A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:02:36 · Pablo Srugo, Rob Woodbridge
[00:02:36] S0: Yes, yes , yes . [00:02:38] S1: There was so much that I was – so many notes that I took on this book because, oh, and that; oh, I’m trying to put that and, oh, this. It's a timeless story, to me, of entrepreneurship, and I think it ties into some of the things we were talking about before about when to give up and when to not give up. He should have given up years ago. And so he's the worst-case study here for us to talk about… [00:03:07] S0: He's also the best. You know why? I was thinking about – I was thinking through what episodes to do and whatever, and I'm like this kind of new segment of how X found product market fit. And I listened to the Amazon story. I'm like I can't talk about this. Basically, Jeff Bezos is a genius. He figures out that e-commerce is going to be massive, launches an online bookstore, which is the best thing he could possibly launch, and crushes it <laugh>. That's it, and so there's nothing there to get, if we learn from that. [00:03:33] S1: Every tool that he's built since then has been as a direct result of his original idea growing so big and so fast that nothing else was available, and then he had to… [00:03:42] S0: It's insane. [00:03:43] S1: …build his own delivery fleet. He had to build his own cloud server. They had to build everything, yeah, and then…
00:03:43 · Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[00:03:43] S1: …build his own delivery fleet. He had to build his own cloud server. They had to build everything, yeah, and then… [00:03:47] S0: Not only that but you saw, obviously, AWS became this massive thing that – out of left field, and now, I just saw that – if you look at just the profits from the advertisement business is now matching the profits of AWS, and you're just like, what's going on <laugh>? Who is this guy? [00:04:05] S1: Let's talk about Nike then. Let's jump into Nike. Not a deep dive into the story but some of the highlights of things that resonated, that we've experienced, or that we've gone through, or that we've seen or worked with companies that are going through, and I think that that's the – that would be the key to me is to come through and say what are the biggest – he had everything happen to him that every VC or every other entrepreneur maybe has one or two of these things happening, but he had everything happening. So I think that it's a perfect case study to say – to pull in some of those things that happen to them, to him, and having Prefontaine die. You know what I mean? It's just how can this happen when everything is – finally can afford a spokesperson and then he dies. What? [00:04:59] S0: What was that story? I don't think I touched on that.
00:04:59 · Pablo Srugo, Rob Woodbridge
[00:04:59] S0: What was that story? I don't think I touched on that. [00:05:02] S1: Yeah. So Prefontaine was this up-and-coming runner that was the – he was their ambassador. It’s who they could afford, and I remember Pre. I remember this guy dominating. He was a world-class runner, and then he, in his prime at 24, rolls his car and dies, like dead, right? And so you have these moments where you're like what is the universe telling me? And they get this point where – so I think we – let's pick a demarcation point because that's an interesting story. At some point, the universe is telling you something <laugh>, and you're either receptive to it or you ignore it, like most stubborn entrepreneurs do. And when your spokesperson dies, that's a pretty big statement to <laugh> – that's something where you're like, oh, how can you get past that? [00:05:57] S0: I think it's true. If you just go through and you just count punches to the face, Nike is probably top of the list. Today you look. It's $150 billion company, number one in the shoe market, just crushing it, right? But it was such – I remember that when I listened to Shoe Dog for the first time, just how long it took. He gave half his company away to – it was effectively like an advisor, his coach. I was watching the – I don’t know if you saw that BECKHAM documentary came out? [00:06:30] S1: No. [00:06:30] S0: Anyways, it's on Netflix. [00:06:32] S1: More of a Spice Girls, like a Posh Spice guy, anyways.
00:06:32 · Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[00:06:32] S1: More of a Spice Girls, like a Posh Spice guy, anyways. [00:06:36] S0: Right. You watch the Spice Girls documentary. I'm watching the second one. One of the pieces was like it just – this resonated with me because it reminded me of Phil Knight a bit where he's like – I mean, he's a superstar, right? But then, whatever, something happens with his coach. I think it was at Man U or Real Madrid. I don't remember which club. They don't just bench him. He's the best. He’s literally one of the best players. They don't just bench him. They’re like you're no longer training with this team, and he had to finish off the season. And this guy keeps showing up every single day to practice, and he trains on his own on the side. And the coach was like – I don't even know what to make of that. I don't know how long it took. A few weeks in, the rest of the squad was like, “Dude, like, bring this guy back in.” This is crazy, right? But that reminded me of Phil because it’s like, if you just look at it, he goes and he starts doing part-time – he's a professor part-time just to pay the bills. He’s going to track meet after track meet. You know what? There was just enough there, I think, every year that kept him going.
00:07:34 · Rob Woodbridge, Pablo Srugo
[00:07:34] S1: But I think that that's the little taste, right? There was always just enough. In those early years, there was always just enough and then there – something happened that made it not just enough. It's so weird that they – it was just enough always, and then they would grow a little bit. And then something would land on their lap that set them back. So distributors would say, “No, we're out,” or the tire distributor would say, “No, we're going with somebody new.” And it was always something that just when you think that you're about to climb that hill it's the false summit. You get up there and you're pulling yourself up and you look over. You're like, oh, my God. I'm a third of the way up. I still got all this to climb, and I'm exhausted. That was Phil Knight. [00:08:22] S0: I mean, that's what I admire most because I haven't been on the other side, on both sides of the fences. It’s like I'm telling you, I'm too probabilities driven. You almost can't calculate the odds of success when you're in it. Yeah, after every one of those punches would've been a pretty – perfectly suitable time to be like, okay, this – realistically not going to work. [00:08:46] S1: Somebody’s telling me no. [00:08:47] S0: Call it quits. But yeah, no, I mean, I think that's almost the defining kind of feature of Nike is just him just continuing and continuing and continuing through it all.
00:09:00 · Rob Woodbridge
[00:09:00] S1: Maybe there's a little piece of necessity there, and I echoed with Phil Knight. I can't compare myself to Phil Knight. I just want to be really clear that there's no comparison between Phil and I when I say this whatsoever, except for this one thing. He probably had no other option. Maybe he did, but he didn't know what he wanted to do or be in his life. So this was a natural thing. He was young enough. He was unencumbered. He had gone to school. He had a job, but the key for him was that this is the time. So you hear that a lot about young founders, but the one thing that really resonated is that he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. And it's kind of like that was – to me, when I was reading that about him was that it was just a clear indication that he was born to create something. Now, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but that was just because out of pure necessity that I started my first company because there was nothing else out there. But I think a lot of entrepreneurs have that feeling is that you want to create something. But you don't fit in anywhere, and so you have this world. You don't fit. I'm not going to be a lawyer. I'm not going to be an accountant. I'm not going to be here. So where do I fit in this world? There's no vocation. So it's entrepreneurship, and then you find out if you have it or not. But Phil had it, man, and it is in his blood. And I think that he absolutely – maybe not absolute but I feel that he had nothing to fall back on if this failed.