A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:08:35 · Ron Spreeuwenberg, Pablo Srugo
[00:08:35] S1: Open-ended. [00:08:36] S0: Got it, okay. [00:08:37] S1: At this point, still very open-ended on those problem questions because again, I'm still in the mode of the researcher mode. If this isn't a problem, I'm – if this isn't a top problem, I don't want to spend my life trying to fix it. [00:08:51] S0: For what it's worth, I think that's critical because you're trying to understand not just what are problems but also what are top of mind problems? What are true high priority? And if you ask them what are some of your main problems, and they don't list the one that you think you want to solve, it's clearly not top of mind. The flip side is if you go in and you're like, hey, is documentation a problem, anything, is X a problem, most of the time you'll probably get yeah, actually that is annoying, whatever. But it doesn't really matter because if it's not top of mind, they're probably not going to be buyers. They're certainly not going to be looking for it online. Everything's just going to add so much more friction when you go to sell it.
00:09:24 · Ron Spreeuwenberg, Pablo Srugo
[00:09:24] S1: And I would say this was the stage where I made that conversion in my mindset. So this came out of this, and folks objectively said, these are top problems for us. Then the next round of interviews in which I did – met with 50 childcare programs, I then switched to, okay, let's dive deeper into those two specific things. So, okay, documentation and paperwork are a challenge. What are you documenting? When are you documenting it? How are you documenting it? Is there any information you can provide me on that? What are your challenges with parent communication? What do parents tell you they like or don't like? And really getting into the next level of detail of okay, we know there's a problem, now let's start gathering information to understand how we can solve it. And that's when I started making the switch to figuring out if this is an area where there's a business opportunity to trying to understand what the solution might look like. [00:10:32] S0: Is this over the phone, by the way? Are you doing this in person?
00:10:32 · Pablo Srugo, Ron Spreeuwenberg
[00:10:32] S0: Is this over the phone, by the way? Are you doing this in person? [00:10:35] S1: No, in person, and that's something else I really try to encourage early-stage entrepreneurs to do because – I mean, so many reasons. One is there's just so much a higher trust level when you meet people in person. So humans are humans. When you have somebody in front of you, the trust level is much higher. People will open up a lot more. And then they also know you're investing your time. It's like you're physically coming to see me, this is important to you. So I'm willing to invest my time in speaking with you. And the other thing which I found super helpful is – and I think we were perhaps in a unique situation in a vertical market. But seeing the environment that they work in, and that they live in day to day, is actually game changing to see that. And we were able to take a lot away from that in terms of our product design, our users. That was very critical information, seeing that actual physical work environment. [00:11:49] S0: I couldn't agree more. I mean, at the end of the day, the research and stuff is going to get you the problems worth solving. But the subtleties, the details are going to be the things that determine how your product's built. And that's the difference between usage, and engagement, and not. So you got to be in there to – yeah, you got to be in there to really see it. Let me ask another question just around that. How did you get these daycares to give you the time in the first place? Was that hard?
00:11:49 · Pablo Srugo, Ron Spreeuwenberg
[00:11:49] S0: I couldn't agree more. I mean, at the end of the day, the research and stuff is going to get you the problems worth solving. But the subtleties, the details are going to be the things that determine how your product's built. And that's the difference between usage, and engagement, and not. So you got to be in there to – yeah, you got to be in there to really see it. Let me ask another question just around that. How did you get these daycares to give you the time in the first place? Was that hard? [00:12:20] S1: Easier than you would think – I think the key is keeping that researcher mindset. Yeah, sure you want to start a business out of this, but most people are pretty open to meeting with folks who are trying to help. And that's just really how I always positioned it. And the other aspect of that too to keep in mind is there's always this curve of innovators and early adopters versus laggards and late adopters. So folks say, look, I'm not interested. There's a good chance they're not going to be the folks you want to be speaking to now anyways. So it's totally cool. [00:13:06] S0: That fully resonates. I think at the end of the day, we all get sold to and frankly we don't really like it. But few people, if you think about it, are often in a position where they're treated like experts. And so if you go in there, and you treat them like experts, and you're just saying, hey, you're an expert in the space, I just want to learn. In most cases, people are going to be much more amenable to that than you might think.
00:13:06 · Pablo Srugo, Ron Spreeuwenberg
[00:13:06] S0: That fully resonates. I think at the end of the day, we all get sold to and frankly we don't really like it. But few people, if you think about it, are often in a position where they're treated like experts. And so if you go in there, and you treat them like experts, and you're just saying, hey, you're an expert in the space, I just want to learn. In most cases, people are going to be much more amenable to that than you might think. [00:13:28] S1: Yeah, that's a great point. And that is the key is a lot of folks want to be the expert and provide you with their expert opinions and views. And so putting them in that position is – it goes a long way in terms of getting their time, 100%. [00:13:45] S0: Maybe to make it a bit more tangible, and I know this is a while ago, but do you remember any – what stories or insights that you noticed, especially in that phase where you're actually in the daycares and you're watching them work, anything that clicked back then? [00:14:05] S1: Oh, so many things, I mean first of all, you just see how crazy it is. You go in there and there's so many things happening. So right off the bat it's like, okay, if we're creating a product for these folks, these educators to use, it needs to be super simple, super quick and very easy to use. They don't have time. If it's not intuitive and easy to use, they're going to be throwing this tablet out the window pretty darn fast.
00:14:05 · Ron Spreeuwenberg, Pablo Srugo
[00:14:05] S1: Oh, so many things, I mean first of all, you just see how crazy it is. You go in there and there's so many things happening. So right off the bat it's like, okay, if we're creating a product for these folks, these educators to use, it needs to be super simple, super quick and very easy to use. They don't have time. If it's not intuitive and easy to use, they're going to be throwing this tablet out the window pretty darn fast. [00:14:32] S0: It's often lost, but you want to meet your customers where they are. And so if there's already a feeling or whatever that they don't want to lose touch with, let's say the in-person in this case, then saying that upfront is meeting them where they are. And the message is much more likely to be heard and to ultimately resonate. But again, there's subtleties, there are details that if you're not in there, if you're not talking to these customers, especially and specifically, I think, in person you are – you're likely to miss. So maybe moving on from that, just through this customer discovery life cycle, you've done these 50 in-person interviews. Do you start – when do you start working on the design or the product? Are you doing that in parallel?