A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:46:29 · Steve Tuck, Pablo Srugo
[00:46:29] S0: And team members hold each other accountable. Like, that's the flip side of this is like, they demand that folks are, you know, as hardworking as they are and, but it really, it is hard to describe the value of everyone on the same team. [00:46:43] S1: Because you do get that in other companies and it's like, well, this person doesn't perform that well. Yeah, but they only make like 50K, so like whatever, right? It just, so that no longer kind of bleeds in. The second question by the way I wanted to ask just before we move on is, what about at the high end? Like, the person who has to do, you know, half their salary or maybe they can make three times as much somewhere else. And you're kind of like, well, you're great. I want you to work here. We have the perfect role for you. But like this, you know, I'm kind of capped like this because I have a salary cap. This is all I can pay. How do you still get them? I get that there's the story and all these other things, but at some point if they're like, I'm going to make it up. I make a million here, 250K here, you know.
00:47:18 · Steve Tuck
[00:47:18] S0: No, you're right. You're right. Look, mortgages are at seven and three quarters. Like, oil is through the roof. There's, back to where we started, we wanted to make sure that everyone had a really comfortable financial situation. And so, a couple ways we approached that. One is, as the company became more successful, we've raised that level from 175K to 200 to 225 to 250 to 275. We will be at 300. Second of all, we invest a lot into benefits. So, you know, whether it's an individual or a family, we cover everything. And yes, that doesn't show up, you know, in the bank account, but it is a way of investing into employees, whether it's retirement and health and others that it's so rewarding to hear from spouses or others, like, oh my God, this is like night and day from what we've been before. And then the third piece is, as we've been able to grow the value of the company, having ownership in the company has become really valuable. And it didn't occur to me until one of our engineers who's got a bunch of friends over at Meadow was like, hey, by the way, you know, as folks are going into the market, it turns out from a salary plus benefits plus equity perspective, like, we are 100% competitive with, like, OpenAI, Anthropic, you know, all, some of the leading companies out there with some of the biggest offers. And so, I feel like we can stand there kind of chest out with, like, from a compensation perspective, we're competitive.
00:48:51 · Pablo Srugo
[00:48:51] S1: And that part, to be clear, the equity piece, you do kind of drive more or less. It's not like everybody has the exact same equity.
00:48:56 · Steve Tuck
[00:48:56] S0: The way we view equity is that you have, it's an offset for risk. So, if you came to the company before we had anything, you were taking on a hell of a lot of risk. Over time, as we have de-risked the company, you're not going to have as much equity as someone that showed up four years ago. And so, we have been relatively consistent in the rubric around equity, which has also helped. There are cases where you have someone that is taking responsibility for a broader team and a broader effort. And as they are taking on more responsibility, they may have a slightly different profile from an equity perspective. But, I think what's important is that there's no one that is not getting equity that if we go take this business where it should go, it's not going to be life-changing. And that is, you know, something that we want to keep consistent as we go forward and grow. From a compensation perspective, we do not want people to have to feel like they have to invest in Oxide to be able to get the fulfillment of the other side of it, which is be part of something special, be working against a mission that is going after, totally transforming a massive space that, you know, I think we're in the very, very early days of on-prem having its cloud moment. And if that happens, and then on-prem IT transforms from this sort of kit car approach to a cloud-ready systems-based approach, over the next 10 years, you have a trillion dollars of infrastructure that's going to turn over. And to be part of being able to build, you know, kind of part of nine products in one, and then most importantly, work closely with customers to make them successful and work with a bunch of brilliant folks that are in this sort of high-trust environment, it ends up being pretty compelling.
00:50:35 · Pablo Srugo
[00:50:35] S1: Steve, we're at the top of the hour, which we had another hour because I think there's a bunch of other things we could cover. But I'll ask just the last question, which is, if you had one piece of advice for an early-stage founder and still kind of hunting for product market fit or just getting the beginnings of it, what would that be?
00:50:50 · Steve Tuck
[00:50:50] S0: Just as many conversations as you possibly can have with as many people as you can. I mean, you should be having, you know, 300 conversations a month if you can. And it doesn't mean that each one of those is a prospective customer. It can be folks that work in a company that's sort of adjacent to the space, but asking for time with people to get feedback on what you're building. Yes, of course, in your prospective customer set. But then when you finish that conversation, asking them if there is anyone they think you should talk to. And that's how you get this kind of spider effect of conversations that you would not have been able to get to first party. And it turns out, like, people love to help. They're drawn in to why you decided to kind of throw everything in on this company idea and kind of make the sacrifices you're making to go build this company. And usually, you're able to get folks that are willing to give you feedback. And a lot of these are not going to be prospective customer conversations, but a bunch of them, you know, you're going to be able to ask questions around the edges of, like, ultimately what you want to get down to, which is, what are the top business level problems that they have? And how does the thing that you're building meaningfully impact one of those top three? Because if it's not in that top three, it doesn't matter how good your marketing and sales and timing is. Unless your sales cycle is less than 30 A's, something is going to broadside that effort. That company, that team, that person is going to be distracted and off to the next thing. And, you know, product market fit gets used as this sort of abstract term like cloud computing or AI. And you really got to dig into understanding how you can fundamentally help companies make money, save money, grow customers, and there's going to be top level priorities inside these businesses if you don't have something that can negatively impact that. It's going to be a rocky road. So I would just say as many conversations as you can have. There's no conversations, the bad conversation, and always finish by asking them who they think you should talk to and you'll be pleasantly surprised at that network effect.