Bend the world to fit demand | w/ Rob Snyder

Well, Rob, welcome back, man.

We're still here.

You're, you're partly here. Like we're seeing like a ghost zombie version of Rob Snyder today. Yeah.

I feel like this whole, this whole month has been like, I don't know if we talked about this before, but I basically did the thing where I was like, okay, I'm just going to move my Calendly to like some date far in the future. And I need to just like focus on stuff. And that, that far in the future was like last week and this week. And so I've been in meetings like every 15 minutes for like the past 2 weeks at the exact time that our baby has started teething. And so I just like, I'm like walking around with this like basically a concussion right now.

So, uh, just a warning to our listener that the already low standard you have set for whatever we do, there's going to be some random tangents in this one that are like Rob trying to catch up with his thoughts or, or something like that. Um, I imagine that Elizabeth, uh, your, your 7-month-year-old daughter— uh, 7-month-year-old, that's good, that's good English. We're both, both struggling. You're 7.

You have no excuse though.

Yeah, I know, I don't have a 7-month-year-old daughter. Um, uh, her teething is actually, uh, relevant for today's, uh, blog post about, uh, uh, Pampers. We're gonna talk about diapers, which is, it's a, it's a strange departure from B2B SaaS.

Yeah. I mean, both are kind of shitty topics.

You know, the, uh, we got a mailbag from Ella, uh, uh, who left a comment on your, um, on your Substack saying, um, that's great. Basically just casting aside our entire, your entire last post, um, which I thought was awesome, but Ella, very unimpressed. That's great. Any tips on finding an initial pull hypothesis? We have good news, Ella. We're gonna get to that eventually. Also, you know, reading through this, today we're talking about supply. Yeah. You are the demand guy. And as I was going through this, you know the famous Allen Iverson quote, like, "We talking about practice, not a game, not a game, practice." I feel like that applies here. Like, we talking about supply, not demand, Not demand. We talk about supply. We're actually going to talk a little bit about demand too. But what's— let me, let me read something here and then I want you to give us the context, Rob, on, on what's going on, that why you wrote this. Demand is what buyers are trying to accomplish in their lives. We can't say that enough. We probably will. We might say it too much for our listener, but supply is what we control. The relationship between demand and supply is interesting. Demand creates supply. It pulls it into existence. What's, what's going on right now, Rob, that this was the thing on your mind?

Yeah. So basically I created that whole canvas of, um, like all of the frameworks in one, one place where it kind of went through kind of demand, the case study, the case study factory, the path to product-market fit. And I looked at that and I was like, huh, there's nothing on supply in here. Like we should probably write about that at some point. And I felt like it was implicit in a lot of the things that we've, like we've talked about and I've written, but I think getting into the exact mechanics on the supply side and how they relate to the demand side will help a lot of people who are still in the, the like mode of, oh,, but like, we gotta talk about the product, right? Like, doesn't have to be a good product. What is a good product? And so this is gonna kind of talk about, okay, how does, how does demand actually bring supply into existence? And what is the use of the pull framework versus problems or pain points in exposing the space that supply can take?

And I, and I imagine it feels like a lot of founders want to talk about supply because that's like what we've like, that's probably your first conversations particularly when they're not super familiar with your demand frameworks, are probably about supply because that's what we instinctively talk about because it's what we're building or what, you know, founders or companies are building. And so you write in this blog about how, you know, most startups start with supply and then try to match that to demand, which is reversed. Like it's back. Why, why doesn't that work? Or like, what do you, what do you see from founders and why is this happening. Yeah.

So I think we should probably get, get into the like exact mechanics here, but, but, um, when we start on the supply side and when we start with like, we start with kind of our vision for how the world should work. Oh, we should do AI workflows, right? AI is a thing. AI workflows should be everywhere, right? So I'm gonna build an AI workflows platform. I've seen this probably 40 times, right? And it's, it's like, okay, so we have this, we wind up going and building this AI workflows platform saying everybody should want this. And then we go out and try to convince convince people and they see it and they like get it. And they're like, yeah, I could see how that would be useful. And they don't buy. And it feels like we were kind of pushing, persuading, and convincing people. And it's not really working. And you contrast that with a startup that's just like taking off with people ripping the product out of their hands that's buying. And the difference when you look from the outside is really hard to understand. 'Cause they, you know, both have fancy websites. They both write like are using AI and they kind of have workflows, but it's because one startup started on the demand side where they were like, okay, someone's trying to accomplish something and they are blocked with that. And so they're blocked for a specific reason. We're gonna build a product that unblocks them, that like overcomes that reason they are blocked. And because of that, they're actively prioritizing They will pull this product out of our hands. And that's the force that's happening underneath this that has shaped their product, their supply, their messaging, such that you look at these two different websites, one that's kind of pushing supply, the other one that's fitting supply into the space that Pull has, has exposed, look the same, but one company's going like this and the other just feels like they're pushing and people are like nodding, but they're not buying.

Yeah, yeah. And on that one, I like the implication that you draw in this one around how does the shape of supply respond to what is fixed in demand. You actually write about demand is fixed and supply is variable, but most think, or founders are at risk of thinking supply is fixed. Basically, that's the same as saying You start with supply, you build the thing that you think is valuable, and then you find demand or you try to convince, which is implicitly saying like your demand should adjust to fit the thing that I have created. Talk about like this podcast is called The Physics of Startups. This is kind of close to a scientific, like economic theory. When you say demand is fixed and supply is variable, What does that mean?

Yeah. So, so what that means, and I'm gonna cut, I might cut this out cuz it's like a little bit too, or I might cut this outta the final version, but it's fine for us to talk about here cuz I think it, you know, it might be like just too nerdy for even the nerdiest, you know, blog posts that I write. Um, but, but okay. So we usually think that, that supply, right? I have this product idea, right? And, and in some way we're kind of putting that as the fixed, you know, element in, in, in the, in the equation, right? And we'll say product idea is fixed. Demand, who wants it, is variable. And so my job is to come up with a brilliant product idea, build a cool product, and then go figure out who wants it, convince some people to want it, right? When in fact demand is fixed because we don't control demand, right? People are trying to accomplish things in their lives and they're running into walls. That's just happening out there in the world. And we should be building something that fits what they are trying to accomplish, and which, and we can kind of conjure whatever we possibly can, you know, we could, you know, raise billions of dollars, we can get the leading AI scientists, or we can just kind of like vibe code some AI slop as long as it fits and helps them make progress on the thing they are pushing against. We don't really control that they are pushing in a specific direction, they're trying to accomplish something and they're blocked. That's fixed. What we build to help them get unblocked is the variable piece.

Yeah, super interesting. And the, and the fixed part is, uh, reflecting on it in the, in the context of Kumbh Mela, but I did this wrong. Like I, I built supply, we built products, we built audiences, we built supply before we figured out demand. And so when you say it's fixed, in that case, it is literally fixed. Like you would have to, and And that the equivalent for having written code, having built products, having built websites, it is actually a thing that exists that is difficult to change. Um, and then you can only really change it around the margins after you've built something until you're finally like burn the ships, like, or not burn the ships, just like burn it down and, uh, like restart around demand. So this, like that fixed concept is you don't realize when you're building it how much you are actually committing to a line when you're not sure what that line should be.

And this, this is actually why one of the most common patterns I see is when startups actually find demand, they burn their product down and just rebuild almost entirely from scratch around the thing that actually fits demand.

Yeah. Super interesting. Are there, are there any that come to mind on that? You don't, we don't have to get into specifics, but I did this.

Uh, so we basically had built out this entire workforce management platform that we thought the the world needed. And we got pilot customers and all this kind of stuff. And then we realized after 2 years of just hitting our heads against the wall that someone was like, listen, I don't need your, your workforce. Like, I don't even understand the words you're saying. I am trying to recruit hourly employees and my existing sources are not working. Can you offer something that fits that? I was like, oh yeah, I can text and email your past applicants and former employees. And I did that. And, and so that was a like supply that fit the demand they had. They were trying to recruit, but their existing sources were not working. I came up with like, that gave me the like shape that my supply needed to fit into. It basically needed to be a different source of work of, of applicants that actually worked and, and complemented what they were exist like currently doing. Okay, cool. I found something that fit in that space and I just wound up texting, emailing their past applicants and former employees to reengage them. I did that through like spreadsheets and free tools online to just figure out if it worked. And they were way happier with that hacky version of spreadsheets and whatever than they were with this big kind of fixed supply idea that I had built. Yeah.

Very interesting. If you were to go back thinking about that, that version of your business, of your, of your first startup, how would you have skipped, like what would, what would you have done differently to avoid 2 years of like wasted, wasted engineering and product development?

Yeah. It's like this entire concept of, of of thinking about the supply side excessively and starting from the supply side where we were basically like the, the kind of like way we thought the world worked was entrepreneur has a big vision. Entrepreneur builds version 1 of that vision and convinces a bunch of people they should want it. Right. And so when you do that, you spend a lot of time in slide decks. You spend a lot of time pitching at conferences. You do spend a lot of time building something and kind of, you know, begging people to be design partners for it, never realizing that you're just focused entirely on the supply side. And that may have no— and often, like, it would be weird if that had any relation to real demand out there. And so I would have— I mean, it would've just been like gone. If I had a time capsule, I'd just go back and just punch myself straight in the face and be like, listen, nobody cares. About your product at all. Here is what you are actually looking for. Yeah. You are looking for somebody who's trying to make progress and running into a wall because their current options aren't good enough. And the only way to find that is by talking to 5 to 10 potential customers a week and/or going and like doing their job with them.

Yeah. Yeah. And th— this actually kind of relates to the, the mailbag question from Ella around coming up with the initial pull hypothesis. It's like if you were to go back and redo it, it would be basically, I, I don't know what I do. Start with this is the person or this is the hypothesis. Like what, where do you start with that?

Yeah. So you can start, you can, I mean, it, it depends what you know. So if you're just in the like, hey, I wanna find an idea stage, like just pick a person that you want to serve and go observe them, work alongside them. And what you're looking for is not product ideas. You're looking for places where they are running into a wall and they're kind of pushing against a wall right now where they feel stuck, unable to do the thing they're trying to do for a specific reason.

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Should we talk about diapers. So you've got in this blog— I don't think I mentioned the name of it— the newsletter, Substack. I call it newsletter, Substack, and blog, which I'm sure is like confusing, but it's called Bend the World to Fit Demand: A Guide to the Supply Side. You go into in some amount of depth, a depth, a blue line that exists on a diaper. As a person who has no children, I was not aware that this existed. Why don't you, Rob, why don't you frame a little bit like the context and why this is a good example of, of supply fitting demand?

Yeah. So, I mean, I'll give you two guesses as to where this idea came from or when this idea came to me. But, but so on a diaper on a Pampers diaper. I don't know if it's on other diapers. This is a Pampers house. Thank you very much.

And so on a Pampers diaper, this, this podcast episode brought to you by Pampers and specifically the R&D team at Pampers.

Anyways, there is a yellow line on a Pampers diaper that turns blue if the diaper needs to be changed. Cool.

Okay.

That's an interesting innovation. I was staring at it one day and like, huh, I wonder how they came up with that. Right. Because it's quite useful. And so there's like two versions of this story. One is they were like sat, they sat in some kind of conference room and they're like, huh, how can we make our diapers better? Right. And we're like, what's the future of diapers? Right. And it's like, and you can just like see them going through this process of like ideation and nonsense like that. Right. And that's, that's basically starting on the supply side and they probably never would have come up with this idea. From, from that direction. But instead, you can see where this idea could come from if you, if you use the pull model and see on the demand side, which is that, look, I, as somebody who happens to change diapers quite frequently, right? Like, uh, and I need to know if this particular diaper needs to be changed right now or not. Right? And I need to do that because I don't want the baby to be uncomfortable in a dirty diaper. I don't want to be like, you know, I don't want to be a negligent dad. Right. And so, and so that with that, we kind of have the, the demand. This is the kind of thing that I am pushing against. This is the, the project that's on my to-do list and why it's unavoidable multiple different times per day. And so they can see that happening. That's the, the P and the U in the pull framework. But then they need to understand—

I'm going to pull that up, by the way, for, for folks who are just listening, you won't be able to see it, but if you're on Spotify or YouTube, I'm going to pull up the pull framework that Rob built for this and the blog. Anyways, keep, keep going, Rob.

Yeah. So they, so at that point they know kind of what I'm, what I need to do, what I'm trying to do. And then they need to understand kind of like, what are the current options that I'm considering? What do, what do I currently do? And what are the options that I've considered and tried? Like, are my current options good enough? Right. And so before the blue line existed, my options were like, I don't know, pick the baby up. Put her on a changing table and take the diaper off and see if, you know, if it needs to be changed. And like, that's a lot of effort. And sometimes I can't tell, it's, you know, it's nighttime or whatever. It's difficult. And so you can see there what they're observing is I'm trying to do something and I have these kind of workarounds that are not quite good right now. They're not good. And, and, you know, I'm just tired and it's, it's, it's difficult to do that. And so from that, they can, they can then say, okay, I've filled out the pull framework here. Supply that could fit this would, would take the shape of, it would be a feature that lets me see if the diaper is dirty without taking it off. You can see that basically what that's doing is that's saying, okay, that's the project. That is on my to-do list, it helps me accomplish that project without the limitations of my existing options. And that the kind of project, the, the progress I'm trying to make, but I'm blocked on because of limitations, basically gives us the shape that supply needs to fit into. And that gives us kind of the requirements for what we need to build. This is a a fairly simple, like, kind of mechanistic thing of, okay, if there is pull, if, if the person's trying to accomplish something but blocked for a specific reason, our supply just needs to help them accomplish that thing without the limitations that currently exist. That's the, those are the kind of like high-level requirements for what supply needs to be.

Yeah. So let, let me try to put this in the way that I think about it. And Rob, tell me if I'm wrong about this. The, the thing— what, what is important to take away from this is less about the blue line. It's more like when you observe a customer who is running into a limitation, you need to understand the shape of what they are trying to do. And then after you understand that shape, that's when you start to think through what is the supply that fits that. Rather than, rather than starting with how do we innovate around our product or like those types of questions.

Yeah. Thinking of pull as the starting point here, right? Because we often, you know, you'll often see people are using clunky and ugly software, but like, as an example, but like that doesn't necessarily like, it's, it's unclear if there's anything they're trying to accomplish that they are blocked from accomplishing because their software is ugly and clunky. We did this with like HR systems, right? We would look at the existing HR systems that, that like existed in the market and we were like, wow, those have terrible UX. They're ugly as all hell. Like they, they're, you'd be stupid to use that. Right. But it, it, it like turned out there wasn't actual kind of pressure that was being exerted where they weren't able to get to where they wanted to go.

Yeah. Yeah. That, that it's related to, you know, I mean, something that we've talked about in the past is like basically people fly in startup airplanes when, you know, their, their wings are duct taped, like things are sort of broken, but they're still taking off because the demand is like such a powerful force and so much stronger than any supply that you can build trying to push it. You know, the, there are a couple things that I wanted to to call out specifically that you wrote. One is pull the unavoidable project with bad options, which I thought was an interesting way of describing pull exposes an opening in a buyer's life. If we fit this opening, they will pull the product out of our hands and buy it as if it is irresistible. If we don't fit that opening well, it would be weird if they bought it. I just thought that was an interesting distillation of it. Another one that I think is like an important reminder for me, like talking about gut punches from the last episode. The supply side only gets points for fitting my pool. It doesn't matter how much effort it took to build it. And even adding onto that, it feels to me like there, you actually, if you do get points, it's for simplicity. It's not for building complex things. It's for building simple things that fit, fit pool.

Yeah. I think of it as, okay. So what Pull does is it exposes the requirements. It exposes the box that supply needs to fit into such that buyers will rip it out of our hands. That's like, that's what it does. And once we have that box, the question is, what can we build that fits that box? And At that point, it's like a, it's, there's a variety of options, right? We don't really get to decide on the box. The box exists just as, as like requirements. What are they trying to accomplish and what's missing? Right. Okay. That's the box. Within the box, we can't, it, there are a variety of ways we can tackle it from again, like something that's super simple to something that's wildly complex, but it's just about the requ— like The right approach here is just to fit that box, to fit the space that has been, that is like available to us. And, and everything is downstream of the, the fitting what that box is. And sometimes it is like, and this is why it's hard to describe like what is a good product, right? A good product is just something that fits that box better than any other alternative. And that might mean that you spent a billion dollars building up data centers and hiring leading AI researchers because that's the shape of the box that existed. Yeah. Or it might mean that it's something ludicrously simple that took one person an hour to make, but it's just such a perfect fit for that box. And then it's like, okay, perfect. They're like, everyone's going to rip it out of our hands and we're going to grow like crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And yeah, you say, you talk about it as fitting a box. I, the mental image that I had while I was reading through this was like, actually the child's game of, you know, you have like a star shape and they have to fit the, like, the star thing into it, or the triangle, and they have to fit the triangle into it. It's like that triangle exists. The hole that is a triangle or the hole that is a star exists, which is the question that I'm continually asking myself. It's like, if the block did not exist to fit into the triangle shape, would the triangle shape still exist? And if, you know, that is the way to think about like like the demand in that case for the boxy iPhone.

I love that. I love that. That's, and, and right, like we can think about that as like there was an iPhone-shaped hole in the world, right? And the job, like our job as founders is to understand the shape of the hole first. Understand the shape of, of like what's absent so we can build something that perfectly fits that. And like, that's, that's the job. And we do, we often don't even realize we're supposed to be looking for, like, what's the shape of the opening?

Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, that's, that's great, Rob. There's, um, a, uh, maybe, maybe one, anything that we want to dive into around B2B context specifically, we gave your example. Um, are, are there any other like founder examples that are useful to talk through?

Yeah. So like, let me give a, let me, uh, a classic example that I see really often. I, I gave the example of the like horizontal workflows startup. That's like a classic one where it's like, okay, AI's gonna be a thing. What can we build with AI? Oh, AI's gonna move us from deterministic to non-deterministic, which means workflows can do da da da da da, right? And so we're gonna build horizontal workflows. And that's, that's just like pure supply side thinking. The, the next one that's like super common is social impact startups. So anybody in sustainability, clean tech, like any of these spaces, what they tend to do is they tend to have this like really noble mission, right? That's like, we want all buildings in the future to be carbon neutral or, or whatever, like some, something that's like a genuinely noble aspiration. Got ex— they're often like very experienced in the space. Everybody also like shares that vision with them who's in the space. Everybody wants that. And so we kind of go from that and we build a product based on that. That's like one step towards the vision. Vision. And you know, that, by the way, that vision has a market size of $40 trillion and yada yada, like, and so, but we build something towards that and we show it to people and everyone's like, oh my gosh, that's crazy. You can win awards for, for like, you know, how innovative it is. You can get on panels and then nobody buys it because again, it's this, like, it's like on the supply side, future vision world side of things. We'll get a lot of nods and a lot of applause. But nobody will buy it because it's not something that fits. Again, they're trying to make progress. These potential customers are trying to make progress in their day-to-day and they are blocked in some way, shape, or form. And we've just kind of ignored that entire side of the equation to go and talk about our vision and how the world should work and the product that's going to get us there. But that, That does not represent the actual day-to-day progress somebody is trying to make and where they're blocked. And so what you usually find in that situation is you go back and some small slice of what you've built actually usually does, or can with like some modification, fit what these people are trying to accomplish. But it requires basically like a mental palate cleansing on the supply side and really just saying, like, okay, take out all the fluff, take out all the future vision stuff. Who is trying to accomplish something today such that we show up and they will buy something from, from us. And then in our minds, on our kind of like planning thing, on a kind of on our whiteboards, we can have the path from there to the ultimate vision. But to get to the ultimate vision, you must first survive. And so the ex— the like Other example here is Tesla's first car, right? It was in theory about clean energy, but it was in practice about very rich people who wanted to show off that they were both rich and hip in a way that was eco— and like hip at that point meant like ecologically sensible or whatever. Yeah. And their existing option was a freaking Prius, which doesn't show that you are rich or hip. And so the, the Roadster fit perfectly for that kind of person, but it was, and so like, that's why it worked in that situation. That's why they kind of like, they, they did all that work on like, the world needs to be like powered by clean energy in the future. Electric vehicles must be a thing. Cool. We're going to hold that to the side and say on the demand side, what is the actual attack vector that can work today? And it turns out it's rich people who want to look cool.

Yeah. Which, um, you know, in starting, if you start with that as pull, you design a Tesla-shaped sleek, very stands out, a very obviously different product that, uh, that draws attention to those like signaling features, which Prius did the opposite of by like designing like the clunkiest, nerdiest looking like vehicle that's ever existed. The new Priuses, I saw one in, in town the other day, look a lot like a Tesla now, which is like kind of, kind of interesting. Maybe that's, maybe that's what they're responding to. Just so listening to you talk about the environmental or sustainability startups, like it's the same. It's literally just the same thing with the business that I built.

Yeah.

Thank you for not running full force at my company, Rob, but just for— yeah, if our, if our listeners feeling like, oh, that resonates like that, it hits me straight in the heart. We ended up building something that had very strong demand from parents and very weak demand and very confusing from, yeah, from, from organizations. And now exactly the way you described it of there is actually a part of our business that we sort of stumbled into developing, which is the way that we connect with influencers and with like earned media and things like that. That ends up— that has— is showing signs of life for demand. Like we have some other stuff that we're doing, but there's— that's where we're like, where I'm interested in pursuing pool. But it's the exact thing that you talked through, Rob, of we built something. It— there wasn't a a strong pull foundation for it. Now that that is the framework that we're using for developing the future of our organization, there is a part of our business that's an interesting thing and it's like designing and communicating around that. Yeah.

And it's, it's like this ha— okay. Now that you have this, this like way of seeing things, you can see why so many startups fail because, right, it's just random luck that you have this, that you real— that like just happened to fit somebody's demand. This is actually like, if you look at basically every startup story, it is because we're just like foie gras with all this terrible advice. We, we all just kind of build something. Yeah. And then like some of us get lucky and, and of the people who get lucky that some piece of it fit demand. Some of us realize that we got lucky and it fit demand and, you know, and it's just like, yeah, this is why I just get so angry at stuff. It's, it's, it's just the way we approach it now makes it just kind of lucky if you fit demand.

Yeah, totally would have been really nice for Harvard to have taught us this, Rob, when we were there. I know that's an upcoming topic.

There's 3 takeaways that you that you list.

One is— Lesson 1 is demand comes first. Lesson 2 is supply-fit. Supply-fit is a function of pull, like it's an— it's on the equal side, the other side of the equation. And then Lesson 3 is innovative supply can't overcome weak demand. Let's talk about like takeaways and implications for founders, like maybe using one of those 3 or any of them. Like what should founders be thinking and doing now?

Yeah. I mean, like, basically this is gonna come back to the same thing that we just harp on every single time, which is like, fill out the pull framework. That's your starting point. And now hopefully you can see how the pull framework exposes a shape in the world where something that you build could fit into such that it would be like, that the market will rip it out of your hands. But that starts with the PULL framework. Fill that out and look at it and give yourself an honest assessment. If it's just a bunch of fluff that doesn't represent any real human, or if it is real. If it's not real, drop everything, go find, go, go fight, go in person with potential customers, do whatever it takes, go goblin mode, right? Like anything is, is like inbounds because if you focus on literally anything else, it would be weird if what you did fit pull. That's the, and, and the, the like last point here, which is that like innovative supply can't overcome weak pull is a really hard thing to appreciate because Basically all the startup stories we know are usually examples of very strong pull. We don't see all of the examples of innovative products that fit weak pull because they all died. Yeah. It, what matters is the pressure that the buyer is exerting. They're pushing against this wall such that And the current options are not good enough such that when you show up, they are like, oh my gosh, where have you been? And rip the product out of your hands. And that has to repeat. It has to exist at the individual level and repeat. And unless you have that, everything else is going to suck for you.

Hmm.

No matter how good your product is.

Yeah, like, welcome to the pain cave and like a very confusing pain cave as well because you have something that sometimes it'll work. It does exactly like you can build very fancy, very expensive things and still be in the middle of the pain cave because people aren't buying. It's very confusing. They're telling you, especially when you have a beautiful product that functions like it's hard to understand why it's not. Being pulled. Um, and that's like the wor— I think the worst version of the pink cave.

And an example here actually that I've been thinking, and I might write another, an article about this soon because I've, I just watched like one of Founder's 5 sales calls and in the calls they are basically going through the pull framework with the potential customer and the customer is essentially agreeing to everything. But I, I'm not not feeling the pressure against the wall, right? Like the customer pushing, they're just agreeing. And so my sense is that that force is like super important to understand and to look for in these calls. So if a customer, if potential customer is like leaning back saying, yeah, it's really important for us to solve Like that's, there's, there's something different there. It's about the, the force that they are exerting to like accomplish something in their lives and anything short of that, you can fill out the pull framework and it, they can like agree to it. But what really matters, right? The pull framework only works not if it's logical and they agree to it, but that they like actually try to buy from you.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And like the types of words they're using, the thing that tipped me off to the, like the part of our business that may end up, you know, working there, I think has a better pull element to it is I had a conversation with somebody in a marketing department and they talked about a crisis that they were in and like that kind of a word of like that they were like their whole job was focused on like solving that particular thing. And so it was this, TB, TBD, if we're, if the supply that we have, again, this is going in the wrong direction. If the supply we have fits that, but, but that is like the kind of language that would be indicative of like, like this is an urgent problem that they don't have something that they're able to, that easily solves it.

In that case, your task is not to say, here's the supply we have. Yeah. Right. Your task is to say, all right, screw that. It sounds like the supply you want has these, has this shape. Is that right? And they're like, yes, do you have that? And you're like, well, gimme $50K and I can figure it out. Right? Like, and, and, and that's actually how it works versus showing up there saying, well, here's the supply we have. Let me try to fit it into that shape. Right? And, and it's no, it's here's the supply I'm hearing that you want.

Yeah, I like that. It's like almost forget that you have a product and then like describe the, like, try your basic, you're kind of feeling around in the dark for what are the boundaries of this particular demand that exists and to, to develop a, an orientation that you then reflect in your supply.

Yeah, exactly. It's exactly that. You're in, and like the hard part before the pull framework was like, we didn't even know what we were looking for, right? You're looking for pain points. A little bit of sh— no problems. Like, no, Pull Framework at least gives you the shape, the, like the context of what shapes look like so that you know what you're looking for and you can make a very, like a non-magical jump from there to like what we offer. Right. And then once you have that, Then you can go and kind of like do your ayahuasca retreats to come up with the wildest way to like freaking come up with that and whatever, raise a jillion dollars. But yeah, it's, it's like this part of the equation is, it is just a very kind of fixed part of the equation. Yeah.

Manned as a children's toy. Star-shaped children's toy. That's what I'm going to take away from this. Rob, why don't we— anything else you want to cover before we, you know, talk about some interesting, or like your next bootcamp and stuff?

Uh, no.

Well, why don't we end, uh, first week of November, you've got a sprint bootcamp thing. What's the version of that? Uh, you know, what's the goal?

Yeah. So, so context is I've been running these for like a year and a half now and constantly changing them and over the summer. Uh, like it's basically like, okay, we watch a bunch of sales calls, review a bunch of outreach with the goal of you seeing enough examples of other startups figuring this out that you can apply this to your own situation. You can get a ton of feedback as well. And so I've been running these for a while. Quite a few of the startups that have gone through them have taken off and keep, keep trying to improve it as we get closer to ground truth on like what works and how it matters, uh, and, and what matters and like how to attack it. And so basically this whole past summer I've been working Interestingly, with a couple venture funds, uh, to like further shape the materials. And so we didn't do a public one this summer because a couple venture funds that I don't know if I can mention their names, so I'm not going to, brought me in-house to like work on this. And so we're going to be doing the next one. There's 5 sessions as always, right? It's, um, like, like actually deep dive into what demand looks like in the bounds of it. Pipeline, how to, you know, schedule a shit ton of meetings, discovery in call 1, pitch demo call 1, and then kind of sales process after call 1. And then there's like office hours and stuff as part of it. So, uh, yeah, cool.

Yeah. You, and you were having been along for the ride, you were getting rave reviews a year and a half ago and your ideas have developed to like a ton since then. So, um, I'm, I'm excited to, to see, uh, be part of this. Yeah.

My, my goal I've been thinking about this, just so it's clear, is like, I've been thinking about this and this will probably get me never invited back. But basically what we learned at HBS, right? We were taught entrepreneurship things at HBS and also, or a few HBS startups became very successful. I don't think there was a causal link there. I don't think A caused B. My goal is for what I'm putting together to be exact, like A causes B in like as many cases as humanly possible. And that's the entire goal of this. And I will not sleep until baby starts teething again, or stops teething, but also until, you know, until we solve this.

You've got like, uh, there's the dread of picking up heavy weights. There's a 7-month-year-old, uh, daughter teething, and now you You've, you've put another thing onto your, onto your sleep schedule. Rob is gonna get over the next couple of weeks. You're just gonna see an increasing zombie Rob. And how do you, Rob, just real quick, if folks are interested at your website is probably the right, we'll drop the link in the show notes. Yeah.

It's all, everything's run out of a Google Doc. There's a Google Doc that explains it. And we probably, I probably just did a better job explaining it here than in the entire Google Doc. So maybe I'll write some more in the doc, but there's that, there's a link to sign up. Up. I used to offer 15-minute sessions with me. I no longer have time for that. So just email me if you have any questions about it, if you're fit.

Yeah. And there's a short form to fill out to work with Rob or apply if you wanna work one-on-one with Rob. Yeah. We'll drop that information in the description. Otherwise, unless you have anything else, Rob, we'll catch everybody next week.

I don't know. I blacked out this whole time. I have no idea what I said many times.

Pampers and supply and Children's Toys. Great. All right.

See everybody.