A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
01:01:21 · Lee Silverstone, Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[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. [01:01:30] S2: No, not at all. Make sure that you have control over the callouts. I have a similar story. This was one of these times where I won an award once for next generation CEO. [01:01:43] S0: You won an award, dude? [01:01:45] S2: I did, I did. It was a merit badge. It was a next generation CEO of the year award, right? I remember that I was up against people that were way more deserving, but I'd been a part of the community for much longer. I'm not saying this was nepotism whatsoever, but I do remember winning this award and it was such fraud. That's what you end up feeling like when something goes down, when it goes wrong. [01:02:11] S1: Oh, yeah. Oh, God.
01:02:11 · Lee Silverstone, Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[01:02:11] S1: Oh, yeah. Oh, God. [01:02:12] S2: I got up on stage and I knew. I was running a company, a software company at the time, and I was doing layoffs the next day, so 9% layoffs, seven employees. One of them, his wife, was about to have their second child. She wasn't working and I'm about to lay this guy off, right? This is in the back of my head. They don't tell who wins, but you have to show up. I showed up and I didn't bring any of my family, not my wife, nobody at that time. I brought my controller Kim and she started the day before, right? That's who I brought. She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, you're coming with me because I can't. It's a fraud. It's fraudulent what I'm about to do. I'm like, please God for the life. Don't win, don't win, don't win, don't win, please don't, don't call my name. They call my goddamn name, right? I get up on stage and you know this is – because that's what being an entrepreneur is. It's like, you're a fraud until you're something and then you don't believe you're something so you're still a fraud. I got up on stage and I had to accept this award and Paul Lem, who's a well-known guy in Ottawa, was the other guy on the other side who lost to me. Paul Lem lost to me. [01:03:24] S0: Saves lives, yeah. He detects early diseases. He's a scientist.
01:03:24 · Pablo Srugo, Rob Woodbridge, Lee Silverstone
[01:03:24] S0: Saves lives, yeah. He detects early diseases. He's a scientist. [01:03:37] S2: He's this – anyway, he got up and I'll never forget it because the story was the guy who was doing the introduction was the dean of the business school for University of Ottawa. He got up and he had this long rambling opening for Paul. He's like, this guy is this scientist, he's this, he's this, he's done this. By the way, he just wrote a book that he's released on how to be productive, productive book and going on about Paul, I've known this guy my whole life, my whole life, blah blah. It was a nine-minute introduction about Paul. Then he’s like, and the other contender, oh, wait, what? You could see it. He's trying to think of, oh, okay, what can I say? What can I say? What can I say? I have nothing to say about this guy. I have nothing to say. He's like, Rob Woodbridge, I knew his father. Alright, let's go. That's what he said. Then I won. You should have seen, he's like opening it up and he's like, wait, wait. [01:04:28] S1: There's a mistake. [01:04:29] S0: There's a wrong name. You have that moment. It was wrong. It was terrible.
01:04:29 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[01:04:29] S0: There's a wrong name. You have that moment. It was wrong. It was terrible. [01:04:36] S1: You’ve got to stay away from that stuff, those accolades. Again, back to what we talked about in the beginning, this validation from the wrong places. Who cares how many articles are written about you? Who cares how many awards you win? Who cares about any of this? Who even cares how much money you raise? That's not even the end goal. All of it is useless. It's useless. The only thing that matters is the customer and is, are you solving a problem for a customer? Are they willing to pay you to do that? Can you scale? If you're not doing that, the rest of it is just vanity metrics and it's useless and is going to, at the end of the day, come tumbling in. I think that's the takeaway.