A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:38:03 · Pablo Srugo, Scott Stevenson
[00:38:03] S1: What did you do with your customers on Rally? Did you just abandon Rally or did you still have it and it's just in the background? [00:38:09] S0: No, we still have it. We still sell it and we're still – I would say the value prop of templates still exists within our ecosystem of Spellbook. Spellbook we want it to be the ultimate AI assistant for corporate and commercial lawyers. Templating is still an aspect of what our customers want to do for sure. That templating engine will roll in slowly into Spellbook as a feature because it is actually useful for certain things that lawyers want to do. [00:38:35] S1: I know obviously mid-2023, you raised about 10 million and then six months after that, so earlier this year you raised another 20 or so, so clearly there's something going on. Can you give a sense of scale, like number of customers? Maybe just curious what Rally was like at that time and then how fast and how big Spellbook has gone? [00:38:54] S0: Yeah, so Rally we had around 100 law firms. Now we're close to 2000 law firms on board around the world. [00:39:00] S1: Wow! That's insane. [00:39:00] S0: Yeah. A little over a year to year and a half, we went to 2000 law firms. [00:39:10] S1: That's product market fit. [00:39:13] S0: Yeah, exactly. We're in a lot of different countries. We see one and two million contracts a year right now go through our system.
00:39:13 · Scott Stevenson, Pablo Srugo
[00:39:13] S0: Yeah, exactly. We're in a lot of different countries. We see one and two million contracts a year right now go through our system. [00:39:20] S1: Perfect. Look, we'll stop it there. I usually end with two questions, but one of them I think you already answered, which is when did you first feel like you had true product market fit? You went to a lot of detail on the emotional response, so I'll skip that one. I'll ask you the other one, which is, if you could go back to about 2018 when you were just starting Rally with one piece of advice for yourself as a founder, what might that be?
00:39:20 · Pablo Srugo, Scott Stevenson
[00:39:20] S1: Perfect. Look, we'll stop it there. I usually end with two questions, but one of them I think you already answered, which is when did you first feel like you had true product market fit? You went to a lot of detail on the emotional response, so I'll skip that one. I'll ask you the other one, which is, if you could go back to about 2018 when you were just starting Rally with one piece of advice for yourself as a founder, what might that be? [00:39:45] S0: One of the intuitions to stay lean until you find PMF was right because we did question that a lot. It was very hard to maintain that conviction with some really difficult conversations with stakeholders on why we weren't scaling out or growing faster. I would tell myself, no, that was right. I probably could have saved myself some sleep if more people had told me that, that was right. The other thing is what I mentioned also. Everything doesn't have to bolt on the same product. When you're in the pre PMF stage, it's a totally different game. It has nothing to do with the post PMF stage almost. You're trying a bunch of stuff. Launch different apps. Launch different brands. Don't get stuck in that sunk cost. I think we made a big mistake in trying to bolt everything onto one foundation to make it feel like all our work was accumulating. That probably slowed us down a lot. Keep launching stuff. Don't worry about the sunk cost. It only takes one landing page and one feature to have that breakthrough moment. You don't need 10 or 20 features all bolted together.
00:39:45 · Scott Stevenson, Pablo Srugo
[00:39:45] S0: One of the intuitions to stay lean until you find PMF was right because we did question that a lot. It was very hard to maintain that conviction with some really difficult conversations with stakeholders on why we weren't scaling out or growing faster. I would tell myself, no, that was right. I probably could have saved myself some sleep if more people had told me that, that was right. The other thing is what I mentioned also. Everything doesn't have to bolt on the same product. When you're in the pre PMF stage, it's a totally different game. It has nothing to do with the post PMF stage almost. You're trying a bunch of stuff. Launch different apps. Launch different brands. Don't get stuck in that sunk cost. I think we made a big mistake in trying to bolt everything onto one foundation to make it feel like all our work was accumulating. That probably slowed us down a lot. Keep launching stuff. Don't worry about the sunk cost. It only takes one landing page and one feature to have that breakthrough moment. You don't need 10 or 20 features all bolted together. [00:40:42] S1: Perfect. Thanks a lot, Scott. I really appreciate it. Some great insights here and I think a lot of lessons actually for founders to take away. [00:40:50] S0: Thanks, Pablo, for having me. I really appreciate it.
00:40:50 · Scott Stevenson, Pablo Srugo
[00:40:50] S0: Thanks, Pablo, for having me. I really appreciate it. [00:40:53] S1: I just gave you content that you like so much. You actually listened to the end. Guess what? You didn't pay a single dollar. Not only that, I didn't even put any ads in your face. You just got a bunch of content for free. Now that I've delivered that value, I'm asking for something in return. Open your app, open Apple Podcasts, open Spotify, open whatever app you use to listen to this and hit that follow button. It's actually going to help you because it's going to help you make sure you don't miss out on the next episode which you like so much that you listen to the whole thing.