A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
00:06:56 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo, Rob Woodbridge
[00:06:56] S1: Yeah. [00:06:59] S0: Then it builds because it's like, oh, QR code's not that cool. Okay, but tracking is cool. Then it was tracking on select weight stack machines. You put the pin, it goes up and down. I remember us talking, yeah, that makes so much sense. It goes up and down. I'm sure you could track that, but it isn’t enough. [00:07:16] S1: Yeah , yeah , yeah . [00:07:16] S2: It'd be super cool to track that, right? Yeah. I can imagine how cool it would be. [00:07:18] S0: Then it was what if you could just track everything? What if you could track the whole workout? [00:07:26] S1: And that's one of those crazy things too that when you look back on it, not to digress from the story, but that lesson of the everything comment I think is one of the scariest things I've ever – you'll ever hear at a startup. This product would be cool if it did everything right. It won't be good until it does. Everything is like one of those things that I think back on all the time, which is – now if I hear a startup telling me something like that, or I'm thinking about a company and it's like, well, wouldn't it be great if, and then it's like, well, it has to track everything and be this like massive platform in order to derive any value from it. You're just like, yeah, that's crazy. You can't do crawl, walk, run. It's like one of those things when you look back on it. We should have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, red flags. This is a bad idea.
00:07:26 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo
[00:07:26] S1: And that's one of those crazy things too that when you look back on it, not to digress from the story, but that lesson of the everything comment I think is one of the scariest things I've ever – you'll ever hear at a startup. This product would be cool if it did everything right. It won't be good until it does. Everything is like one of those things that I think back on all the time, which is – now if I hear a startup telling me something like that, or I'm thinking about a company and it's like, well, wouldn't it be great if, and then it's like, well, it has to track everything and be this like massive platform in order to derive any value from it. You're just like, yeah, that's crazy. You can't do crawl, walk, run. It's like one of those things when you look back on it. We should have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, red flags. This is a bad idea. [00:08:17] S0: Rob, what was, by the way, I'm curious your perspective because you actually – so we met you. I mean, you became CEO in 2016, halfway through. You were VP marketing maybe a few months before that. I think you and Lee did a podcast really early days. You must have had some outside view of what are these kids doing? [00:08:34] S1: Remember that? You remember that? Yeah, not until just now that has, I didn't remember that for the past nine years or whatever it's been, but now I remember that.