Is your customer BLOCKED or COPING?

Well, Rob, welcome back, man. How you doing?

Good. Nice to be back in New Hampshire after a great trip to Utah.

But, but yeah, good to be back in the, in the frozen tundra of the, of the north.

I think it might go above freezing today for like the first time in weeks. So we are, I'm going out in shorts.

I love that. I would still be hibernating if I were, if I were up there. Well, what's, what's going on? What's,, what's new with, uh, with Reframe or how was the, how was the trip?

Yeah, it's cool. Uh, like this post is basically, I had a bunch of conversations with a variety of startups from, you know, just starting out to Series B, Series C stage. And, um, it's just a good time to test theories and test the frameworks and stuff. And so this post actually, I, I I wrote on the plane or something like that on the way back because I was just thinking about it and thinking about, there's one startup that was trying to figure out, they had like very intense product market fit on their first product, had grown super fast. We're thinking about other products as well and weren't like, you know, it's, we have to find product market fit again and again and again. And we're trying to teach, you know, it's no longer the founders doing it every single time. They have to teach product managers to go zero to one on things. And so Thinking about like how to very quickly communicate to them to, so that people quickly can understand the difference between demand and a cool product and demand and supply and that kind of stuff. And what are you actually looking for out there in the world that will kind of be a preview of, of, you know, will somebody actually rip something out of your hands?

That's super interesting. I hadn't, hadn't thought about, um, so that in that case it's probably like, uh, you know, a post-Series X, uh, Series A, B, whatever, uh, startup, but, and also has, uh, uh, you know, practical applications for, uh, corporate entrepreneurship and for, you know, other, other environments that really super interesting.

What I actually like, what I very much noticed in that experience, and I think I've seen this in a variety of places after it's just like founders, is that you take, you your existing product market fit for granted and don't understand it and don't understand how like magical that is. If you, if you take it for granted or if you don't understand the physics of the product market fit you have on your first product or whatever your like current suite of products, you are going to fail on the next product because you're going to be, well, it's right. You can look at it and be like, oh, people like this product because it has these kinds of features. People like it because it saves them time. And then you say, okay, cool. What else could save them time? Which is the wrong way of understanding, like, why was this product successful in the first place? And so you, you like actually have to understand what causes a startup to take off, a product to take off versus after the fact, looking at it and saying, well, it has this value prop. Therefore, we should build something with this kind of bigger value prop or this broader value prop or whatever. It's like, yeah, we're just totally missing the point.

That's very interesting. If there's academics listening, like a, like a longitudinal study of how startups that turn into companies continue to innovate or struggle to innovate through the lens of do they understand what caused their, their first product or their first successful product to take off. That's super, super cool. Or Rob Snyder might help us out with that at some point. This, this post is called Blocking— excuse me, Blocked or Coping: Two Variants of Pull. I find this one to be very interesting, particularly in the pre-product stage. It's, it's One way of looking at it is if you already have a product, what was the situation before? I think the really useful one is, okay, I've, you know, maybe I have a sector that I want to work with that I'm, you know, starting my company at, or I have a type of customer that I want to work with. How do I identify, you know, the supply that matches something that they need? But Rob, why don't you give us, you gave us a little bit of context on what was on your mind, but why don't you, you know, tell us why this right now and, you know, who is is this one best suited for?

Yeah, so I, I wrote this in part for myself as I'm launching new stuff and, uh, it's, it's for a lot of people who are in the early stage. There's also a stage 2 of, of, um, you're at $100 to $500K ARR and it's not repeatable. Everyone kind of looks different and you're trying to figure out where to double down cuz it, you know, some deals required, you know, a little, little arm twisting. Some deals required a little magic and it's like, cool. In order to get from here to $5, $10 million ARR, we need to find something that is repeatable that will actually work without heroics. How do we think about, of all of the different options that are in front of us, where are we most likely to win?

Yeah, that's great. That's great. And we'll, we can pull in, um, to try to make it practical between the two of us. I'll give a couple examples from Kumbh Mela that I'm genuinely interested in your interpretation of whether they are blocked or whether they're coping. I think like one of them I was reflecting on yesterday while I was reading your, reading your post and I was like, I actually don't know which category they fall into. So, well, here's a little bit of context drop. I'm just going to start off by reading the framing that you do. You say, you talk about a Trello board, which is, you know, probably most folks know what that is, but it's basically like what is on somebody's to-do list. That's a literal to-do list. You write about the to-do list on somebody's soul, but you say that a Trello board, somebody's to-do list has 4 elements. One, there's a backlog of things that I'd like to eventually prioritize. That's not demand. 2 is would prioritize right now if only there was a way. We'll get into that. 3, prioritizing right now but struggling against existing options. That's the other variant of demand. And then 4 is prioritizing right now, existing options are good enough. So that one's all— that one does not, or does not fit pull. And then Rob, anything before we jump into what is blocked and what is coping, anything you would add like to those, to those 4?

Yeah, basically just, I don't know if you've seen a Trello board before, but it's a really useful way to think about this because there are different, I don't know what they're called, but like different, like kinds of projects, right? There are different like categories of things. And so at, in my mind, I just see there are these 4 categories of projects. The, someone's backlog is infinite. There's so many things I would love to do. But right now they can only take action on one thing at a time, like literally one thing at a time. And so there is just one thing that I am prioritizing right now. And if I'm prioritizing it, it could either be something where, yeah, my current approach is, it's good enough. I'm not struggling against it very much. I don't care. Or it could be something where I am like, actively struggling against it. This is right. Like, and I, I just wish something would show up and take this, like, help me do this differently. Right. And those are, those are kind of like the most commonly understood categories that we've talked about, but there is a fourth category, which is the things that I would do if only there was a way right now, this would be my number one priority if only there was a way. So if the backlog is infinite,. And if the things I am actively doing right now, there can only be one. The, the list of things I would do if only there was a way is like, it's non-zero probably, but it's also smaller than infinite. So I, I don't actually know how many fit there, but I think there are quite a few that, that are, that are in that category.

Yeah. And let's, I'll wanna, I think that one's the trickiest one to navigate because it, you can create narratives slash I have created narratives around things that people would do if they could. And that's, I wanna better understand, Rob, how you think about like when you're right about that or when, or like how to navigate those kinds of situations.

Yep. Totally. Totally.

Yeah.

That's, I mean, both of these categories that we're going to talk about, coping and blocked, have downfalls, have risks associated with them that I've seen, like patterns of failure associated with them. And I think that by actually creating these as two separate categories of things, even though they're both flavors of pull and talking about them, uh, like there's different ways to figure them out. There's different ways, same way to test them, but there's kind of like different, different things you are looking for and different downfalls.

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Well, let's, I'm going to read here the definitions that you have for each, and then we'll, we'll get deeper into coping and then we'll get deeper into blocked. So a buyer, let's start with coping. A buyer who is prioritizing a project right now, but their current approach is sufficiently bad that they are coping, struggling against their current approach. And then the second one is a buyer who would prioritize a project right now if they could, but their existing options are unworkable or unavailable. Available or maybe don't, don't exist, um, potentially. So they are, um, they are blocked. You start out with the example of Uber, which is an example of both. So why don't, why don't we start with Uber real fast, um, and, uh, demonstrate how, like, what, what part of it was blocked and what part of it was, uh, coping?

Yeah, so Uber's a great example of, of both of these, and we can kind of contrast them.. And so when people were initially valuing Uber and saying, well, here's the market size of Uber, what they did is they said, well, here's the market size of taxis. Like how much money people are currently spending on taxis. Uber is a better taxi. People when they are in taxis are coping. They, they are getting from point A to point B, but they hate the experience relative to Uber. And so we'll, we'll assume most people are coping in taxis, so Uber can attack that taxi market. That is a kind of coping pull. It's, you know, they're currently doing this, but they are, they're coping against it. They're struggling against the current supply on the market. So when a better option shows up, they switch. But what, what people valuing Uber did not understand was that there was also blocked pull, blocked demand, which is there were a ton of people who were just not going out because whatever it was, like taxis were just too unworkable of an option. Hmm. So if you looked at them before Uber shows up, they just weren't going out, but they had this project on their to-do list in that category of like, would do this if only there was a way such that when Uber shows up, they are traveling, they're going out, they're going places much more frequently, which means that the market size for Uber was, yeah, the taxi market plus the amount of blocked pull there was.

Yeah. And in, in that second, um, so let's maybe think about, um, like a woman that wouldn't feel safe in a taxi because it wasn't trackable. If you like looked at her calendar on a Friday, she might be like, you know, inside watching a movie with her friends. And then after Uber exists, there's like, yeah, at least 2 Uber rides that are created. It's not, it's, you know, it's not just that she would've taken a taxi, it's that there was no taxi would've showed up on her calendar if you, you know, calendar per se.

Yeah, you couldn't have watched her and said, said, okay, like, like you just couldn't have seen that there was that there, even though it was in this category of like would go out, but it's like too inconvenient or too un— like I gotta call a taxi company to do like, yeah, gotta call a taxi company. Maybe it will show up. I'm gonna have to haggle, right? Like in, in like all the, they're all of those reasons. Why it was like, why a taxi was not a good enough option.

And, you know, my, um, thinking through that, like, actually rural, uh, rides, small town rides that couldn't have, that couldn't or previously didn't support, uh, like a full-time taxi driver or, or company, um, like, that is, uh, kind of like, in, in that case, it's just a creation. Like, there, it's, it's much more pure creation of, uh, uh, of market of, yeah, of transactions or realization of demand that was blocked. Anything else to add on, on Uber before we jump in a little bit deeper to coping?

No, let's, let's break down each of these and then we can, we can roll from there.

Okay. Well, why don't you help us out with, with coping? And what we'll hit is a couple case studies of, or a case study or two of companies that you see have addressed coping, the process to validate if there actually is pull in a situation like Coping. And then you mentioned risks and/or like common patterns, so I wanna make sure we hit that as well. 3 that you write about, 3 case studies are Jump, which we've talked about a couple times, Rippling, which is an HR and IT platform, and then you also mentioned a carbon compliance startup that helps to sell green energy or carbon credits for green energy, clean energy products. Where do you, where do you want to start on this one, Rob?

Jump's a fun one to start with because like Jump, basically financial advisors are required to take notes for client meetings and they have to do meeting prep. They have to take notes and then they have to put those notes into their CRM because I don't know, the SEC might audit them or, or, or someone, someone might audit them and so they have to be be prepared for that. And so it has to, so that has to happen. Before Jump came around, they were taking notes manually doing that. And you, if you watched them, you would literally see them taking notes, doing, doing this, this work. Jump shows up and offers a way to take those notes off their plate to, to, to write like, uh, automate that in a way that integrates with their CRM in a way that fits the, the like compliance requirements they have.

Okay.

The only reason this worked is because before Jump, they were doing this work. Yes. But while they were doing it, they were coping with their existing supply. They were struggling against it. The real project on their mental to-do list was like spend the least amount of time manually taking these notes. And they were like, you know, kind of prepping for meetings and after meetings. And so they were the existing supply they had to do, but they were struggling against that supply. There just wasn't a better fit supply for their demand. And so, so if Jump didn't exist, These people would still be coping, right? They're just coping. They're struggling against it. That's, that's the kind of interesting thing about both coping and blocked. We're looking for people who, if we don't exist, are coping with their existing thing here, with their existing method, with their existing tool. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. Do we want to— I've been thinking about running through the pull framework. And so like in the end, Jump's, in Jump's case, like the project is I have to take notes, uh, you know, uh, following my meetings. It's unavoidable because of the SEC or the, the risk of audit. Um, like very strong unavoidable. Like people will, you know, there, there's like something that is forcing this to, to really happen. And then as, as you mentioned, they're coping because on the supply side, the L&L, um, you know, they, they're, uh, either actively looking for options, uh, or they're, they're compensating with something right now, in that case manual. Um, uh, and the options are lacking because it's it's like super painful. So like the, the pull framework there like applies like transparently. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have it. They have an existing option that they are using.

Yeah.

And, and, and so, and they are struggling against that existing option because it is just takes too much time. Yeah. And so, so yeah. And so you can see there's the tension in the pull framework there, but, but importantly, you can watch them. In their day-to-day, and you're gonna, you're gonna see this tension firsthand.

Yeah. Yeah. And in that case, it looks like kind of an annoyed financial advisor who's like, yeah. Or, you know, a company compliance officer who's like constantly on top of their, you know, their team members to take notes, to document or something like that.

Right, right. Exactly. You're, yeah, you're gonna see the tension. Of, because it's a, it's supply that doesn't fit the demand.

Yeah. Um, do you want to hit either Rippling? I think, I think the carbon compliance startup is, uh, is pretty interesting. I don't know if you'd be open to discussing that one.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally. The carbon compliance one, um, is basically, uh, so carbon compliance, carbon, there are project developers who are making kind of like clean energy. Doing clean energy projects. In order to fund that, they, they get like car— they sell carbon credits on a carbon market. In order to get carbon credits that they can sell on the carbon market, AKA in order to make money, they have to go through a certification process that's basically like, yeah, You, you can get carbon credits like that. Carbon credits apply. Here's how, here's how much, da da da da. And that certification process, it looks like that's something they have to do before making money in the carbon markets for their projects. Hmm. When they are considering doing that, the existing options on the market were basically like, okay, we're gonna figure this out ourselves, or we're going to hire a consultant. To do it. They had to use, they had to do either of those or they weren't going to make any money here, but they were like really coping in that situation against those options. They really just like, it didn't really fit what they were looking for. Too slow, too expensive, too much hassle. Right. And so you see the, the, they were just struggling against that. And so Friend Startup shows up saying, hey, We offer like an AI-enabled service that helps you get carbon compliant really fast, like at a tenth of the cost, super fast without having to think so much about it. Right. And like you, where, where it felt like there was kind of like a spring loaded like that. It just, I don't know, it, it just gets unleashed. Like it, it, they stop coping and they select this by default.

Yeah. And on this one, Rob, is it like that when you talk about the spring that's loaded, do you see it as more there's a cost that they are incurring, i.e., they either have to hire somebody to that's, you know, got 30 years of experience in this and, you know, or they have to bring on a consultant or they have to, you know, they've got to navigate. Is it, is it the line item that is I've got X $100,000 in cost that I can get off of, you know, or is it this hurts, like it's, it's just painful, hard to navigate and would be nice to not think about it.

Yeah, I do. I don't actually don't think about in general in those kinds of categories. All I think about is like, are they, are they dissatisfied with their current options for some reason? Right. Are they, are they, are they struggling against their current options for some reason? In this case, it was both timeline and cost. But I don't want you to come away from this thinking, oh, if I can find something that is expensive and takes a long time and I can automate it, then by default, somebody will pay me. What matters is when this company didn't exist, people were actively coping against this. They, they were struggling in that moment. They were struggling against their current supply.

Hmm. Yeah, super, super interesting. I would think the way where it would show up is maybe the outbound, like the way that you communicate about it. Like if you tell me— continue to tell me I'm wrong about this, I really like generally rip me to shreds on it. So I would think like, let's say that the biggest pain point was there's not enough available consultants out there. It's hard to get on their time. They're not fun to work with, whatever. Then your outbound would be more about Hey, like, I worked with, you know, carbon compliance consultants in the past. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. That's why I created something that, you know, means I don't have to do that. Versus if it's like there's this big line item that is like putting stress on projects, which is like, hey, we, you know, we went from red light to green light on a bunch of projects this year because we took out $200,000 in consultant fees, something like that. Like, does it manifest there or is it, is that just the wrong way to think about it?

Yeah, that, that's so, that's fine for how you like go about getting people to talk to you and whatnot. But the point that I'm trying to focus on here is like, is there a need in the market that will cause you to grow very fast? And the way to think about that is Assuming that you don't exist, are they coping hard right now? Are they struggling against their existing options or what we'll get to next? Are they blocked from what they really want to accomplish? They have something on their to-do list, but they just can't do it for whatever reason, right? Like the reason doesn't matter. It matters if, right? If like, let's take the inverse. Assume they are not struggling, assume they are in equilibrium. There is that you show up and what happens, right? You can show up with a 10x better product, 10x better product on whatever metric you care about. And they're going to be like, right, you show up to me with a 10x better printer. It's like, cool. I already got one. I use it once a year. I don't care. Right. It's, it's not, it has nothing to do with my to-do list. So this is about saying, Who, like, like, how do you find people? What should they look like before you exist or, or independently of you existing? If you have, like, let's take that example from the beginning. If you have 50 different potential customer segments or you have all these different kinds of customers, the way, the way we typically think about this is like, who do I have the most compelling value prop for? Who like, da da da da da, right? And that's the question is actually If we don't exist, who is spring-loaded? Who is coping hard such that when we show up, they will rip it out of our hands, right? This is independent of us. And that's the important thing because otherwise I fall into this trap of, of like, I call it, I think of it as the supply trap. Maybe we'll write more about this of like, oh, but if only I made my messaging better. Oh, but if only I change the positioning. Right. And it's like, no, no, no, no. We like cope, they have to be coped or blocked right now and like spring-loaded such that when I show up, they will rip it out of my hands. Yeah.

Very interesting. This is, this continues to be founder therapy for Robert Carpenter. And, uh, in many ways, uh, had a conversation yesterday with an organization down in Argentina and, uh, you know, we were going through their options, uh, basically what, what, you know, I was trying to understand what they were trying to accomplish. And they were like, we are in this very remote part of Argentina. We're trying to get more tourism related to a national park that was recently founded. It's hard because they're very far away. It's expensive. It's expensive to work with travel agencies. They're not bringing very many people. You know, traditional radio is not— or other like media are not I haven't been super effective in actually demonstrating that they are bringing people— local businesses are struggling as a result. A lot of their, their entire theory of like how to develop these things is about economic development around ecotourism. And so in that environment, I was like, okay, well, you know, we reach this number of families in Argentina if we place this like 2 months before, you know, 2 months before the busy season. You know, reaching, you know, this, this type of audience with this types of messages. And they were like, yeah, definitely. Like, this is totally worth, like, you know, let's, let's give this a shot. And, and so that was, that would be an example of, like, coping with a limited set of options that are available to them. And then it, like, there was, I wouldn't say it was the immediate, like, because what I couldn't say is my solution brings, is going to bring you 50, 100, whatever families within 3 months. That would be a really strong, stronger statement than what I can give, but it's, it's got that flavor. And they're like, okay, if that's the case, like I would, you know, we'd love to, let's, let's pilot this. If it works, let's keep, you know, let's keep doing this in the future. Am I, am I interpreting that correctly as like a coping example?

Yeah. So that's a great coping example because again, before you showed up independently of you existing, right? This is the most important part. Forget your product, forget you exist. If that's possible.

Uh, uh, it's a deep philosophical idea.

Yeah. They are just out there in their lives and they are, they are just coping in that moment. They're struggling against their existing options such that, and like, that is what does the convincing. For them. Not you showing up with your brilliant positioning, with your da da da, with your like awesome slide deck, right? You were just looking for somebody in that situation where they're like, yeah, we've tried all this other stuff. We're looking for a way to bring families in and we've tried these other options. We're spending money, but it's, we're just kind of like, so you can, you could observe them spending money on this. They're spending money. They're spending time. It is something they are actively doing. So it's the kind of coping kind of pull, right? But their supply doesn't fit and they're struggling against it. You'd see them reallocating budget here and there and like looking at spreadsheets and saying, what the heck? And like all that kind of stuff. That's the, that's the signal that they're, they are coping. Yeah. And then you, then like, okay, cool. So That's happening independent of, but we actually don't know if they're in the category of I am struggling against my existing options so much that if something that fits better shows up, I'm going to like pull. Yeah. Versus, yeah, I'm struggling against my existing options, but change is hard, but da da da da da, like it's not that they're good enough. Right. And so that's the pitfall. That you fall into on the coping side, which is you can observe somebody who looks like they are struggling, but you can't know if that struggle, like, you know, that struggle is just an equilibrium struggle, or if it's a disequilibrium struggle, if they are like, if their workflow is just tedious and annoying, but They don't, they, they don't want to change. They're not really kind of pushing against it. Then you're going to like, you're going to come, you're going to watch them and you're going to say, whoa, this is so inefficient. I'm going to build the greatest thing ever. You come back and show it to them and they're, and they say, yeah, that seems like it would be way better. Yeah. And they don't pull. So what you're looking is that, so that, that's the pitfall here. That's why you have to test by selling, putting some kind of conceptual supply in front of them and seeing, are they leaned back, which means they really weren't coping. They're like, kind of, it's just good enough. Or were they coping such that they like lean in and say, wait, you can do this. Let's talk about next steps. Let's do, or how do I sign up?

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. TBD. I'll keep folks, folks posted on whether this was, whether this was coping or whether it was actually like there was, there was good enough. Or, you know, the other side of that is maybe you don't— your supply isn't in the shape of like what fits their demand exactly. What's— let's talk real quick about how you validate coping. You write, you first, you know, you're always a huge advocate of like, go watch the person, like, you know, goblin mode or just like going to the, to visit the customer, watch for places where they are fighting against their existing supply. Step 2, try to infer what their project really is based on where and how they are struggling. And then 3 is use sales to validate that their coping pull is real and beware of our, you know, the timeless saying by Bob Moesta, bitchin' ain't switchin'. Anything that you would add on the validation piece? Nope. What you mentioned risks or you like common pitfalls.

The common pitfall is what we just talked about, right? It's like, it's objectively inefficient, slow, garbage, annoying, painful. Yeah. But they're not actually struggling against it. They're not struggling to change, right? Like it's such that when, when you show a supply that seems like it fits, they're like, oh, that's interesting, versus leaning in.

Yeah. And this is related to, you know, something we've talked about in the past about it is the business world is so complex that it's actually impossible to know until there's like really transactions, which is why that third step is you can't stop at step 2, build product and expect people to, you know, to purchase it. They might, might get lucky. You wanna jump into, to blocked pull real fast?

Yeah. So blocked is the hard one or, or it's the one where if you figure it out, you can grow very fast. I guess you can grow fast with coping as well. Like you, I actually haven't decided which of the, they just have both, both have their kind of like pros and cons, but I am particularly fond of blocked pull because it really means you are, it's often you are bringing something totally new into the world or you're serving a totally new segment of a market. And I just, I just like that a little more.

But what block— you get, you get a bunch of questions around this. Like how does, how does your theory, Rob, apply to new category creation? And if, if that's a, uh, uh, if that's a question, like listen up for, for this part. We'll, we'll figure out what Rob thinks about.

So to be clear, new categories could also apply to coping. Pull, right? Because it's what matters is that they are struggling against their status quo, against their existing supply options. What might fit is a new category of things. So that's always kind of based on demand. What is the right fit supply that makes them say, oh, that's exactly what I need, right? What helps them understand it? That's the kind of point of a category. And so, but what, what blocked pull is, is with coping, you can like kind of wash somebody. At their job. You could be like, looks like you're taking all these notes manually. And as you're doing it, you're muttering swear words and like, you know, praying to the god of whatever and, uh, and want all this to go away. If we just automated that for you, right? Like, would that, would that help? And they'll, oh my God, yes. If you could automate that for me, amazing. Right. But it's based on what you can see. Hmm. Blocked poll is not visible in the moment. They're not struggling against something. What they, what it really is, is they are prioritizing something right now. They're taking action on something, but if there was a way, they would be prioritizing this other thing.

Hmm.

Right now, classic example of this is Lovable. Before Lovable existed, people, like non-technical people weren't building apps or building websites or whatever as much. And, but it, so if you had watched them, if you had watched me, you wouldn't have seen me struggling with a website builder because I was like, listen, I, I have a kid now. I can't be spending my time on a website builder. I can't bring that kind of energy into my house. It's just too much work. I'm not going to do that. And so, and so you wouldn't have seen me do that, but the second Lovable comes out, it turns out that I wanted a way to build a website. Like I wanted to build a website. It was just, I wasn't doing it. It was my, this like thing where if it was easy enough or if it was whatever enough, it would be my number one priority. Right now. I would be prioritizing this right now. And so that's the kind of shape of thing here is the thing that you are not actively prioritizing because you don't have a good way to do it.

Let's, I wanna put this, connect that to the pull framework and I've got— Yes. It's kind of a specific question around this. So the Project in that case, let's continue with lovable is clear. Project is clear, like have a website without sacrificing time with your daughter or something like that. Also the options, like looking at options, you've probably investigated it, you're probably doing something else that they're lacking because they're too time-consuming or complicated or expensive. The thing I don't totally understand is if you applies or if you applies differently, like if it is unavoidable or urgent. So how would you, how do you think about that second part? Yeah.

I mean, I think about the U as U stands for right now, unfortunately, in my mind.

Ooh, right now.

Right now. And so U stands for right now in my mind. And so it's like, My number one thing right now that I'm trying to accomplish, or I would be focusing on right now if only I could. Right. And then, then we can work back. Okay. Why is it unavoidable right now? Why is it urgent right now? Why is it the thing you would like there? And so that's kind of how I think about the you, right? It's, it's like, I want to have an awesome website, right? I have this idea I want to try to make into a thing.

Mm-hmm.

Right. I do it right now cuz this is like way better. I'm, this is like, I see myself as this, this entrepreneur and I da da da da da, like just, but I'm, I'm blocked because my existing supply isn't good enough.

Yeah. Gotcha. I, I like that. I'm gonna remember you for right, right now. Um, there's, uh, you give two other examples. I don't know if you'd like to hit, uh, either of those selling into independent physical therapists, uh, in, in HBS, uh, base. Startup or startup that came out of HBS. And then Wiz, which is one— was that a— I think that was one of the, not, I'm drawing a blank.

CyberStarts companies from last year.

CyberStarts, there. Yeah. But would you like to hit either of those, Rob?

So actually it was funny 'cause when that post came out, I was actually talking to a CTO who brought up Wiz totally separately to me. And he was like, so Wiz, if you're not familiar, Wiz is like a way to secure your cloud, uh, infrastructure platform, your, your kind of like cloud computing platforms, Google Cloud, AWS, whatever. And so he was, he was describing to me, he was trying to, he was actually trying to understand the difference between coping pull and blocked pull, because I had been kind of teasing that apart. And he was like, okay, so like maybe like Wiz. So before Wiz came around, I just had this fear in the back of my mind that I didn't know how to take action on. That, like, just about security. I wanted to make sure that all the, like, if there is a critical vulnerability in some part of Google Cloud, I will know about it. Because it's, like, not necessarily obvious that that's the case. And I don't, I don't feel comfortable with it, but there's no option for me there. And so it's just this thing that is, like, in this category of number one priority that I would totally take action on the second something shows up in front of me and is good enough. But there is literally, I don't know what to do here. I don't have anything here. And so he said his experience during the Wiz demo was like, oh my God, I am buying this right now. And I will, right? Like this is happening right now. That is something that he was blocked from because there wasn't supply that fit on that he, that he knew of.

Super interesting. Um, we, I had a conversation yesterday, um, uh, basically just asked one of my customers, why, why did you buy for us? Which I should have asked a long time ago, but, uh, we, we had 15 minutes and her perspective was, uh, we, I wanted, um, Uh, I knew that our reach was too local. We needed to be able to reach, uh, new parts and in particular rural parts with something to offer. We thought media was a good option. We didn't know how to do that. And so we had sort of played with the idea of producing in-house and then they were like, you sent a DM on LinkedIn and it was like, oh, okay, like this is, we can outsource this and it'll be professional. But what probably would've happened had I not connected with this person, is they just wouldn't have done anything about it. And, but so there was, there was something there. Um, I, I think this falls into the blocked pool. Yeah. Um, they, you know, they may have tried to piece together some, you know, plays with something, but I think it's more likely that they actually wouldn't have moved, moved forward with any type of project.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I think that's, that's probably right. Right. And you wouldn't have seen them. Doing much about it. It'd just be this thing on the back of their mind that they're like, yeah, I'm thinking about it every once in a while, but you can't see that. You can maybe ask them what they're thinking about, but, but yeah, like that's, and, and the critical thing again, we come back to this is like, okay, assuming you don't exist, your product doesn't exist, are they blocked right now on, on this thing that they actually want to accomplish? It all comes back to, right? Like to find product market fits, you have to forget about the product and say, say, is this person like, who is coping or blocked right now from what they are really trying to accomplish? Right. They either have supply that doesn't fit well and they're grinding against it. They're a coiled up spring. Just ready to like, I don't know, I don't know what that, that thing is, but you can see my hands spring, spring, or they are blocked because they're not sure how to do it. Right. They're not sure the supply side of the equation. And so they're like that CTO I mentioned where it's just, or you're in that situation for you where it's just this thing in the back of their mind. It's like, if only something If only something existed that could help me do XYZ such that, so that has to exist independent of you. You just show up with your like, hey, here's what I do. And they're like, yes, cool. I've already bought it in my mind. Right? Like I'm already there.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about validating, validating Blocktopool. You give, you know, a couple or 3 steps One is infer by observing. Two, there's the CyberStarts, you know, questions. One is what would you pay me to solve for you? And then the second one is if I spent $100 million to build something that solves something you need, what would I solve? I would maybe, maybe a third one in my case was like, if you've already sold to some people, like ask them why. And they might actually reveal that there's like, that they were blocked. And then obviously like the final step is go sell and that, that'll validate. But anything you would add on the validation process there?

Yeah. So this is the one where it's like, I'm not, this is the one where you're looking for something that doesn't actually exist. It's like, it's not observable. It doesn't even, it's just this thing where it's like, if only X, then I would take action on it. And so you have to kind of come at it obliquely. I don't know that there's ever going to be like a, I mean, maybe there is, there's Plenty of people smarter than me probably who can think about this, but like the method for consistently finding this thing, uh, I don't know, is, is this— maybe I've seen some people show like a fake Trello board with like a category of things I would do if only there was a way right now. And you know, you could have that conversation. You can kind of give that scaffolding and see who knows, right? Um, I think like the general thing here is you can observe them and kind of say, okay, what's their, what's the kinds of things they are trying to do, right? If it's like, I'm, if it's basically like I'm pinching pennies, I'm really concerned about cash flow, right? You can, you can sense that they are kind of, they have a general force in the direction of like, saving money or, or kind of like improving cash flow. And you can say, okay, cool. Maybe let's zoom out and let's look at, let's look at ways they might not have considered to improve their cash flow. But we know they're generally trying to do something in this space. And let's find a line item that's like this hidden line item that they didn't realize is like very important. Right. And so you can kind of do that. It's, it's less direct. Than the like, hey, it looks like that sucks for you right now. Would this solve it? What do you, like, what do you think? Um, but it's like, it's directionally there. And then yeah, there are some questions you can ask, like, hey, I'm going to raise $100 million to solve something. What, what have you tried to solve? Or what would you desperately like to solve that if I spent $100 million on it, like, that's worth, it's a like an investment that's worth me spending $100 million.

Yeah. Um, is, would it be fair, Rob, to say this is one there where the ideas, like it's, I, I would suspect, I think in both of them there's a bias for this, but suspect that it's particularly useful to come from the industry, um, and have been like, oh man, I really wish I could do this thing. Like you, you know, the thing that is in your your head. Is, is that fair or?

Not necessarily. Like, it's always better to have a firsthand intuition, whether that's you being from the industry or you just spending time in the industry. Um, but like the risk on this one is that it is very easy to go into first principles land here, which is like the worst place on earth to be where you're like, well, in theory, who wouldn't want a way to increase revenues and decrease costs? Right. And it's, and you, it's, I think of that as wish-casting pull when it's not really there because it doesn't, you know, it's like, like it's the wrong place to come at it is from first principles, I would say. Yeah.

Yeah. Rob, I, we're gonna, we're gonna run up here against time. I, yeah, you, you write, you draw an interesting parallel connection to Clay Christensen's work with new market disruption. I don't think we have time to hit that, but that might— I think I found myself revisiting Christensen's disruption frameworks and thinking about how they interact with yours, which would be a cool thing to explore at some point. So we want to hit mailbag real quick.

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay. Well, we'll hit one of them. This one is from Giacomo Tamburino. I'm not even going to try. 89938893. He said, uh, hey Rob, big fan of you, dreaming, uh, to launch a cybersecurity venture. I talked with 5 ICPs and noticed, uh, that the hypothesis is confirmed. Uh, there is a clear need, but there is no urgency. What would you suggest to do next?

Uh, yeah. So what that means to me is that there is no pull, which to me suggests that the hypothesis is not confirmed.

Hmm. Like it's a pain point that they've—

Yeah, it's like a theoretical future thing, which is like pull is a thing. Remember, U stands for right now. Um, and so, uh, and so if it is not something they need right now, then there isn't pull. And, and I would take that back. I'd basically go back to those 5 people and say, hey, I must have missed something because You were suggesting that's a future thing. What's the thing right now?

Hmm. Yeah. And, um, uh, and unless there's anything else you wanna add on that, are there any other, um, I should have hit this before, any other practical takeaways? Like what should founders do with the, uh, the framing of blocked and coping?

Uh, like the question is, if you don't exist, who is either blocked or coping? It doesn't matter which one you're tackling. But you need to know, like, are they blocked? Are they coping? What are we actually testing here? What are we actually looking for out there in the world? Where are the coiled springs? Where are the, where are the, the people who are, where's the dams ready to burst? And, um, it, it's a very, very good exercise to forget your product. This is what we talked about last week. Like, and, and ask, okay, let's just We can't think about our product right now. Who is blocked or coping the most right now such that when we show up, they will rip something out of our hands? That is the question to be asking.

Yeah. Yeah. The, uh, an interesting consequence of having, uh, worked with you for a while now, Rob, is I did that entire Argentinian conversation with, uh, the national park without slides, just like straight, straight up, like running through. Yeah. Uh, they, they have no idea that I even know what a slide is, which is, uh, a surprising evolution of this former consultant's life.

But we're about to get a cease and desist from Bain for this. Uh, yeah, about to have your alumni, uh, uh, revoked.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, they did that a long time ago, Rob. Um, anything else before we wrap?

No, I think that's it.

All right, we'll see everybody next week.