, I remember --, Specifically, the one I remember was this one and it – these were city gyms. City run gyms, these people have no incentives to change their gyms. This is a gym that's a club. It's got a skating rink and a basketball gym, all these other things, which are just completely meaningless to us. We walk in. We meet the manager. Hey, how's it going? Lee would've called before, set this up. Pablo, Lee, whatever, we're building this thing, and he would start telling us about his gym. Let me give you a tour. Sure, we're just playing along because we have one goal. It's just signature, dude, signature. We're like, yeah, we would track reps, and weight, da, da, da. He's like, a lot of people skate here. I was like, dude, we'll track skating. I remember that. We'll track skating. Why not? And Lee would just be the one that say we'll track it. Funny. [00:25:37] S1: About that. [00:25:38] S0: Just like anything that they would ever – what about like these random like noodle looking things that you like? Dude, we'll track it. Why not? [00:25:46] S1: Oh my God. I cried laughing. I forgot about the tracking skating. That’s so funny. [00:25:53] S0: No matter what, the person would say the level of interest, if it was zero, we'd still just pull it out. Listen, I get that you're probably not because I get that you're probably not going to buy this. It's totally fine. I'm just trying to fundraise. It'd be really nice if you could just sign this thing. Take a look at it.