A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:06:54 · Pablo Srugo, Rob
And so my point is, the ones that don't do research, like whether it's because they've worked in the industry and so they've done implicit research for many years or explicitly because they actually go and do customer discovery and all that stuff, tend to do it almost in practice. It just takes longer. And they do it like while they're in the market. But, but I don't know of many examples where somebody's not from an industry doesn't do customer discovery and hits it on the nail like right off the bat, except like a Facebook or Snapchat or like these really exceptions of exceptions, you know? [00:07:26] S1: Yeah. But you know, that Facebook wasn't even his idea. So it , uh, really doesn't , uh, somebody else did the research. Funny mean , [00:07:31] S0: Whenever I mention Zuck, you just , you just hate on him , you know ? And I just gotta stay away. I gotta stay away from that [00:07:35] S1: <laugh> . No , but it , it , it's true though. You have to have a domain expertise. And, and that's where that, that the idea of hobbies comes into play. Like everybody says, like, do what you love, find something other , like , I mean, that's total crap. Don't do that. Like, that doesn't work. Uh , you're just gonna ruin the thing you love <laugh> by making it work, right? Like there's a re but [00:07:57] S0: You mean people will buy my paintings z <laugh>. [00:08:01] S1: That's so true . [00:08:01] S0: They actually, they won't. That's thing
00:08:02 · Rob
[00:08:02] S1: I've just got these like bootleg copies of myself playing the guitar. I'm sure somebody wants them . They don't, they trust me. They don't. What ends up happening a a lot of the time is that, is that your, your domain expertise is the thing that becomes very visible to you. Like you see it and then you , you test that market and, and it's where you, you are completely a fish outta water . A good friend of mine when I was a kid , um, like his dad made a , you know, millions of dollars selling his business and uh, and then he went bankrupt. And this stuck with me as a, as a young entrepreneur. And I would ask, why? How did you go bankrupt? Man? You lived on this great street. You had a pool, you're like, rich, rich, rich, blah , blah . I drove, Beamers had the first cell phone and I've ever seen in a car, even like the bricks. He couldn't use it 'cause it was like $10 a second. But he said, Rob , like I put a million dollars into an apartment building. I'm like , okay. Like he , he bought into an apartment building, he's like, I have no idea how to run an apartment building like that stuck with me so much. He's like, he was an expert in his field and he succeeded. And then he got, he got like, the ego gets involved and he is like, here, easy peasy. Here's a million bucks, here's a million bucks, here's a million bucks. Oh, by the way, what now I'm on food stamps, gotta sell the Beamer. And, and , and that, that happens more often than not . The ability to, to , uh, to be able to control yourself in those situations. Like , it , it is, it is imperative that you understand sometimes that you, you hit lightning, but you didn't hit it by accident. You hit it because you had that expertise.
00:09:36 · Pablo Srugo
[00:09:36] S0: I think one of the challenges though, too, like if I , when I think about when we were talking about this earlier, is like, how do you actually do research? And then, and then, and then part of it is like, how do you fund that? I mean, <laugh> like I'll tell you like, you know, as a VC, and I'm a seed stage vc, you know, there's people that come in earlier like pre-seed , but there are , there are nearly no, you know, even pre-seed stage VCs that would fund somebody who says like, I'm just doing research. Like, that's just gets unfundable <laugh> . So that's the other piece that we're talking about hitting reality. And , and that's the other piece that comes to mind is like, to the extent that you, you need money to survive, which you know, most people do , uh, you gotta figure out like, how are you gonna make, how are you gonna make it work? And that's where I think things get a lot complicated because I do think a lot of founders, and maybe for the wrong reasons, but at the same time, outta necessity, they're like, well, I need to raise something. Like I need to raise half a million dollars, right? I need to raise a million bucks, whatever. Um, and frankly, the easiest way of doing that is to pretend that you know more than you do, as
00:10:32 · Rob
[00:10:32] S1: You said, you can research your way out of an idea. I don't even know what it is, a small percentage of great storytellers that may have something without the research that may lead to something completely disruptive that that is , it will , will take over the market or nobody's looking in that direction. And I think that there's like a , a small sliver of people that fit into that category where it's like, this idea has some merit, this person has merit, his partner has merit, and somewhere in that mix, something is good is gonna happen here. And if not, I believe I'll back the, i'll back the founders, I'll back the, the the partners,
00:11:10 · Pablo Srugo
[00:11:10] S0: Your choices, none of them are great. Like one is you just pretend, right? And you do and , and you write . Because as much as it's hard to, to raise on idea stage, especially as a first time founder, you know, that's what like a lot of accelerators and like incubators are, therefore , and it's , so every now and then it does happen. Or like some, some angels depending, but, and you have to be hyper confident. You have to tell like a wonderful story. You gotta like spend a lot of time, which we did at Gym Track and , and it didn't necessarily lead us to, to the promised Land, right? I think the other one, and and this doesn't apply to like successful founders, I think successful founders, like, they just, they have credibility. So it's a lot easier to, to raise. Like you could maybe even be honest and just still raise money, whatever <laugh> . But for, for , uh, for first time founders. I think the other thing is like Gary v talked about this, and I don't know if I should be taking advice from Ravi or not, but <laugh>, that's a separate story. Uh, he's like, dude, just don't quit your job. You know what I mean? Like, you think you need to go all in on this, like you don't, like, you really don't like, just do it on the side. Like take off like all the Netflix hours, all the partying hours. Like take those away. Don't take your 9 0 5 away and find a way to just do this stuff on the side until you actually feel like there's something real
00:12:13 · Rob, Pablo Srugo
[00:12:13] S1: Tim Ferriss, same thing. Like he , he , he , he doesn't preach the four hour work week . He preaches basically four hours of research a week, is what he's talking about. And even Dan Martell talks about that. He's like, stop watching the hockey game. Don't spend your Sundays watching football test an idea. Like he thinks that that that sports, watching sports is the scourge of entrepreneurship is that it basically zaps your life. So take those 19 hours a week that you watch football and throw them into an idea, right? And that's, you don't have to quit your job to do that. So [00:12:43] S0: We got number one. Okay, fine, figure it out. I mean, the second one is this kinda , [00:12:47] S1: Yeah , [00:12:47] S0: <laugh> , <laugh> , right? Salt , like basically done, stamped, [00:12:51] S1: Done, [00:12:51] S0: Dude, done <laugh> , I mean <laugh> . And you gotta go out and do it. Actually, it's funny, the other day somebody hit me up and said, look, I'm trying to do this research thing. I'm , I'm , I'm like struggling because I, you know, like, okay, I bought into it like I'm gonna do research, know what I'm gonna do it . Like how do I even do it, right? Like what do <laugh> , where [00:13:07] S1: Do I start the library ?