A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:00:00 · Pablo Srugo, Rob
[00:00:00] S0: So a few weeks ago I put in an episode called the Five Steps to Product Market Fit. And I had a lot of of great feedback, but also a lot of questions around how to actually implement these steps. So today with Rob, what we'll be doing is going through the steps again, we'll be sharing a lot more stories and , and just adding a lot of color so that it's a bit clearer kind of how to implement these steps and also when some of these steps might break when they meet reality. Welcome to the product Market Fit Show, brought to you by Mistral , a seat stage firm based in Canada. I'm Pablo, I'm a founder, turn vc. My goal is to help early stage founders like you find product market fit. Rob, welcome again to the show. [00:00:43] S1: Thanks, Pablo. Yeah, like when you're running headfirst at full speed into a brick wall, you mean, right? [00:00:48] S0: That's , that's exactly it, man. [00:00:49] S1: That's the reality. [00:00:50] S0: <inaudible> , yes, <laugh> [00:00:51] S1: It says here that I should do this, but every time I do that, I end up with a bloody forehead in a black eye . I'm not sure how many [00:00:57] S0: This , how many business books, how many business books have you read that you were like, dude, I figured it out. I solved it. And then you realize like, <laugh> , [00:01:04] S1: Every single one, right ? Like all 400 of the business books. So like, yeah, that is it. I have to pick my enemies wisely. You're right. I gotta , you know everything. I gotta blast . You have the
00:01:04 · Rob, Pablo Srugo
[00:01:04] S1: Every single one, right ? Like all 400 of the business books. So like, yeah, that is it. I have to pick my enemies wisely. You're right. I gotta , you know everything. I gotta blast . You have the [00:01:15] S0: Nugget truth, right ? But even, even like, you know, disrupted , um, the Clay Christensen one, which is like the amazing one, the disruptive one, right ? Just gotta be a disruptor, man. I just gotta come from the bottom. And then you're like, what does that really mean, <laugh> ? How do I really do that?
00:01:27 · Rob, Pablo Srugo
[00:01:27] S1: <laugh> it is like, you just gotta build a hard drive that's better than the incumbents that co like, what? Wait , huh ? Right , right. It , it sometimes, regardless of what your business is or regardless of who you are , um, there's, there's an inherent native reaction that happens when you decide to be an entrepreneur. And, and oftentimes you don't decide to be an entrepreneur, you just are like, you're born an entrepreneur. And there was a guy that I used to do a lot of work with way back in the day, and he said he would teach entrepreneurship. And I would think like, that's not something you can teach you . Like, you can, you can say like, this is what it's like to be an entrepreneur and this is how you do your books and this is what, you know, this is how you do accounting and this is what you're product market , this is what you're supposed. But then at the, at the end of it all, you can't teach somebody to be an entrepreneur. They are or they aren't. And I believe that wholeheartedly. And so, like, that's the, that's the kinda lens I look at PMF from is because there's no art or science to being an entrepreneur. There's just blind faith and stupidity. And if you are both of those things, you have blind faith and you're a little dumb, you can be an entrepreneur, in my opinion. [00:02:36] S0: Basically what you're saying is, look, being an entrepreneur is like 90% practice, 10% theory, and I'm spending all my time on the 10%. So basically <laugh> , it's like , what am I doing
00:02:36 · Pablo Srugo, Rob
[00:02:36] S0: Basically what you're saying is, look, being an entrepreneur is like 90% practice, 10% theory, and I'm spending all my time on the 10%. So basically <laugh> , it's like , what am I doing [00:02:44] S1: <laugh> . So we're trying to dissect it and we're trying to get it to a point where it's like, this is the formula to being an entrepreneur. And I'm like, well , you know, I don't know if you can do that. I don't, I don't think that that
00:02:53 · Pablo Srugo
[00:02:53] S0: Exists. I mean, that's totally legit, right? That's totally legit. And that was one of my frustrations even and I talked about, which is like, it's not really a recipe in , in any meaningful word , meaningful sense of that word. Because like you do all these things and you still nec you might not have product market fit, but I do think they are best practices, right? So just to go through them again, like the five of them. The first one is before startup mode is research mode. The second one is only the insanely focused survive. You have to be in the market to win the market. Uh, the fourth one is find value, not growth. And the fifth one is pivot harder faster, obviously. We'll, we'll go through all of them, but, so starting at , at the first one, I think this is one that I do believe, especially amongst, it's not actually just first time founders. I, I've seen it in repeat founders too, but specifically the repeat founders, that their first one was almost like quote unquote too easy. Nothing's really too easy, but sometimes things just kind of work, you know what I mean? You put something out and , and it just, you get the poll and, and, and then you end up getting an exit and you're like, wow, okay, that worked out. Let's do it again. And on your second one, you're more polished. You've certainly lot , a lot , you've learned a lot of things, but you actually didn't necessarily go through the, the painful part of finding pain points. You kind of just landed on one and you just assume if things look cleaner , more polished, it was gonna work. First time founders, especially though, like, I just find, you know, because I worked with probably a hundred pre idea , like idea stage companies through when I was an entrepreneur in residence. And that was my number one finding was just, it was, it was like they, they had an idea and they're already out, you know, trying to lean, start up that idea, trying to go through the Eric Ries motions, the MVP stuff. And I'm like, man, everything you're doing doesn't matter because fundamentally, I don't, I don't see anything like, none of your telling me tells me that you're even solving a real pain point. So that's kind of where the research piece comes from.
00:04:38 · Rob
[00:04:38] S1: Research is, is a, is a really interesting component to it that you need to do. Like, I don't dissuade this, but I , it , it's almost like when you get older and you've gone through the scars of building a business, that's, that's when research is done. You know, like in the next startup that I do, I'm gonna research a little bit more than the last one. And then the last one, last one.