A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:53:51 · Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[00:53:51] S2: Then we did a pilot in Ontario with MOVATI as well. We started to get – the problem was we got that momentum and I go to the MOVATIS here in Ottawa and I still see our sticker on all the equipment every single day. I see it every day and I'm like, there's legacy there, right? [00:54:07] S0: A reminder of what could have been, yeah, but that's the thing. That's the danger is when you actually get – if you put something out and you get nothing, it's easy. You crush it. It's easy. When you're in this middle zone, you gain some traction, but it's not enough, that's where you can just spend tons of time wasting it, but I think ultimately the question is, and you're not always ready to answer it, but it's, am I truly solving a Number 1 or Number 2 problem? If I go to my ICP within that gym, which is the operations lead, and I ask him or her, what do you think about every day? Do they really say the problem I'm solving? That's the thing that you always got to come back to I think to ground yourself. [00:54:44] S2: We would even look at these dashboards that we were making. They were web-based dashboards and we would look at utilization stats, not the gym equipment, but how many times people logged in and it was next to none. Never did they log in. Then Pablo would spend a day writing these reports on most used equipment and we would send them individual. Remember that as well? We would send these reports, never opened. There was telltale signs there.
00:54:44 · Rob Woodbridge, Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo
[00:54:44] S2: We would even look at these dashboards that we were making. They were web-based dashboards and we would look at utilization stats, not the gym equipment, but how many times people logged in and it was next to none. Never did they log in. Then Pablo would spend a day writing these reports on most used equipment and we would send them individual. Remember that as well? We would send these reports, never opened. There was telltale signs there. [00:55:11] S1: I think because if someone, if the gym owner or the gym operators in the gym every single day, they don't need sensors. Their eyeballs work better than the sensors. The pen and paper or an app on your phone works better than GymTrack V1, right? It's this whole thing of, again, if you build it, they will come. No, they're already doing something. That thing probably is better than what you have. I think again, Pablo, you've talked about this before. If your customer is using pen and paper to solve their problem today, your competition is not the ten other software companies trying to solve it. Your competition is the pen and paper. You’ve got to be better than that. Yeah, status quo is the competitor. How can you be better at that? [00:55:52] S0: Let's shift gears. I think we're getting close to the end here. I want to end on something that you'd probably get zero value out of, but it's funny. So let's do that. Here's my intro, okay? [00:56:02] S1: I'm here for the – I'm here for the jokes. I'm not here to give anyone value. My assumption. This is the comedy podcast, right?
00:56:02 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo
[00:56:02] S1: I'm here for the – I'm here for the jokes. I'm not here to give anyone value. My assumption. This is the comedy podcast, right? [00:56:08] S0: That’s what we're becoming. Over time, I realize people just want entertainment, so give them entertainment. [00:56:13] S1: Give them what they want. [00:56:19] S0: Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, gets on Forbes, jail, right? SBF, founder of FTX, gets on Forbes, jail. We get on the cover of the Ottawa Citizen, bankrupt. Is there a correlation there? [00:56:30] S1: Thank God it's just bankrupt, right? Yeah. [00:56:38] S0: Do you remember – I don't know what it is, but there's something to that. When PR is at max, company is at bottom, right? The Ottawa Citizen, which is this mainstream local for Ottawa, but mainstream newspaper that your mom and dad reads sort of thing. They come to us and they're like, we're doing deep dives on startups in the region and you guys are the top. We want to do in-person interviews, video interviews, a multi-page front cover. [00:57:07] S1: They came to my house. They were in my bedroom. I mean, it's like, why are you here? [00:57:12] S0: We're like, oh, this is awesome. Love pr, so value zero. We're selling to gyms. I just don't – zero. We’re selling to gyms outside of Ottawa, so there's actually zero potential value. We're not trying to… [00:57:26] S1: Actually negative value. Negative value in doing it. Not zero value. It was detrimental.
00:57:26 · Lee Silverstone, Pablo Srugo, Rob Woodbridge
[00:57:26] S1: Actually negative value. Negative value in doing it. Not zero value. It was detrimental. [00:57:31] S0: Then we go through it and right maybe a few weeks before they're going to publish, we have to do layoffs. We have to lay off two thirds of the staff. They were already going through it. It was almost done. I remember asking Ken, Ken, do we need to tell them this? He's like, yeah. We got to call them up and be like, this story, this profile you're doing super positive of GymTrack and just don't publish it. They're like, we're publishing it. [00:58:01] S1: I remember them saying – it was this younger reporter. I remember her being like, sorry, too bad. We're running the story. I spent time on running the story, deal with it. [00:58:12] S0: Your profile on it came. It was pretty great. [00:58:17] S1: Oh, my God. I think if there was one thing in my life I could go back and change, it might be doing that interview. It haunts me to this day because the internet is this archive of everything that's ever happened in your life if it's public. People still to this day when I meet them for the first time are like, oh, I read this article about you. I'm like, okay, nice to meet you. See you later. [00:58:40] S0: Your quote was ingrained in my brain, which was, look, sometimes I don't sleep at night and I can see the office right there, the office. [00:58:49] S1: I just go to the office and work. I remember…. [00:58:49] S2: Do you remember the pictures? The picture of Lee.
00:58:49 · Rob Woodbridge, Lee Silverstone
[00:58:49] S2: Do you remember the pictures? The picture of Lee. [00:58:49] S1: Which is – but also screw them. There were so many pictures they could have used and, I don't know, I still do that to this day. I still put my hands on my head. It doesn't mean I'm – it's not bad body language, but I remember we told Janet Banister, Janet Banister was one of our board members. I remember we told her we were doing the story and the look on her face. She hadn't even seen the story yet. She hadn't even seen it, but she just looked at me like, oh no, what are you doing? I was like, what? Isn't this good? She was like, oh no. Why, guys? She understood what we didn’t, which is that, oh, my God, this is a huge distraction if you're going to start super messy. They're reporters. They're going to try and tell a compelling, interesting story, not show you in a good light. They want to tell the true story of what it's like being in a startup, which means trying to show your skeletons and trying to show the reality of it. I have no idea what compelled us to think that that was a good idea, but it's a terrible…
01:00:02 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone, Rob Woodbridge
[01:00:02] S0: Hype man. Our mind was in pure hype. Then I fast forward a few years later, I'm in this board meeting with one of our portfolio companies and the other board member is this guy Jeremy Levine, who's still on the board of Shopify. He backed Yelp, Pinterest, really, really big dude. The founder just raised a series A. He’s like, I'm thinking of doing PR. What do you guys think? Should you do PR? I'm not replying here. I'm staying quiet. Jeremy Levine says, listen, you can do what you want. I'll just tell you this. Every single break company that I backed, they didn't announce their series A. I'm just like, alright. [01:00:37] S1: Because if you spend your time doing that, you're spending your time doing the wrong things. I think it's a symptom of a broader issue within a company to spend time talking to reporters that are not industry specific reporters that are going to get you more customers. It's a symptom of broader failures within your organization. [01:01:01] S2: You definitely want it to be – you want any PR to be based on merit, right? Based on accomplishment. You would typically, and it takes a while to learn that because I went through it in my twenties as well. It's about me, right? It is about is this ego. [01:01:21] S1: Also someone should have given us media training. If you are going to go, always bring it back to the product and the company, don't tell stupid stories about your life. That's that.