Rob, big day we are. We are dropping knowledge.
We've got a big new presentation that's out.
Tell us about it. What's going on?
Yeah, So I don't remember why I thought to do this.
At some point it was like, cool, I'm just going to, I'm going to
make a big presentation. And so I had done, I done one of
these two years ago to give a six hour workshop or like a full
day workshop at Harvard. And I think I've been building
like with the book, with everything I've done since then,
I've been building a like evolved version of that that is,
I think probably 10 times better and also much longer.
And so it turns out it is currently 150 slides on why do
startups take off, how to make startups take off.
And it will likely keep growing. But I'm going to.
I'm forcing myself to release this version today.
Yeah. And on that note, it's like,
yes, some of the core ideas are similar, like you use some of
the same words around demand, but there's also things that are
in the in the last two years since that since that drop are
just new, like it's your your thinking has evolved like poll,
even as a concept didn't exist at that time.
And so this is revisiting kind of like your hallmark.
Why what happens that causes startups to take off, but
through a better like a better lens, like a more complete lens
is, is how I read it. And yeah, it is a it is a
mammoth. I'll, I'll share it here just so
that people know it's know it's like a real thing.
But what you do is in different pieces you walk through or
instead of me putting words to it, Rob, how, how would you
describe like how this is structured and what people are
going to find in it? Yeah.
So it's framed from the typical position that most start-ups,
basically every single startup finds itself in every single
founder, every single startup, and a lot of established
companies find themselves in where you have a product or an
idea or whatever that is objectively valuable and
differentiated and interesting. And even customers are saying
that and they're saying they want it or they're saying they
need it or, or you know, something like you're hearing
all the right things, you have all the right pieces.
And yet you're not, they're not buying fast, you're not taking
off. And what I've realized in the
past couple of years of doing this is that basically that is
the, that is not the natural state of the world, but that is
the default outcome of the way that we are taught to think
about startups. And so that's where, where the,
the, this all starts, which is this place where everything
makes sense and doesn't work. It isn't what isn't taking off
specifically. And so from there we have to
basically say, OK, why is this happening and what's causing
this? And there are a ton of books out
there and playbooks and there's a ton of advice out there.
What are we missing here? And I found the right, I, what I
think is the right way to talk about that, which gets us to
the, the core question, which is OK, why do people actually buy
things? And from there, like that's
where I think the core misunderstanding, which is that
we think that people buy things because they have pain points,
because they have problems, because we offer value, because
they want a product, when in fact those things are not
related to purchases. Yeah.
And once you embrace that difference, you can build a new
model for thinking about startups that makes it both more
intuitive, which is kind of helpful, but more importantly,
actually work when when everything up until now is often
intuitive, it just doesn't work. This is a model that is both
intuitive and works. And we've seen this a time and
time again where start-ups go from the kind of pain points
problems, vision da, da, da, da, like value props that they are
pushing onto a market where the market doesn't pull to just like
switching this little bit of thinking at the core about why
are people buying things and everything about their business
changing at that point. Yeah.
And there's, you know, one thing that while I was reading through
this, I've been as close or closer to it like you're
thinking, you know, for the last several years as basically
anybody. And it was still helpful for me
to connect the dots between this is how the system works.
Like maybe there's been concepts like the toll booth.
OK, that resonates. And you know, pinpoints versus
problems which you just talked about like maybe maybe that
sense and OK, like the delivery mechanism or the pricing, like
maybe there's been some of these concepts, but they're a little
bit disjointed. Like they're like tips that live
on their own. But what what this presentation
or like what this drop does is it shows you how the system
works when it is and like how the different elements connect
to each other and why they connect to each other in a way
that, yeah, actually, you know, it connects to that foundational
understanding of why people buy. And then what is the system if
if that's where you start, what is the system of a startup that
develops as a consequence of that?
And yeah, exactly it's, it's the goal is to build 1 model, yeah,
for startups that. And from that model, you can
know what to do at any one point in time.
And so it starts with the why people buy designs around that
and gives you a way to look at a start up that tells you what to
do in any single moment. So you go from, it feels like
there's a lot of things that are important.
We're trying a lot of things. We're hearing all the right
things, feel like we're doing all the right things.
And people aren't buying fast. We're not taking off to I am
just doing one thing. Yeah, and we are taking it's
like a, it's a. The goal is to create a.
So the goal is to describe reality.
And reality happens to have seems to have this this this
magical thing to it where where it works this way and it happens
to be simple. Yeah, well, we will in the
coming weeks dive into some of those elements and I'm sure go
like way deeper. You've got some more stuff
planned on this that the way to access it.
We'll we'll drop the link in the description of this.
It's going to be through Rob's sub sack is where you can just
visit there and download the whole presentation.
It's free. Rob, anything to add on access
or feedback that you want to get from folks on this?
Yeah, it's so this is it's currently 150 slides.
It is an overview or like a taste of the book which you
should pre-order. It's coming out in July.
It is also very much not complete.
I've realized that I am going to at some point write a textbook
and, and I don't want to, but it, one must be written on this.
And so I, I think I have to. And so as you go through this,
if there are things that aren't clear or things that are missing
or whatever, just reach out, e-mail me, reach out on
LinkedIn, whatever to. And you know, I may or may not
add slides or I'll just keep these concepts in the back of my
mind to work for the next evolution or for the textbook.
Yeah. Love it.
Perfect. Well, we'll have all that info.
I'd say, like for me, when I went through it, it's it's long.
You go through the concepts quickly, like I would say like
40 minutes to skim it. You'll want to revisit some of
them. You might, you know, save some
more time in case one of them you just like want to sit with
that idea. But just in case folks want to,
you know, think through like, oh, I don't have time to read
it. You do.
I promise. And yeah, with that, Rob,
anything else we we want to hit before we go?
I don't think you have time not to read through this.
Honestly, like actually that's a better way because you're gonna
spend, it'll change the way that you spend the rest of your day,
the rest of your week, maybe the way you approach your business.
Awesome. Well, we will see everybody in
Rob's sub stack and next week resume kind of like more normal
programming. See you later.
Yeah, later.