Reframe

Product-Market Fit is misunderstood.

Learn more: reframeb2b.com

Newsletter: howtogrow.substack.com

Founder

Redstick Ventures

Reach out if you're in restaurant + food tech!

Venture Partner

MuukTest

QA Automation software that *finally* gives CTOs peace of mind

Fractional Head of Growth

Food Foundry

Food Foundry is a Chicago-based growth accelerator program by Relish Works, built in partnership with Gordon Food Service.

Entrepreneur in Residence

Incendium Strategies

Incendium is the leading growth studio for B2B software companies. I help their startups find product-market fit and repeatability.

Founder in Residence

HourWork

We founded HourWork to disrupt how companies recruit and retain their people. 

Our game-changing technology solutions enhance your recruitment and retention needs, and we are already serving some of the largest quick service restaurant concepts in the world.

The HourWork name is rooted in our commitment to celebrate and build the interdependent relationship between employers and employees. HourWork partners with clients who see themselves as skill providers and who have a deep belief that their business is most successful when their employees feel successful, too. 

We are on a mission to restore the ideals of the American Dream by unifying employers and hourly workers.

Co-Founder

Anthros Consulting

Consultant

Evrnu, SPC

Intern

McKinsey & Company

Business Analyst

Green Hope Orphanage

Cofounder and President

Serial B2B founder 
Helps you navigate $0-$1M ARR
Kinda like a cofounder

Ex-McKinsey, Harvard Business School, and B2B founder ($0-$4M ARR in 2 years). Had to unlearn most of what I thought I knew from McK & HBS to survive in startups.

One of our customers just got a permanent tattoo of BusRight.

We are a technology company, but more importantly, we're a team and community that creates hope, purpose, and deep friendships with our nation's hidden community heroes. 

We're building a generational business that leaves marks on communities across the country, and skin, for decades to come.

Rob Snyder

When I left McKinsey & Harvard Business School to become a first-time founder, I thought I knew everything... but in reality, I was a total idiot.

Since then, I've helped 7 startups go from $0-$1M+ ARR. Think I can say I am now (slightly) less of an idiot.

Here's the "talking-to" I wish a serial founder had given me when I was just starting out.

This would have saved me 2+ years in the pre-PMF pain cave... if only I'd listened.

What am I missing here? Going to compile this advice into a longer substack post in a few weeks...

Letter to a First-Time Founder

The best motivation when you're building a startup? Being told you're doing it all wrong, by people who haven't built a startup before.

Does anything even come close?

(This happened to me twice last week. Had a 11/10 productive weekend.)

Perhaps the simplest but most important reframe for thinking about finding product-market fit, that I wish someone had told me 10 years ago:

Smart people tend to think top-down, at scale, in abstractions: Personas, market segments, value propositions, product categories, etc.

This is helpful in many ways. However, you actually find product-market fit bottom-up, in 1-on-1 conversations with prospective & actual customers.

In fact, top-down thinking often *prevents* us from finding product-market fit. Because we're so committed to our theories, we have a hard time recognizing the real patterns of demand in our customer conversations. And we try to force our top-down theories on the market, which is neither fun nor effective.

It was only through onboarding our first 300 customers 1-on-1 that I noticed a pattern that led to the *real* product opportunity, for example.

Would I have noticed this if I hadn't done that hands-on work? Would I have noticed it if I'd been committed to some top-down thesis developed before working with 300 customers 1-on-1? Of course not.

Everything in startupland talks at scale, in theory, in abstractions. Which makes sense in the classroom, in newsletters, and on social media. The only place it doesn't make sense is in practice.

Tom Kerwin

You might have seen Devin, the AI-powered software engineer. Today I'm launching Dalvin, the AI-powered devops engineer! 🔥

It's crazy what AI can do... for JUST $10k per month, Dalvin can 20x your cloud costs!

If that's not enough for you:

- Dalvin will send daily passive-aggressive messages to every engineer on your team, via our new Slack integration. (If you upgrade to our premium plan, Dalvin can send personalized insults to product, QA, and even sales!)

- Dalvin will make up increasingly complicated pretend words like "kubernetes" and "terraform." 

- Dalvin will set up your cloud infra to be so complicated, you will have to hire our team of junior AI devops engineers (Darby, Dobby, and Fred) to help Dalvin manage it. (VCs - look at this NRR potential!)

Now obviously this is just an early v1. What other features should Dalvin have?

(But actually, if you're a startup looking for a simple way to build on AWS & be SOC 2 compliant from day 1, reach out - I've got some free stuff for you)

25 of the biggest myths in early-stage startups ($0-$1M ARR): 

1. You can "validate" an idea without selling & delivering.
2. Product-market fit is complicated.
3. Understanding precedes doing.
4. You can plan your business.
5. You should "start with why."
6. Your product roadmap matters.
7. You need to think about scalability.
8. You can know your market size.
9. Customers buy software to "solve problems" and "stop pain points"
10. If it makes sense in theory, it works in practice.
11. Personas and market segments buy software.
12. You need to build systems and processes.
13. That fancy VP will solve all your problems.
14. Your investors are uniquely counterproductive.
15. Raising money is a form of validation.
16. That other startup has it all figured out.
17. Customers care about your vision.
18. That person who's never done it before has a helpful perspective on PMF.
19. There is a scientific approach to the early stage.
20. That viral piece of advice that sounds right won't steer you into the iceberg.
21. If you approach the problem from first principles, you'll get it right.
22. Someone else can figure it out for you.
23. Bootstrapping is less ambitious than raising venture.
24. You could have known that really important thing you now know, earlier.
25. If only you were better at sales/dev/etc. the journey would be a lot easier.

26?

Saved my new startup 12+ months of research, experimentation, analysis, and pain this week.

How? Just started selling. Did some demos. They weren't pretty, actually kinda embarrassing... but I learned what really matters. 

And as always, what matters in practice is VERY different than what I would have whiteboarded, theorized, or experimented.

Gotta practice what I preach: Stop LARPing, go sell 1:1 & the business will unfold.

(PS - if you know anyone who's looking to get SOC 2 compliant, DM me -- I can save them from months of dev work for free.)

First-time founder, pre-PMF: "I need to hire BDRs/AEs to build pipeline"

Second-time founder, pre-PMF: "It's my job to figure out pipeline"

Agree or disagree?

If we're being honest, here's the *real* 3-step journey most founders take to find product-market fit:

1 - Find an idea and validate it through careful discovery, experimentation, analysis, maybe even unpaid pilots.

2 - Hit your head against a wall for 2+ years.

3 - Something unexpectedly works, customers start to pull, and you build a business around that.

⭐️ Fun, right? ⭐️

But that's not all! Here are three ways to make this even better:

A - During step 1, precisely follow all the discovery, experimentation, and analysis "best practices." ESPECIALLY from people who haven't done 0-1 firsthand. Step 2 is way longer & more embarrassing when you're 100% wrong, 100% confident, and slowly realize that 100% of your prep work was a LARP.

B - During step 2, it's important to pretend that you're crushing it, and not vice versa. Go big: Focus on attending events, going viral, & giving talks. That will make the existential dread go away, right?

C - At step 3, rewrite your story of the past 2+ years to make it seem like you knew what you were doing all along. Nobody has to know...

--

If we can be honest about the path to PMF, we can make the journey less painful. We can stop overintellectualizing everything, stop pretending, stop steering startups into icebergs, and stop making founders feel worse when they're in the pain cave.

The simple, honest version:
- PMF is about repeating *one* customer case study.
- How do you build that case study? "Sell, serve, and find out." 
- Everything that matters (e.g., TAM, product direction, etc.) emerges as you sell & serve. You can't know this stuff in advance.

What other startup myths need to be busted?

Steve Travaglini is going to destroy me. Last night, he challenged me to schedule more discovery interviews than him...

If you don't know Steve, he is:
- Building something *very* exciting for revenue leaders
- A monstrously good seller & revenue leader ($0-$50M ARR)
- Already at 24 discovery interviews scheduled in one week
- Ridiculously hard-working

Nobody in their right mind would compete against Steve. I'd never bet against him. So obviously, I said "bring it ON Steve!!!"

Can I win? Eh. I just know that competing against someone great will make me better & work harder.

SO:
-- If you're a sales leader looking for the next big GTM advantage, reach out to Steve.
-- If you are a founder considering SOC 2 compliance, or know someone who is, and want to save a ton of time & pain on the journey - message me!

Game ON

There's a secret to customer feedback. 
But, it's NOT what you think...
Watch Rob Snyder and Matt Watson in today's Startup Hustle episode to unlock the key to building happy customers (and saving yourself a headache).
https://lnkd.in/gRdTTJFa

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