A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
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.
00:53:02 · Pablo Srugo, Steve Tuck
[00:53:02] S1: Steve, thanks for your time and appreciate having you on the show. [00:53:06] S0: Pablo, thank you. It was fun. [00:53:08] S1: Wow, what an episode. You're probably in awe. You're in absolute shock. You're like, that helped me so much. So guess what? Now it's your turn to help someone else. Share the episode in the WhatsApp group you have with founders. Share it on that Slack channel. Send it to your founder friends and help them out. Trust me, they will love you for it.