A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:26:27 · Andrew Lockhead, Pablo Srugo
[00:26:27] S0: Without the government, we were at about six month of runway. [00:26:27] S1: Wow. [00:26:27] S0: We were going down pretty fast. Good thing that we just raised before, so it was good. With the government stepping in and paying 75% of the salaries in the rent, we were able to extend it up to about 18 months, which was exactly what we needed. [00:26:44] S1: When do you start to shift from, oh, my God, on fire, let's just try and get out as quickly as possible as long as it meets certain conditions to let's find an opportunity? [00:26:56] S0: The opportunity was always there. I was probably not the one leading it all the time, but about two months, two months and a half later, after running all of those scenarios and brainstorm, nothing is really working out. Nothing is sticking up. We don't feel so good about ourselves, so we're looking at the different scenarios. [00:27:16] S1: Just so I know, how many people are you at this point? [00:27:19] S0: We’re 42 as of today. [00:27:20] S1: No, I mean, in the story at that point. [00:27:23] S0: Oh, sorry, we're probably around a dozen people back then so 8 to 12 people. [00:27:27] S1: Dozen people brainstorming. No one's doing any work-work. They're thinking, but there's no production because there's nothing to work against and two months of that, all right. [00:27:35] S0: Exactly. You don't know what to do with your day, right? [00:27:35] S1: Exactly.
00:27:35 · Pablo Srugo, Andrew Lockhead
[00:27:35] S1: Exactly. [00:27:35] S0: What are you supposed to do? You don't reach out to customer. You don't spend time, so people just sat at home doing whatever they can. Obviously, they all have their family as well. They all have their own problem. You're not able to go grocery shopping. You're not able to go out. Your mental issue is not as good, so everyone's having the same type of challenge. We're just trying to do those daily and weekly call about, hey guys, here's what happening in the market. Here is the data we're looking into. We think it's going to go back in X amount of time, but we barely know what's going on. We’re trying to make our best to keep the positive attitude, even though we know it might never come back, and we'll just have to deal and shut it down. [00:28:12] S1: No one did. I mean, that's the crazy thing about then is nobody did. There was nowhere to point to that you could say they know. It just was complete… [00:28:20] S0: It was bad. A year exactly after this, so March 2021, we lost our biggest supplier, which was Airbnb. Airbnb decided to drop [unclear] platform. They wanted to go public so go with, yes, one, show that 95% of people go direct to Airbnb, so they shut down everyone. Airbnb was representing about 72% of our reviews back then. [00:28:40] S1: Wow. [00:28:40] S0: That was another big drop, so we're starting to slowly get back. Pow! Now you got to find another way in. [00:28:49] S1: You're getting back just… [00:28:50] S0: All of my investors…
00:28:50 · Andrew Lockhead, Pablo Srugo
[00:28:50] S0: All of my investors… [00:28:51] S1: Just through that time, you're getting back on still the same model selling to ticketing platforms, or did you start making a shift at that point? [00:28:56] S0: At that time, what we noticed is nothing's happening with the event industry. Let's move out of this. We came back to the conclusion of like where do people travel right now? They're not able to go outside of the country. What they're going to do? Go back and export their cities, which was the main thing people did. I don't know if you did look at the nicest beaches 90 minutes away from where you live. Go back and see whatever, museum and outdoor activities. This is what most people… [00:29:21] S1: Cottages, that's what we started doing, yeah, 100%. [00:29:22] S0: Exactly, cottage and you go hiking. Over there is a nice trailing. All those massive outdooring company just lift up during the pandemic, and this is how we decided to switch. We're like, okay, good. Now we have an idea. How do we get to those people? I'm always the go-to market. How do we find a distribution to get them? The one talking about this were either content creator, bloggers, or media company. Both of them were the one driving that type of travel, so we decided to talk with those people and say, okay, it's a bit different than what we're doing with ticketing platform. The map-based solution doesn't work as good for you guys, but we can find a way to get it. [00:29:59] S1: Just to get more clarity on that, this is what? This is somebody that writes top 10 beaches in Ontario, this kind of thing?
00:29:59 · Pablo Srugo, Andrew Lockhead
[00:29:59] S1: Just to get more clarity on that, this is what? This is somebody that writes top 10 beaches in Ontario, this kind of thing? [00:30:05] S0: Exactly, you got it. Those are moms and pop shop. This is going to be Caroline, 45 years old, that live in Missouri that's going to talk about here's a nice thing to do around the city. If you got kids, the 10 nicest activities around. This is exactly your type of crowd that we’re dealing with. [00:30:19] S1: Okay. The media companies would be what? [00:30:22] S0: In Montreal, it would be our city. They’re the one talking about mostly for Gen Z. Gen Z calling the nice shots. What's happening with the vibe? What's going up in the trend right now? [00:30:32] S1: Let’s say it’s like a BuzzFeed but local BuzzFeeds, things like that…. [00:30:35] S0: You got it. [00:30:35] S1: ...that are writing these kinds of lists.
00:30:35 · Pablo Srugo, Andrew Lockhead
[00:30:35] S1: ...that are writing these kinds of lists. [00:30:37] S0: Yeah, something called BuzzFeed. Reach out to those people, try to understand what the pain point is. At that point, me and my co-founder decide to get back on the steering wheel because we had some people working with us were like it's not fast enough. We want to be at the leading edge of this. People don't trust, let's be honest, us anymore because we've been hyping the situation for a year and a half at that point. Hey, don't worry, guys. It's going to work out. It's going to work out. Nobody believe us probably at this point.There's a demo like this is scrap , this is scrap , this is scrap . But that's there . It's kind of cool. So let's like explore this a bit further. And we did this for about 10 days just. [00:31:30] S1: Crazy. [00:31:30] S0: It’s like, okay, let's get back to this. During the day, I was running interview with bloggers, so I was running 5 to 10 people doing workshop, calling them out, seeing what their pain point was, just trying to understand. My co-founder at night was coding the product that we're describing for a full week, and the next day, I was having another conversation with different blogger like, oh, where's – we work on. There's a demo. This is crap. This is crap. This is crap. It's kind of cool, so let's explore this a bit further. We did this for about 10 days. [00:31:31] S1: Just to make sure the timeline right, February 2020, that's the round. March, April, you start trying to see if you can exit of 2020. This is a year later? [00:31:40] S0: Yeah, a year later.
00:31:40 · Andrew Lockhead, Pablo Srugo
[00:31:40] S0: Yeah, a year later. [00:31:40] S1: It's March 2021, after Airbnb shuts you down. [00:31:43] S0: Almost at the same time as Airbnb shut us down. Maybe two months before Airbnb shut us down. [00:31:48] S1: You crossed your fingers and hoped for about a year, basically, trying to say, okay, this is going to come back. It's going to come back. It’s going to come back. [00:31:54] S0: Be as frugal as possible, renegotiating all of our deals, negotiating the rent, negotiating all of our contract, not paying our provider, dealing everything we could just to keep as much money as we could to delay whatever amount of time we needed to get there. It was about to come back. [00:32:10] S1: That's when you realized, okay, what's the new normal? What are people actually doing? Then you started going down this blogger media. [00:32:16] S0: Exactly. Nothing was really happening during the first six months, right? You were stuck at home. You were not able to go outside. You couldn't even hike. You’re going to have to wait in your car past 8:00 p.m. in Montreal. Everything was shut down, but after about six months, people started to go a bit more. This is how we managed to get into the outdoor industry. [00:32:33] S1: What did you find out from these conversations with bloggers? What were some of the main pain points around what you were maybe offering?