Well Rob, how you doing man? It's good.
Good to see you. You are four days into the two
week PMF Sprint and busy as can be.
Yeah, dying I think is the correct framing of it.
Now the, the, the interesting thing that I, I wanted to tell
you is that this week we have learned in in the Snyder
household that my 14 month old daughter is better at opening
child locked doors than I am. And so we have like I, I need to
get her to help me to open towards to get into the.
Cabinets and so. There's nothing that quite makes
you feel like, you know, when you're feeling.
I dropped the physics of the startups lecture.
I was like, feeling good. I was like, yeah, this is the
best thing I've ever done and that I'm asking my baby girl to
open a cabinet so I can get something.
It's just. It's like it's the definition of
having handed the inmates the keys to the prison or something.
Something like that. Like, yeah.
Yeah, it's just, it's just like we both have reached, she can't
even say words yet. And we've both reached this
understanding that like I'm just good at stuff in this room, in
my office and everything else. She she's got to, she's got to
lift the load for me. There.
Oh man, like my dad, he's very good at a specific thing and
entirely a mess in in other parts of life, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it it turns out I have literally one skill and
well, let's. Let's let's keep talking about
that. Let's.
That skill hey, with the I've really enjoyed being back in TMF
camp. I, I think this is like my 6th
or 7th one that I've, I've gone through with you and one total
refresh of the content this time.
And so it's super interesting to see how you've incorporated more
of your most recent thinking. A couple things that have jumped
out to me. One was people are super
familiar with your content. Like they're coming in very like
they've, you've published so much that and they've they've
they've digested it and are implementing it.
And it's still really hard. Like you say, I, you know, when
I'm listening to you and this, I'm like, these are familiar
things, like familiar concepts. But it still requires like such
a fundamental reboot almost of the way of the way we talk of
the way we do outbound of the way that we present supply of
the way that we think about why, you know, it would be weird for
some a day to buy the thing we talked about in our last
podcast. Like it's and it's you like
watching the founders interacting, interacting with
you in this environment. It's like they're really, you
know, it's, it's just hard and is, is the way that it works
like there's a, an aha moment or what do you see when it's like
they go from intellectually recognizing it to, oh, I get it.
And and it becomes like almost an instinct I guess for how they
how they approach it. Yeah, it's interesting because
I, I think you're like, everyone comes in having basically read
everything that I've ever. And so I'm always kind of like,
OK, what am I going to do on top of that?
And what I, what I found is like the thing that really helps,
which I just can't release publicly, is showing them other
people's calls and other people's outbound.
And the, what I've designed the program to do is put them in
situations where they have to answer questions where their
intuitions are wrong. And so it, and that's just what
I found is like the best way for me to learn.
That's not, it's just, it's like, have a strong opinion and
have it just get punched in the face.
And, and just doing that repeatedly is my, is what I'm
trying to do to get to the like core thing, because poll is
really simple, but it is such a foundational concept that it is,
It's like the, it's really hard to embrace when everything in
you is like geared towards push. Oh, well, those people could
buy, they would benefit. And oh, maybe if I, if I implant
this sales tactic, then they'll want it and they'll behave
differently. And maybe dad and like all
there's all of and maybe if I send this kind of message with
these kinds of benefits, right, with this, this kind of pitch,
because I saw it on X like it's, it's and it's all And maybe if I
add these features and and it's all of that, mm, hmm, where it's
we have this, I don't know, we just have this like malware
running. And so my hope is that by
showing, and I think the experience shows that start-ups
going through this experience, but which by the way, we don't
have the next one scheduled. I have no idea when the next one
is going to be. We'll we'll talk about it
another time. But but the experience of
start-ups going through this and embracing this is it's just a,
it's like a repeated punch in the face of like, no, stop
pushing what what you think is pull is actually you just
pitching more benefits. What you think is the right way
to describe your product is actually counterproductive
because we have to put it like, everything starts with pull.
And in the context of pull, everything you do has to make
sense. And it's just such a halt.
It's such a simple thing, but it's such a hard thing because
it touches everything else. Yeah.
And one, one example of that yesterday was outbound and
taking my perspective from the outside of like observing the
result of having you develop the content, It seems like the
approach there was you were reinforcing the idea of outbound
as a system and we need to think about it as a system.
And you, you kept popping up examples that were like
imperfect. One of them had emojis like
they're, they're just like a bunch of very imperfect and the
whole group could sit, could like critique them individually
and find tweaks. And the the take away was like,
it's working, it's generating like the system functions.
And so stop screwing it up. Like that's not the thing to
focus on. And it, you know, I think the
third time that, you know, like ran through that example and we
were still falling into the city like a similar, like a similar
trap. I was like OK like time to time
to rejigger the the screws a little bit on this one.
Yeah, yeah, that was fun. That's it's fun too, because
yeah, I, I actually enjoy my role here, which is to kind of
lead people like it's I, I'm finding my, my vibe in this is
to lead people in the wrong direction and like, oh, wait,
where are we now? Like what wait, what do we mean
here? And and that that's been that's,
that's just a fun thing. Yeah, and I do think this this
PMF camp has been a lot of fun. It's a really great set of
founders that are that are really active and engaged.
Well, why don't we jump into investor pull, which is the the
title of your sub stack this week.
We are. We are.
We're talking about VCs, which as a bootstrapping founder who's
never pitched to VC like I know nothing about this and so.
Lucky you everyone who knows about VCs listening to this all.
All four people are like you lucky dog at this point.
But it's just. Everyone just thought that
because, yeah, no, it's this is not a topic, one that I care
about. To be clear, I've raised money.
I've helped a bunch of startups with their pitches.
I don't enjoy it. I don't think about it very
much. I don't care about it very much.
But I thought it was an interesting lens to explain a
thing that is very common in, but how we misunderstand pull.
Cause investors have pull, they take actions, they make choices,
they obviously they have pull. And so there's a just common
trap that I see founders fall into with their investor pitch,
especially the ones who have listened to us for a while.
And and yeah, that's a fun. That's that's actually that is
interesting because the way that or anyways, let's let's let me
hold off on on that until we actually lay out what your your
case is in this essentially what you actually who is this any,
anything for there to clarify on like who this is for and why
this is on your mind. This is also relevant to you if
you're not fundraising, if your boots wrapped, because we're
going to talk about investors, but it's an analogy for
understanding what poll actually is.
Yeah. And you know, you've worked with
a bunch of founders who they were bootstrapped and then they
hit PMF and all of a sudden, you know, you, you your product is
taking off. You need to grow your team.
And so there might be like a cash flow like, you know, issue
and you need to bring on investors or something like
that. And so this is like a helpful,
helpful framework to have and kind of in the back of your head
and the off chance that, you know, you need a fundraise,
Yeah, for a. Friend start up bootstrapped and
you know, two years later it's like, oops, we raised 50 million
bucks like it's so you may want to be bootstrapped, you may
aspire to be bootstrapped, but the market might force you into
another path. And I think that's the same is
true with WP Engine with Jason Cohen.
And like they were like, I think we could maybe get this to 20 KA
month in revenue and then we can just chill when it turns out
they became a Unicorn because the market had other ideas.
That's really funny. That's really funny.
What you talk about two ways of approaching VCs.
Do you want to outline that, or do you want me to read from
your? Blog.
Yeah, I know. So.
So the general thesis here is that your pitch to AVC has a
theory in it. It has as a theory of what AV CS
poll is or what the project is on their To Do List.
And the most common one I see of our kind of founder, AKA
overthinker and overachiever type is that we're making a
logical case for them to invest, which is like, we're a strong
team. We have strong traction.
We have proven something small and that thing could grow and be
big someday, right? And it's basically the legal
case or the, it's, it's a, it's based on the theory that AVC
makes a decision to invest or not based on, is this a good
team? Is this based on like a set of
criteria like that, a set of, of logical, sensible criteria.
And in fact, what I have seen is that that kind of pitch
generates A yawn because, well, you might hear that from your
typical early stage VC. That is not actually what their
pull is, what the project is on their To Do List.
And, and it's really subtle because it's like, oh, I want to
invest in a good team, good company, da da, da, da, da,
right. Like that.
That's a, that's a really sensible, obvious thing.
You can watch them invest like their job is to invest.
Don't they want to invest in good company?
Well, not quite, because what their poll seems to actually be
is I want to not miss out on something that could be massive.
And the difference there leads to a totally different pitch,
totally different approach to even the fundraising process.
And so it is, yeah, it's just subtle difference between I want
to invest in good team versus I want to not miss out on next big
thing leads to a totally different everything.
Yeah. And what are maybe let's talk
about the approach, anything that you'd like to add on?
Like what's the approach that you know, the the logical quote
UN quote, like maybe a slightly more conservative like somebody
that's really trying to build a very solid business and then
they communicate to VCs in that way.
How do they how do they approach it?
Yeah, so they will, they will usually start the from the point
of luck, what are we doing, which is like sensible, what are
we doing right now and where could it go?
And so they'll start like the, you know, all pitches start with
like, oh, the problem that we're solving, right.
And it might be in this case, it would be like, I don't know, I'm
just thinking of a friend, the startup that just raised and,
you know, they're doing, you know, construction stuff and OK,
cool. So this part of the problem in
construction is like a 5 billion problem a year and it's really
annoying for them. And we have a great solution to
it. And this could also go and grow
to this other thing, right? Like it could also grow and we
can handle these other problems in in construction as well,
right? And that if you hear that you're
like, yeah, that makes total sense.
They like you and I listen to that.
And there are some VCs out there like that will listen to that
and be like, Yep, I get it. I see it.
But that's not a that's an if a if a investor makes a decision
based on I don't want to miss out on something on the next
like Unicorn. That's totally wrong as the
pitch you have to start. I have the kind of like normal,
like practical crazy. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And that I've, I've drawn this
on many whiteboards when when analyzing pitches before and
it's, it's always the same thing.
It's always the same approach here because it's like you're in
your business trying to explain your business to an investor.
And and so you're like, you're going to probably take the
practical route throughout the pitch with like AO and this
could be even bigger in the future, like here's our path to
a big company at the very end. But you've already lost them by
that point because again, their, their project was not like, I
want to invest in a solid team da, da, da, da, da.
So you have to go and say all of construction is about to be
totally destroyed, right? Or it's going to be totally
replaced by AI. All of these roles, there's this
billion in in wages that are going to be in like that.
That might not be true, but it's crazy enough that it's like that
that it's like, oh, wow, I don't want to miss out on this.
Like this seems like the This seems like it's on the order of
magnitude of a thing that I would be crazy to miss out on.
And so the like what you have in this for anybody on, on Spotify
or YouTube, you can, you can pull it up on other platforms.
What we can just describe it. And I will put the link to this
in the in the show notes. But what you show is like a gap
between the crazy approach and the practical approach.
And they're both essentially linear or like horizontal
through problem solution product team.
The practical approach is a more conservative way of of
presenting it that crazy is like a step change above it.
And then they they converge on traction, which is I guess like
what are you doing now? Like don't lie about what your
business is and your your results today.
And then the vision again, like the slope just totally
dramatically changes. But how, how should I, how
should I interpret this? Like what in particular?
Like when presenting problem, solution, product and team?
Why are those different? Yeah.
So it's, it's a, a, if you think that VCs make decisions based on
like just investing in solid companies, you're going to
position yourself as close to reality and say, we are solid
operators, we are solid. Here's the problem.
We're going on for da, da, da, da, da, right?
And that's you're, you're just kind of like living in reality
for the which like, again, this makes sense to us.
And it makes sense when you're in the business of like, I'm
trying to explain you the business because my theory of
your poll is you're going to invest in a solid business with
strong upside potential. Da, da, da, da, da.
And it's like, OK, cool. The the actual anatomy of the
pitch has to be basically insane.
Look like kind of insane because it has to seem like it's
basically inevitable that there's going to be a $10
million company. And so the, the, even the
structure of the, the structure of the story is totally
different where it's not like we're solid operators, we're
doing da da, da, da, da, we're starting here, right?
Like it has to be like, no, this here's this massive thing that
is totally changing here's right like this huge opportunity
window that only we can see. We've done all this crazy stuff
and right now we're just here but actually right.
And then you, you dip your toe back into reality, but then you
kind of you keep it at the big broad pitch, like the, the big,
very future oriented pitch, right?
Like there's, there's one theory, the, the, the kind of
practical theory here is that they're investing based on
traction and like the past, the crazy is like, no, they're
investing based on the probability of becoming a $10
billion.10, you know, whatever billion dollar revenue company.
Well, let me run some of the past you, Rob that you're you're
listening to you is making me think through.
It's like, is this the, the, the VC version of like the used car
lemons problem where like when they're buying, they're so
heavily discounting everything because they just as that if you
go in there and you tell them like the a reasonable, like, you
know, the grounded and the, the way you really think about your
business view of your business, they are then going to apply
that same discount because from the outside, they can't see the,
the difference between these two types.
I don't know. So I I think of it as like
investors have pull and investors have pull and if we
understand what the real project they are trying to do is.
You just talk about it differently.
Talk about it differently and you approach the fundraise
differently. There's all this stuff out there
about like, OK, you want to do you want to structure a
fundraising process to generate FOMO basically, right.
And it's like, OK, cool that that again ties to this theory
that they're not looking to invest, like in theory, they're
kind of looking to invest in the best companies.
But their true project is I don't want to miss out on the
next trillion dollar company. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The the embarrassing headline of like passed up on Uber because,
you know, partners said that never blah blah blah and then
market was too. Small and.
Like never going to overcome these obstacles.
Yeah, that makes that that's that's super interesting.
And in my world, which is closer to impact, we, I spent about
more of the more or less about a year trying to figure out what
foundations were and what their, what their animus was, what they
were trying to achieve. And I, I approached it from this
red line perspective, which is like, you know, media is, you
know, research supported for impact.
It's scalable, it's got an audience, blah, blah, blah.
And they're their objective and foundations.
As far as I can tell. I've never worked in these
things, but my like I met the yawns and what I, I kept looking
at their like portfolios and being like, some of this stuff
just seems silly and like, but it was silly.
And reflecting on it, it was silly in a direction that
achieved something else, which is like.
Probably highly memorable or, or something that they could, they
could then sell and like champion to their their donors
or to their board. Like it was, it was more it was
presented. It was, I suspect, kind of
present. The story that they could wrap
around. It was so much stronger, even if
the impact was much more limited that I like the way it felt to
me. And I don't know if founders who
have gone through fundraising, it's like I left that thinking
like, what am I missing? Like what how could how could
somebody go after this thing which is going to like literally
by definition have a reach of 10 or 15 people for an incredible
expense and miss like this other thing that has, you know,
potentially 100,000? And I think it's just because
the story that like they were optimizing for what is something
that might I can get my board really jazzed about and believe
in my continued support or something along those lines.
Yeah. That and that's the thing here
is like if you misunderstand the project on the customer's To Do
List on on just whoever you're interacting with.
If you don't understand what the real project in their mind, in
their soul is, or if you and even subtly misinterpreted here
like these are subtle interpretation errors here of
like, like we we see what they're doing, they are
investing, they are buying, they are doing whatever, right.
And we it's like, I think I understand why you're doing it.
Yeah, but if you have these kinds of experiences where it's
like this, this doesn't feel right.
I don't understand why they funded that and not this.
I don't understand why they bought that and not that I don't
understand why anybody buys work day versus blank right.
Like it's, it's. It all makes sense to them, and
it makes sense in. Their head, they're they're.
What they are doing follows a kind of logic if you trace it
back to the real project on their To Do List.
And so that's the that's the kind of point here is if like if
it, this is a sign, right? If it feels like you're pushing,
if it feels in in your case or in a founder's case when it
doesn't quite land, you're not sure why.
It's like, well, maybe let me add more detail.
Let me add more whatever to it. It's like, no, we have to
actually understand what is the project on this person's To Do
List, what is their pull, because in your case, there's no
amount of additional detail you could have added.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly you.
Have to change the story to fit the thing in their brain.
Yeah, yeah, one of our, one of our mutual mentors, I think does
this really well. And he had figured it, he had
figured it out around storytelling.
And I, I was like, what do I do with this?
And, and looking back on it, it's like, oh, oh, like that's
that like you had, he had, I think intuitively tacked into
this is the thing that like these types of foundations that
this particular type of that's, you know, they're not a
customer, but in a certain way, they are like that somewhere
between a customer and an investor.
And like, they like this is the thing that they, they need that
they, that they're trying to do. And they would never say that
out loud, like or very rarely. It would be really hard to find
one and hard, probably hard to find AVC also that that would
say the things in the sequence that you said them, but it's but
behind it, you can kind of like navigate to understand or I
guess, you know, how would you maybe what advice would you give
to not all about not all VCs are the same.
I imagine not all VCs are doing like, you know, have have this
approach or it's maybe a blend or something like that.
How, how should founders go about identifying if they are
fundraising? What is the motivation or like
what, what are what's the job they're trying to accomplish?
What's the pull for the VC? Yeah, I mean, I think so.
I think if AVC is presented with something that they believe has
a credible chance of being a $10 billion deck of corn type
company, they would be weird not to invest in that.
And so it's, it's like I that is in general, the rule for VCs.
There are exceptions. I've met quite a few exceptions.
They're Gray and they'll tell you why they're different and
how they think about it differently.
And they'll ask for right to discuss this at a different
level. But you should by default assume
that this is the, the actual project on an early stage V CS
To Do List, right? There's later stage with all
this other stuff, but early stage V CS, that's kind of what
they're thinking. And it's a it's a blend of big
thing and team that seems to be able to execute be like crazy
enough to execute on it. But I think there's like a
general zoom out thing here, which is this is a this is a
principal pull projects on To Do List is whenever you're dealing
with somebody that you don't control and you want them to do
something or you want them, right?
Like I want you to invest in me. I want you to buy from me.
I want da da, da da da, right? Like you just you don't control
them. So you have to figure out what
they want or what they are trying to do.
And the the, and this is like relevant if you're building a
feature, if you're building right, if you want them to use
something, you won't just want them to do something.
You have to figure out what they are trying to do.
And the there's just a nuance to this of two things that seem
like they're basically the exact same thing if you squint lead to
totally different behaviors here.
And so I think this is just like an interesting case of how that
comes to be and how that that shows up in fundraising.
But this also shows up in like the products.
I, I mentioned Rippling and Gusto and payroll here where
it's like, OK, we both, yeah, they're at slightly different
times. But like, the story is roughly
that they both looked at people who are doing payroll with old
clunky systems, payroll and HR stuff with old clunky, you know,
first Gen. systems and, and they're like, OK, cool.
Like clearly people are struggling against this.
Clearly they will RIP something out of our hands.
But they had slightly different interpretations of what buyers
wanted. So Gusto, for example, was like,
well, what they really want is to do the to have this work be
delightful. They don't want to be looking at
something that like, you know, basically looks like MS-DOS
right and and functions like it. It's just like ugly, difficult,
a lot of clicks. They just want something that's
like really clean and nice to deal.
They want a nice experience and Ripling, I feel like came and
was like, yeah, no, they just want to automate every all of
the tusks. They want to do nothing to do
with this. And those are like very, these
are subtly different, but lead to Ripling has a really
interesting architecture to their product that I don't think
Gusto has. And it wound up being OK.
Well, the kind of person who actually cares about the
experience in Gusto's case is a smaller business, I'm pretty
sure because it's, it's the owner of the business who's the
one clicking and logging in and da, da, da, da.
And, and for Rippling, well, maybe it's bigger companies
where that's the case. And so it's you can see how just
like those subtle differences in understanding what the project
on a buyer's To Do List, they lead to totally different
businesses. Yeah, fascinating.
I love it. It's got it's making me think
about a customer but that I'm working with right now.
But why don't we keep this one, this one short?
Any other takeaways from this one, Rob, that you'd leave with?
Leave with Founders I. Don't know I blocked out like
admin free. Rob is Rob is tired right now,
but you're gonna, if you listen to this, you'll be surprised at
some of the insights that you dropped.
Probably. Well, this was great.
PMF camp is going on right now. But as a just like APSA, excuse
me, the sessions are recorded. We keep them on, you know, on a,
on a notion that founders in the community can access.
And so you don't have to wait until like there's an upcoming
PMF camp to get access to it. If you hit a moment where it's
like I'm wrestling with some of the stuff, I'd love to get
closer to Rob's ideas. Like there's async stuff and
there's also one-on-one ways to to work with Rob.
Anything else, Rob, that we want to add before we we end today?
There was something, but I've already.
Forgotten it, so it's gone. OK, we'll put it in the show
notes if so. All right.
Take care, everybody. We'll see you in a week.