A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
00:08:34 · Lee Silverstone, Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[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. [00:08:41] S2: It was early on. I had my own podcast, Untethered TV, and you were maybe episode two or three. I did that for 10 years. You were really early on. I found you guys through Invest Ottawa or Oak. It was probably Best Ottawa at that time. Maybe it was Oakley, which was an economic development group here in Ottawa. And you were the darling company. Every once in a while you have these startups that emerge. They get into this rarefied air where everybody wants to work for them, invest in them, and be around them. It's like this little moment of celebrity. You poke your head through the clouds, and it's sunshine. You can't do any wrong. That's where I saw you guys. I thought at the very moment, the way it was described to me. After I did the podcast with you, Lee, I literally said, there's two companies that I wish I could have been involved with in the early stages. One of them was Audible.com because I love audiobooks. The second one was Gymtrack. I love audiobooks and going to the gym and can you imagine these are two companies right in it. I fell in love with the idea I had. I got it as well. It was like this virus. Wouldn't it be cool? That is so cool. And that's what it was. [00:09:57] S0: This is maybe a perfect segue because you mentioned we were, let's say, hot, right back in Ottawa, which is – this is a low bar, but hey. [00:10:04] S1: Hey , hey.
00:10:04 · Lee Silverstone, Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[00:10:04] S1: Hey , hey. [00:10:05] S2: You excelled at the low bar. [00:10:07] S0: We excelled at the low bar. That's like, that's my my thing, man, big fish, small pond. I’m in. Yeah. When that happened, that happened right after Lee. I don't know if you remember it this way, but I remember it's kind of a step function. When we got into 500 Startups, we were like whatever, and then we got into 500 Startups. Then all of a sudden it was like, well, who are these guys from the perspective of Ottawa community. [00:10:33] S1: Yeah, I think – I mean, I remember it a little bit differently in the sense that a bunch of these accounting firms and law firms started to introduce us to angels. There was this sense and semblance of hey, these guys maybe know what they're doing. [00:10:48] S0: It was buildup. [00:10:50] S1: Yeah. It was like – but there was no kind of proof point that we had any idea exactly what we were talking about. There was no anchoring to reality. It was just, I don't know, maybe they're the smartest people ever. Maybe they're idiots. Who knows? It was this slow burn. Then when we got into 500 Startups, that was when everything – it was this force – it was this forcing function. I remember being in the airport flying to San Francisco for the first time, and walking to the gate, and getting a phone call from an angel we had been speaking to. It was like, hey, I heard you got into 500 Startups. I'm in. Let me write a check. [00:11:27] S0: That’s right. That's what I'm saying, yeah, exactly.
00:11:27 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:11:27] S0: That’s right. That's what I'm saying, yeah, exactly. [00:11:29] S1: Do you remember that? And I was like, hey, send him the safe in the airport on the way there. [00:11:35] S0: I've mentioned this story, but I actually didn't live it. I really want to hear from you and your recollection of how we got into 500 Startups, how you got us into 500 Startups in the first place. It started at the beginning because I almost forced you to not go on this trip. Do you remember that. [00:11:53] S1: Yes, you almost kiboshed it, which in retrospect maybe would've been good for the company. Who knows? Yeah, so I remember we were – the guys at Micrometrics were a New York desk and there was an invest all in this open office space. They were like, hey, we're going to Startup Fest in Montreal. I think you were like, man, what are we going to go to like a startup festival for? How is there any value in that? I was like, it's networking, it's investors, it's whatever. You were like, no, man, that's so stupid. I got work to do. Classic Pablo wants to get things done and done. [00:12:22] S0: One hundred percent Pablo right there. Just to be clear, the work I was doing was getting grants, that was for sure work.
00:12:22 · Pablo Srugo, Lee Silverstone
[00:12:22] S0: One hundred percent Pablo right there. Just to be clear, the work I was doing was getting grants, that was for sure work. [00:12:37] S1: It is still valuable, but I think that's such a Pablo thing to be like, nah man, I'm not going to a networking event, no way. There's no value in that. I was like, cool, like let's divide and conquer. You hang back; I'll go. He was like, all right, whatever and ended up going. To be honest, he was probably right. There was not a ton of immense value in going to network around, but it was fun. It was a good time. I remember there was a group of people surrounding this guy who was, I don't know, wearing a T-shirt and jeans or whatever. My mind, there's no way this guy's an investor. In my mind at that time, but I hadn't worked in VC yet, didn't know anything about VC. That guy was probably a startup dude or whatever. I don't know. He was doing the sound at the event or something. Someone pulled me into the conversation, and they were like, tell this guy what you do. And I was like, oh, we're working on this startup, Gymtrack. We're building technology to automatically track what gym goers do in the gym. I used to – we were talking about this before. I used to walk around with this 3D printed piece of hardware that was this smart pin that we had as part of our product in my pocket. We had it. It wasn't functional, but it had a logo on it and everything. It looked super professional.