Demand: Force against the status quo | w/ Rob Snyder

Well, Rob, welcome back, man.

Let's do it. Yeah, we are, you know, big weekend. Unfortunately, the Bills lost, but I got into a new metal band. I got past the plateau on bench and I have to start here with my massive L from last week's podcast and newsletter, just like taking the biggest L ever on that one. It was, you know, wrote the entire post and did an entire newsletter adamantly saying that we are a Pampers household. And then, then went up to tell my wife and, you know, just like, I'm really flumped about this. I was able to incorporate this into it. Like, how funny is this? And she just like points at the diaper bag that are the diapers that do not say Pampers at all.

The highly detail-oriented Rob Snyder. The principal stood we just have to, because of the high journalistic integrity standards that we hold, we need to issue a formal apology to the team at Huggies for, you know, misattributing to their direct competitor the innovation that they've maybe led. We're not actually sure.

Who knows? Yeah, I don't actually know. But, but yeah, that's a big L. But I would say, you know, that is not in the top 100 dumbest things that I have done, probably even this month. And it's like day 6 of the month. So, you know, whatever, we're gonna keep riding.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, it will not, will also not be the last retraction that, that we make over the course of this. I'm sure. Um, probably also not the, not the first false statement we've made. So apologies to anybody that we're just not aware of having, having mischaracterized. Yeah. Um, hey, today we are talking about, I think maybe one of the most confusing things about, uh, like starting companies, which is How is it possible that you can identify a pain point or a problem and, uh, in even a serious one that people will tell you is a pain point or problem, but not sell products or to struggle to sell and like still find yourself in the pain cave?

Yeah. Yeah. This is the thing where like you, you're a year into your startup, you've done all this discovery, you've done all of this research, you've talked to a ton of customers, you maybe built something. You've gotten people to nod to it and say, wow, that, that would totally solve my problem. That would solve my pain point. And then you go and ask them to buy it and nothing happens. And you're, you go into maybe like 3 to 6 months of utter confusion as a result of it. And, uh, and yeah, this is the cause.

Yeah. And you end up churning around, uh, is it the business case that's wrong? Is it the wrong entry point? Like what's, um, but but really it's a different issue that is more fundamental to what's going on. You describe it as a force. Why don't we just like dive in and define demand in the way that you do? This week's blog, just for folks that want to pull it up, is, or newsletter, Substack, is called Force Against the Status Quo: The Physics of Demand. So really last week we talked a lot about supply, Thank goodness we're back to, we're back to demand, back to the sweet spot. Um, tell us, uh, Rob, help us understand like force against the status quo as a way of defining or like understanding demand.

Yeah. So, so that's the point of this week's blog post is to kind of really get into, so the, the genesis of this is I was watching a startup sales calls, which I often do. Like I, I watch a ton of startup sales calls and I, had this weird feeling when I was listening to like 4 sales calls back to back where the potential customers were all saying the things that sounded right, things that like fit into the pull framework for demand. But I was like, something's not right here. And it was because I didn't feel any kind of motion, right? It, they were saying the right things, but they weren't leaning in as how I described it at the time. And I went back and kind of like thought about it and, and because this is called The Physics of Startups, right? We can think in terms of forces. We, you know, we think of projects on people's to-do lists. And so what I realized and talking with the team, it was like, okay, there's something that we're missing here because they're saying all the right things, but they're really not leaning in and pulling. And so this is where I got to this kind of foundational idea of demand, which which is just like, how do we describe it in terms of a force, which it's primarily a force and it's a force that a buyer is, is basically exerting against their status quo. And when you think of it like that, that's what it is at its kind of like most core raw thing, right? If there's no force, there's no demand that they're exerting, right? Then that force we need to understand because it has to take shape for them to do something about it. And so the, the force that they are exerting, I assert, turns into something that we can understand as a project on their to-do list, right? And that's, that's like a, just a way to conceptualize this force. But what matters is the force that they are exerting against the status quo. And right, what I was seeing in that conversation, those conversations with, with the potential customers, was that they were talking about things that were on their to-do lists, but it didn't feel like they were actually putting force behind those things. And so there's a lot of cases where you can have something on your to-do list. I have many things on my to-do list that I'm not putting force against. And so they're kind of like, they're backlog things that if you talk to me, I'll say, yeah, that's really important to me. Yeah, I aspire to do that in the future, but it's primarily about the force I'm applying.

Where I've seen this a couple times with thinking through some of the founders that I've seen their calls or in their office hours with you, it feels, let me see if this is the kind of example for that. They'll say things like, oh yeah, we've been working on that for like a year or, and it's like an indication or maybe it's like slow burn for a long time. What, what other kinds of things are they saying that's an indicator? It sounds like demand, but it's actually like the magnitude of the force is, is quite small or weak.

Yeah. So, so this is actually where you'll hear people talk about their problems and pain points, right? It's, it's, there's no force behind them quite often. So you'll have a sales conversation and someone will be like, oh yeah, that's huge problem here.

Okay.

I don't actually know anything about that. Like, are you taking action? Are you, are you personally applying force against the status quo to, for example, solve that problem, right? Like, or, or to do something. So, so yeah, you'll hear what you'll often hear. Bob Moesta has a classic line about bitching ain't switching, right? Like what, what it's all about is, right? Like it's about the application of force, not about complaining, not about talking, right? Not about aspiring to someday, whatever. It's like the buyer, the champion, the, the person at the, the, the company that you're trying to sell to is, is trying to do something in the moment. And in that moment, they can only really do one thing at a time. So they're applying force to this one thing. And that takes shape as the project on their to-do list versus them kind of like waxing eloquent about their problems or where the industry is heading or really resonating with your vision for how the world should work. Like all of those things are things that can happen. You can have a very nice sounding sales call, very nice sounding discovery call, and they, but it doesn't represent demand because they're, you just don't see them taking action. What you want to be hearing is like, I've been trying to do this forever. I've been struggling with this, right? I've been struggling against this. I've been hacking it together myself. I'm spending 45 minutes a day on this myself today, and I want that to go to zero. I don't know how to, I don't know how to do it, right? Like in that case, you can kind of feel them pushing against the status quo.

Yeah. Or I've been spending money on things that I'm not satisfied with, either in the form of hiring or other products that they've purchased. Like you said, you know, time as an indicator, not— we're going to get into an example here that's interesting that like time can be an indicator that there's demand there, but it's not always exactly indicative, in particular if they see their value contributed as part of that time.

Right.

Right. Yeah.

And I think, I think that that's a core cause like they can, some, somebody can talk about, oh, I've been spending, you know, this is my whole job. I spend my whole day doing this. Right. That in itself is not demand. I spend my whole day doing this. But if they say, and I don't want to, and I'm trying not to, right. And I've been trying to not do that. That's demand. That piece of it is demand. The other piece of it is just, Interesting context.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the one other thing before we jump into that example from, from the blog, you talk early on in this one about like the goal here, the problem with, with pain points and with problems is that they are not predictive of demand. And so that the objective here, kind of like thinking about the goal of this, of this podcast of your writing is like, how do we come up with a predictive model that says, if you find this, then they will purchase. Which is kind of the— what we have— what there has been previously. Let me try to characterize this is like after somebody has found demand, they can then go back and say like, this was the pain point that caused it, but it doesn't go in the other direction.

Yeah, that's exactly it. This is like what has driven me crazy for years and it's why I want to banish the word pain points and problems from the startup universe, which is basically There are a ton of playbooks out there for building startups and a ton of advice and best practices. They are basically all designed looking at successful startups and explaining why those startups were successful. The challenge is there are so many different ways to frame why startups are, were successful that you come up with things that sound bulletproof. Oh, hair on fire pain points, my big problem, right? Like things like that, that actually, like, they are not generated in the moment when a company goes from not working to working. That's the moment you have to focus on. Everything after that, and you have to say, okay, what caused that change, right? What predicts that change? That's where the truth is. And when, like, basically what you see out there at best is, you know, people looking after the fact at companies that were successful and, and trying to kind of like create a model based off of that. You get things like pain points and problems, which do not, like, you can have pain points that you don't take action on. Mm-hmm.

And in fact, the, the number of pain points that people don't take action on is probably much greater than pain points that they do take action on.

Yeah, absolutely. Like life is a series of pain points we mostly do nothing about, right? That's, that is the key thing to, and so if we don't take action on most of our pain points and you go and find a pain point, it's basically weird if your startup works, it's random luck if your startup works.

Rob, let me, let me try this on with you. Is it, is it the case that a problem or a pain point is necessary, but not sufficient for there to be demand?

I don't think so, actually. Like, I don't think, I think those things are sometimes associated with demands, but sometimes I just don't think they're a good description of, or that they don't even exist there. Right? Like, there are, there are a lot of cases in which pain points are associated with demand. There are probably a lot of cases where it's not really the case. Like, for example, if I'm buying you a gift, what's my pain point? What's the pain point associated? There's no pain point associated with that. There's no problem associated with that. That there is, I like that frame of reference doesn't even enter my mind. I'm not like, oh, Damn it. This, I have to, I have to buy Rob a gift. Like what, what the heck? Absolute trash here. No, that doesn't, that doesn't happen. There's, and so I think there's this whole category and then right. Like if I'm thinking of, okay, you know, where do I want to live? Where do I want to move? Is that based on pain points? I don't think so. I, so, so there's a lot of cases. And yeah, and that, that's my other problem with problems and pain points is this non-predictive, not even like semi-correlated, maybe. Yeah.

Like you could, you could probably bend yourself into a pretzel trying to describe the things that you just said as a problem or a pain point, but it's not, it's not actually the way the human being experiences it in, in the moment.

Yeah. And so that's, that's why we have to get to like the core here is the attempted Action, like actions are the source of truth and we try to explain them, right? And, and that's force against the status quo. Can be a, oh, I hate the status quo, or it's just like, I wanna buy Rob a gift, right? Like whatever, whatever it is. But that's a force against the status quo that we can then understand as something that's more project-shaped than problem-shaped.

I like several of the things you just said. One, I don't want to skip past the force against the status quo piece. The status quo is always not purchasing things. It is continuing to do the thing that they have been doing, have always done. Maybe that's common practice and overcoming. We're just going to keep coming back to the physics references, but the static friction of getting, like, initiating movement is quite high. Like, it takes a lot to start, to begin motion in a new direction, or in this case, to like purchase a new product. But, but how do you think about encountering people in the status quo? Like, what does that mean?

Yeah. So, so it might be that they're just, they, they already have something that's working for them. And so they have no need to apply more force against the status quo, right? Like, I do not need more weights in my gym right now. I do not need to apply force in, in that direction because I'm set. Now talk to me in a couple months and your boy might need an extra couple plates. And like, and that's because, right, I am, I am currently applying force against my own status quo of how much weight I can lift. And I currently have a certain amount of weights. And at some point I'm going to get to the point there where my status quo no longer serves me. And at that point, I will need to go out and figure out what to do about it. But until then, we had to get a weightlifting reference in here.

I was going to say, like, they could— It's about time. We're 10 minutes into a conversation and hadn't brought up weights yet. We already hit the dad point, so now we've done weights. Now we can actually get to the— Yeah, let's get to the topic. Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good explainer of why better products are not purchased. Like, like you can design a better X, but unless it's actually solving something that's on somebody's to-do list, people mostly do not care like that, it, that it exists.

Yeah. Did we talk about the better printer last time?

Yeah.

It's like, it's like that. Right. I don't have, I don't need to apply force against my current state with my printer. My printer sucks, but I don't care because I use it once a year.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, there was something else I wanted to hit, but I have, uh, like a good podcast host, I've completely forgotten what it was. So why don't we, uh, jump into the, uh, In your— in this week's Substack, you write about two personas, human beings. They're both healthcare billing administrators. Let's talk about— and health— but they're doing the same job, or the idea is like they have the same goal or not the same goal. They're doing the same tasks or very similar tasks. They're both, you know, sending out billing, probably paying attention to who has paid and, you know, reporting whatever billing administrators do. The first billing administrator describes basically what you said earlier, which is they describe— they may complain about their job. They talk about how manual their processes are. However, they're not like— there's really no demand there when you try to— or the product that you're trying to pitch to them is we have an AI solution that's going to remove all of the automation., or that, that is going to automate all of the manual work that, um, you are currently doing in your job, and that will, you know, free up time or whatever it might be. They do not buy because there's not demand.

What are your—

before we get into the second example, what are your observations about like this healthcare billing administrator?

Yeah, so this, this is like super common, which is like there's somebody who's doing a particular job. They're, you know, they, they've got a full 40-hour week and it's all in If you come in and look from the outside, you're gonna look at it and be like, that job sucks. Like all sorts of manual stuff. There's like papers flying everywhere. Like, what is this person doing? And they're working a full 40-hour week. They're stressed. They're like, you know, and you look at that and you're like, okay, cool. I've just seen that. That sucks. Let me go build an AI tool that can automate a ton of that. Right. And, and You show up with that AI tool and the person's like, oh, that's really, that's really exciting. That's cool. Congratulations. And they get back to work, right? You know, like you don't understand why that's the case. Well, it's the case because that person isn't exerting force against their status quo. They view this like all this crazy manual work as their job. That's why they're there. That's what they do. Anything like, it would be weird to change that, right? For this person, it's, it's just, this is my, this is my job. What are you doing?

Yeah. Yeah. And then the, uh, contrast that against the second person, which is same position, actually. We're not, we're not talking about their, uh, you know, that person's boss or any, anything like that. It's like, it's actually. Another human being who has the same responsibilities but who has been tinkering with automating. They want to, they want to stand out in order to advance within their organization. They want to be promoted and they see this like, okay, if I can demonstrate that I'm bringing in new tools that make it more— our work more efficient, then that will bring me attention for promotion. Like, why is there— yeah, what is the demand there? Or how do you characterize it observing it?

Yeah. Okay. So cool. So we have person one. Who is doing this like awful manual work back and forth, email, like everywhere, right? That's person one, but that's their job. They go home, they complain about it, but it's their job. It's their responsibilities. It's, it's what they do 40 hours a week, right? You have the person right next door to them doing the exact same job, but this person has something in her mind, right? Which is, I believe this job is beneath me and I wanna get promoted. And I, I like, I've been doing this for years. I deserve a promotion, right? That's just a thing that is in her mind. And so to do that, she's already tried to, to kind of like automate bits of her job. So in fact, compared to the first person, she has fewer pain points because hers is a little bit less manual. She has fewer problems because her, hers is like, there are pieces of her job that are automated. Right? And so you would, if you're coming at this from the pain points and problems perspective, or, or like just without the demand perspective, you're gonna look at person A and say, oh wow, person A, we should totally sell to. Person B, we can make less objective improvement in her workflow. But that's totally the wrong way to look at it because person B is exerting force against her status quo. She's looking for ways, she's attempting things to get promoted. And this is something that she can pull that, yeah, it's not gonna make a massive improvement in her life, but it will demonstrate to perhaps her boss or whoever that she is proactive, deserving of a promotion. And so Person B, while there's less objective improvement, there are fewer kind of pain points and problems. She might even pull out her own credit card to buy this AI tool to demonstrate this, where Person A is going to look at you like you're from Mars.

Yeah. Yeah. Or kind of wish you didn't exist and probably try to bury you, like prevent you from making progress in the organization because you're a, you're actually a threat. Um, one other thing reading through that was jumping out to me is that there's implications for lots, like your product itself, depending on which persona or which person you think you are selling to. If you think you are selling to a person to minimize the amount of work they're doing, you design a certain product. If you design for a— to sell to a person whose demand is, I want to advance, I want to demonstrate, you know, that my technology is supporting, you know, more fishing happening, whatever it is to get promoted. The way that you communicate is a little bit more about like, hey, here are examples of ways people have progressed. This is how we show that, you know, pro— there's probably some dashboard outcomes or like, this is the reporting that we do. Whereas the first person, it's more about time saved. Or how do you, how do you think about differences? Like what are the implications for the product in your, and your messaging?

Well, yeah, so the first person, you're just not gonna win. There's— this person is exerting zero force against the status quo. Like literally nothing you can do short of going up to their boss or something and having their boss kind of force this down on them is gonna change this person unless something happens in her brain at some point in time. The second person is winnable, but only if you frame it in terms that she can, can then take and say, cool, this fits into the thing that I'm trying to do, which is to do something visible to get promoted. So I need, right, I will implement this and I want to show something, right? The other example of this is when a lot of startups are, especially AI startups, are demoing their products. You're usually demoing to an executive, right? That executive has a project on their to-do list, which is usually like reduce the amount of human labor that goes into XYZ department, XYZ process, right? And so in that case, what do you demo? You don't demo— you, you can show the like, oh, here's the AI doing the task, right? But that's not really something that fits on the executives' to-do lists because they're not in the work on a day-to-day basis. So they're gonna, I've seen a bunch of demos like this where executives are kind of like, yeah, I guess that looks like the tool that somebody beneath me uses and that looks like it's, but I, it's not connecting to the project on my to-do list. So you have to combine that with like a, here's the executive view of like what's happening. You can see that the amount of manual work is going down over time. Right. And that's the— because we have to meet them where they are applying force against the status quo in ways that make sense to them in that moment.

Yeah. And the case study that you're demonstrating, like, is most relevant to the force that they're applying. Anything else to call out on, on that example, or do we want to jump into Lovable?

Yeah, let's jump into Lovable.

So why don't we, why don't we start with background for the knuckle draggers like myself who are not used using Lovable. Lovable is a pro— uh, let me, let me try to characterize this. Yeah, it's a prompt-based, uh, website and app designer, um, that like results in, um, uh, you don't have to do a lot of technical, like manual design of, uh, to create a website. You tell it what you're trying to accomplish and the general structure and, and it creates things for you. Is that, is that a decent enough, or tell me where that's from.

Yeah, we'll give it a solid B+ and AAA+ for effort.

Okay. Yeah, but this is actually a good example. I'm with my company on Squarespace, which is where I've been for years, and it's an example of the thing I have works. I'm not applying like any force into a better website because we kind of figured out the messaging and I just want to— I have the recurring auto payment and I don't need to, you know, reinvent anything. And that's, yeah.

So, and the, and the different, yeah. So that's a really cool difference for, for us on, on Lovable because you're familiar with Squarespace. You, you basically are proficient at it. When I try to use Squarespace, I basically just wanna walk over to that wall and hit my head straight through it because I just, for some reason I, these like, I can't drag and drop elements effectively. Everything I create looks terrible. And so, and so it's just like, like, so for me, I would, for you, you have no relevant demand, no force applied against the status quo. If at some point you're like, oh wow, I need to do a full website revamp. In your head, you're gonna be like, huh, well, I know how to use Squarespace and I'm quite good at it. Yeah. Maybe I'll just throw a prompt into Lovable because Rob won't shut up about it. But like, but you're gonna look at that and say, ah, I probably need to edit some things. I'm gonna, I'm just like more comfortable in Squarespace. Cool. No, no real force against the status quo there. However, if you wind up saying, well, I need to build an app of some sort, right? Well, I don't know how to do, maybe I'll try this lovable thing, right? Because that can actually build apps and I can't really do that in Squarespace. And so, right at that moment when you're applying force in that way, you might consider it, right? So, right.

So with that, can I jump in here, Rob? That is fascinating because while I was reading through your blog and going through the list, I was like, yeah, not me, not me, not me. I came to the app, which is something we've thought about, and I was like, actually, yeah, like that would be super nice. Like, I don't, I have no idea how to do that. And, and so if we come to that point where that's the active thing, like Lovable, I will definitely go to now because that I didn't even know that that existed. So, so yeah, you're, it's a back to the predictive benefit of thinking about the projects to be done. Like, That is a project that I would need to do that I don't have a, a solution for that I would be exerting force against. Yep.

Yep. Yeah. So, and so, so for Lovable, what I've basically done here is I've tried, so I just find Lovable fascinating. One, because basically everybody knows it except apparently if you're a podcast studio.

And two, I live, I live under a rock, so nobody, yeah. Which makes me a great candidate to co-host a B2B SaaS like, uh, podcast.

No, we need the, we need the normie take here. It's great. It's, it's amazing. That's, it's good. Um, uh, so basically everybody knows it and it grow— it grew so fast that it just like, it's hard for people to conceptualize and we often have the wrong interpretations of it. We're like, oh wow, they grew so fast because they built a great product because they're PLG. It's like, no, no, no. The thing that caused their growth was on the demand side first. There was all of these people applying pretty similar forces against the status quo that just kind of kept compounding, right? And so, and and their product, yes, it's great, but it's great because it fits the force that people are trying to apply where they are blocked specifically.

Yeah. Yeah.

By the way, one thing we should probably touch on before going into this, did we talk about pull versus demand in terms of force? I don't think so. So there's, there's a really important difference here that I think will make lovable make sense. Which is, um, uh, right, there is demand, which is force that I am applying against the status quo. So like one example here is if I'm driving, as I was this morning, driving back from daycare on a kind of like one-lane road where there is a certain speed limit on that road and the car in front of me is going approximately 10 miles beneath that speed limit. And there's no way to pass on this road. And so at that moment I have demand, my whole body is just shaking and I'm like, oh my gosh. And there, but there is, but there's no outlet for that demand. So like there, so there's nothing there, but you can see there, like that's the force. That's what it kind of feels like. I'm, I like just want to get past this car or I just want them to speed up or don't be in New Hampshire.

And so go back to Massachusetts.

Yeah. Go back to Massachusetts. All the communists drive slow. Where was I? Oh yeah. And so, so that's, that's demand, that's demand. And so you can think of other things, right? Like if I, after, if I, if I, after this want to go and kind of like, I have this like urge in me, I was like, oh, I need to write I need to write the next newsletter, right? That's not gonna lead to me buying anything, right? But it's gonna, it's gonna lead to me acting. It's not gonna lead to me buying anything. The pull framework exists to articulate a situation in which I am applying force against the status quo in a way that is blocked, where if you show up with something that unblocks me there, I will rip the product out of your hands. That's the predictive quality here, right? It's basically, I am applying force, but my force is blocked by bad options such that when an option shows up that actually fits what I'm trying to accomplish, I'll rip it out of your hands. Enter lovable, right?

So can we, can we pause on that before we jump into lovable? Let me, let me try to make sure I'm tracking this. So what you're saying is demand is the force against the status quo. Pull happens, kind of the so what, it's like the release of that force. It's like the opening of the door for the demand to like pass through. Or you talk about dams, the opening of the dam for the, for the demand to pass through.

Yes, it is. I am applying force, but my force is blocked right now. Yeah. Is what pull is such that if you show up with something that unblocks me, I will pull it.

Yeah. Yeah. What are, um, maybe real quick again, before we get into Lovable, reasons real fast why demand is blocked?

I mean, Lovable is the perfect example. Okay.

Like, okay, perfect.

Uh, uh, because it was perfect for me. I needed to make a website and I did not want to, like, for me, Squarespace is like clawing my eyes out. It's, it's, yeah. It's hours of awful work that I am not good at and I hate it and it comes out bad in the end. And so I was like, and so I would do it, but like most of my businesses have been run on Google Docs, not on actual functional websites because I am so bad at this. And because I just, I am so blocked by it. That two things were happening. One is like, right? It was, it was just awful for me so that I would, so that when Lovable showed up, I typed in a prompt and got a website that was like more than passable. I was like, oh my gosh, amazing. Right. And I just released so much force and like instantly made like 5 websites that I didn't wind up using, but it was, it was a, just like this release of energy.

Right.

But the, but the, the interesting thing there is that it wasn't that I, it wasn't just that I had bad websites and wanted better websites. It was that I entirely avoided the activity of making websites, that my demand was so blocked that it was just kind of like me sitting behind the, the car in front of me. It was like, there's no outlet for this. So it, so if you look from the outside, it just looks like I don't have demand. I'm, I'm not, I'm not making a website. I'm not making a shit. I'm not struggling through a website. I just have like, I just have all this pent-up energy inside that I can't apply such that when Lovable shows up where I can just type, I go crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. One, one interesting thing about, about Lovable, you actually run through an entire list. Like you, um, I'm going to read just like a couple of these real fast to give a sense for, um, like what is the demand that Lovable, who is taking off, tapped into? Um, one is, I'm trying to make a website and I'm wrestling against a traditional website editor. That's where you would fall. Um, also the second one, I want to make a website, but I know how annoying traditional website editors are. There's some others that are interesting. I'm trying to explain my product idea to engineers and they keep not getting it based on my requirements. And I want to show them something, but I can't make a good clickable prototype. Um, I aspire to build a startup, but I don't know how to code and now feel FOMO based on the influencers who seem to be making millions off of Lovable apps. What's the— is it important for a founder to target one? Like, did, did Lovable target one of these and then go into the other ones? Or is it that you can kind of go after more than one of these at the, at the same time?

Yeah, so this is, I'm actually working on this with another startup now where they've kind of, they've got a bunch of different options here, but it's really hard to go after multiple. So my sense is that Lovable actually went for the, I wanna make an app, but I'm not an engineer and learning to code seems tedious and no-code tools also seem tedious, right? Like they, they went after that one, but they nailed that so insane. Like when you nail that one, kind of you get all the others for free, right? Because then I look at it and I'm like, well, I don't need an app, but I just type this front end for a website. Cool. Right. They didn't, they've never billed themselves as a website builder. They've always billed themselves as an app builder. Right. But you get me for free in that. And so, and then like sometimes, and what tends to happen is as you start growing, these things kind of like compound. And so you get, you know, you get people operating based on FOMO, you get people talking about it, you get, right. Like, and Lovable just wound up hitting a bunch of people's, I think, through the same single motion.

Yeah. And, and I don't know their history, but we're probably based on your like Wave River Dam, like, uh, with the AI, they were probably tinkering around in that AI space and had the right solution at the point where there was like a step change that unlocked, you know, the, the ability to do this based prop-based development.

Yeah. And, and, and basic, so they were tinkering, that's where they were tinkering on the supply side. But this would be a classic example of a dam, right? It is, it is. And so just, just so people know, there are waves, rivers, and dams. Rivers are kind of constant demand. Waves are like a big crescendo in demand. And, and dams are basically just instant, like bursting. You burst a dam and like the, the—

Frequently because a new technology has has come out.

Yeah. A new technology has enabled, right? Like a new approach on the supply side such that demand that was previously blocked is now unblocked and now we can kind of see, right? Force applied there.

Yeah. Yep. Um, other things on, on Lovable we want to, we want to hit, Rob? There's, um, there's a mailbag before we actually, why don't we get into implications and then we've got a mailbag about, uh, jobs to be done if we've got time for it.

Yeah.

Um, What should founders do as a result of this thinking about demand as a force, um, you know, applied against a project?

Yeah, basically just now, you know, you should be looking for a force, right? And, and so if you don't feel a force and like, so, so most, most founders are in a situation where there's a bunch of potential customers we could serve and a bunch of potential, you know, problems, pain points, da da da da, right? And so I would suggest going and ranking them based on force they are applying and like the, the extent to which they, their force is blocked by their existing options. And so this also, so that's kind of like, how do you choose your ICP based on the pull framework, right? Who, who should rip the product out of your hands? Everybody else would kind of be weird to buy it. Right. And, and so this is another way to frame that and think about it. And I think the concept of force applied is really, really useful for founders to like, not to, to not fool yourself into thinking, oh, they should, they said they have this project on their backlog, right? Oh, but right. Like that's, that's not, not enough. Then in sales calls, right? And what most people do in discovery in sales calls at the beginning is like, tell me about your current state. Tell me about your problems and pain points. And you wind up learning interesting things that are totally useless. Instead, you want to be asking questions that are focused on what are— what's the force they are applying against the status quo and then why and what options are they looking into.

Yeah. And that, um, a couple of things jump out to me from this conversation. One is think back to the way that you described both being trapped behind the slow car on a, on a highway, on a two-lane highway, and, um, you know, using a more manual website, uh, or app developer. It's like, it's visceral. It's not just the words, it's the way that they describe the frustration. Like eventually Forrest gets to a point where it's like an emotional thing that you're just, I should be doing something else with my time. I should be able to do X and I can't do it. And it creates a, like an animation in the way that they, they're communicating with you.

It, it should, it should feel like on an individual level when you're talking, it should feel like a dam is bursting for them. Like, that's the feeling that they should have is I can now, I can now do this, right? Like I'm now unblocked.

Yeah. Um, and the types, the types of questions tactically, or the types of conversations that people should be having, as you've said, like remove pain point from your, from, you know, like your founder vocabulary move toward, um, you know, what are you trying or what are, what are What's the most important project on your to-do list? Um, you know, what are you actively trying to solve that you don't have a solution to? Something like that. Is that the direction founders should go?

Yeah, it's, I, I think we're gonna do a full post on like discovery in the beginning of like demand discovery and sales calls, but that's loosely it. It's basically like question 1 is why are you on this call with me? Right? That, that will often have them explain it.

Yeah.

Question 2, if you don't, don't, uh, hear that, it's like, what are you prioritizing right now? Yeah. And if you don't hear anything useful there, then it's like, huh, well, usually when I talk to people like you, they are trying to prioritize these kinds of things. And do any of these resonate? And, and right from that, you will see if there is actually demand there.

Yeah. Yeah. That's super interesting. I've got a couple calls later today though. That's gonna help with it, Ram. So thanks for the tip. Do we, do we have time for a mailbag about jobs to be done or do we wanna hold onto that?

Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it. Okay. So, uh, Ran— uh, Randy— oh man, L-E-F-E-B-V-R-E. There's too many consonants and not enough vowels.

And yeah, that's like one of those French, like Lefebvre or something like that, which is not how it's pronounced.

Nobody, nobody wants to hear like the North Carolina and South Carolina and Texas boy try to pronounce French words right now. Um, uh, so the question is what's, uh, what's the difference between your pull framework and jobs to be done?

Yeah. So this, this is a longer conversation. So Jobs to Be Done is, um, Clay Christensen is known for it, but it was actually brought to him by a guy named Bob Moesta, who is like a mentor and he's an awesome dude and he's behind so like, he's behind so many products you don't realize he's behind because he won't, he won't say it publicly. And, and, um, yeah, like I will not also say it publicly, but basically most of the, the like insane successes you've seen are, are thanks to Bob. And so yeah, so Bob is super interesting because he came up with this concept, but Jobs to Be Done is a way to think about like, it's a different articulation than projects on to-do lists. Bob, I, I tried to use Jobs to Be Done and I just found I couldn't understand it until Bob explained demand and supply. So demand and supply are actually Bob's, like, substrate-level concepts that he used to create Jobs to Be Done. And so what I've done is I've basically said, I can't, I don't understand Jobs to Be Done. I can't, it doesn't work in my brain. And so I've had to create an entirely different set of things and I've had to kind of like way more deeply specify demand and supply to make it work in my brain. I've just found that like a bunch of other founders are in a similar situation where, you know, like jobs to be done is something that you can hear, you can kind of nod your head to, but you can't apply it. Um, and it's, it just takes years to be able to apply it well is what I've seen from people who are like actually good at applying it. And I, I needed something that I could actually use in the moment. And so that's kind of where I've been tinkering with it and kind of like building in my own direction off of it. Yeah.

Yeah. I was thinking about Jobs to be Done with the healthcare billing administrator, um, example and like try, could we try Rob here to differentiate between the demand that, uh, and the force that the, the second healthcare billing administrator have head and the job to be done, are they the same in this case, which is get promoted? Yes.

Or is it like— Project on to-do list is basically identical to job.

In this case.

In this case. Yeah. And I think in most cases it's basically the same, but I needed, so what I needed, just hearing that there's a job to be done doesn't like, I think there's a couple of I'll say conceptual innovations with the project on to-do list idea, which is that you can kind of like zoom out and see somebody's full to-do list where when you see jobs to be done, you kind of just look at that by default. I look at that as just like a singular thing tied to my product, right? And so I need to be able to zoom out and see projects on to-do lists competing with each other to know why someone prioritizes one thing. And then if somebody has a job to be done, right? Like there's also competition from other things that could, could do the same job, which is where the two Ls in the POL framework come from because I'm looking for specifically, I'm not looking for just any old job to be done. I'm looking for a specific one where somebody will rip a product out of my hands. And so that's why I need P for project is essentially job. It's a way to describe job in a way that makes sense in my brain. And I think like, it's just kind of easier for a novice to apply like me than you for why is it unavoidable? That's, that's about the force. Like what is the force behind it that is causing this to be the thing out of all the things that could be on my priority list right now. And then the, the L's, which are for the alternatives that I am blocked by, give me the shape like we talked about last week. Of supply that will be ripped, that like you could rip out of my, you'll rip out of my hands.

Yeah. Several of these resonate with me, like in particular, like the prioritization that is completely additive. Like that's not explained by, by Jobs to Be Done. Um, and it's not that Jobs to Be Done is wrong. You're actually saying Jobs to Be Done is like very right and very powerful. Like it's an important way of understanding how humans interact with products and like what they're trying to do. Like it was a real innovation and certainly in, you know, the way to think about product.

I listen to Bob and he's just, he's too smart. Like he's just so smart. I can't like, he's just a magician.

Well, fortunately, I don't think our listeners have that problem with us. Very unlikely.

That's exactly, that's exactly the case, right?

It is.

If I can figure this out, You can do this. What you should be able to do, that's way better.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, Rob, well, why don't, why don't we wrap there? I imagine we'll probably revisit jobs to be done down the, down the line at some point with a little bit more rigor. You've got a, just a quick reminder, you've got a November bootcamp sprint coming up. If folks are interested, we'll drop information in the, in the, in the episode description. Anything else you want to add before we drop Rob?

Uh, oh no. The only thing is for, for now I have removed, so I used to have like office hours that basically anybody who was considering kind of like going through the bootcamp or working with me, um, could, could just like sign up for. I am like quite booked. And so I've removed that as a CTA. And so you just email me or Rob here if you have any questions.

Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. We'll put that info in the description. Um, and we'll look forward to hearing from anybody that's interested. Otherwise we'll catch y'all next week. See you every day. Bye.