A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders
00:46:58 · Sean McCarthy
[00:46:58] S0: So traditionally it's thirty minutes. We kind of go against the grain, I guess, as it relates to running a playbook and doing just discovery, and making sure that you're deeply embedded on that first call. What we find often is that we have to demo on that first call, and really just so that it conceptualizes what we do in, AI and the impact to the customer. Otherwise, they don't quite understand what it is. You can talk a little bit about it, but they need to see it. So we will demo, we'll get a little bit of information. We have a demo that we have a number of demos actually depending on what they tell us is relevant and we'll demo that. And then from there, we'll collect information. Almost always, they're going to bring in more team and so if they do that, we'll try to get more information from them as it relates to what they liked. What was relevant in that demo to you guys and what was not relevant. What are some of those things? And we can make sure and customize that demo a little bit next time for the broader audience. Sometimes they're so excited, they'll offer, we'll offer to sign an NDA. So that they can give us some of that information right off the bat so that the next meeting we have is hyper focused on their use case. But that's traditionally, it's usually thirty minutes, forty five minutes, we do the demo, and then our ask is always to make sure that we have the relevant stakeholders in. That are either going to help us shape the use cases or utilize the product or are going to have that signing authority.
00:48:17 · Pablo Srugo
[00:48:17] S2: On the demo, what have you found is that wow moment and how fast are you able to get to it?
00:48:23 · Sean McCarthy
[00:48:23] S0: We intentionally insert two wow moments in the demo. Essentially, we have a couple of different demos, but the first is around the intake from, we can show voice or email. Voice tends to get a better wow factor where it can be in a warehouse. You know, for a lot of our customers that are at a loading bay, and calling in with a problem. And then very clearly, they're able to articulate what's happening, but then the AI will start to go chase the information. So send a Slack to Pablo, call Sean, log into FedEx, like all at the same time, to pull this route to result. And that is happening before their eyes, so that's been powerful for them to start to see. And then the second and kind of ending part is the resolution. So now we've got all this aggregate information, we have enough to solve, but it shouldn't still go to a human for then a human to input into a system. The way that this should work is that we should be able to update QuickBooks or the ERP with the financial outcome and then update the warehouse management system with maybe the relevant stock or whatever happened there. And so, actually showing the systems being updated and the ticket being resolved across the board. And so, we try to always have at least two wow factors in the demos and even the custom demos that we do. So that they can understand not only what this looks like in practice, how their customers are going to utilize us, but internally what it's going to look like as well for them. Because I think those are two different experiences. They're worried about the customer experience, but they're also worried about the employee experience and so I think if we can make each wow factor around both of those elements, it usually sits really well.
00:49:59 · Pablo Srugo
[00:49:59] S2: And then from there at that point you have interest. You're trying to go to something, probably like some kind of a pilot and the biggest thing I found is just the challenge, like the failure mode is you just get stuck somewhere or it just starts taking too long. And, you know, time kills all deals, priorities change, whatever. Because you're already in at that point. Clearly, they like what you have. What have you found works in order to shorten the time between interest and some closing of some sort, even if it's a pilot?
00:50:27 · Sean McCarthy
[00:50:27] S0: I think the pilot thing for AI startups can be very dangerous and we've learned with lessons too. I think, you know, when we look at those pilots, and what I say by learn by lesson. You don't want to after the pilot be in this purgatory of, where is this going to go? Yes, we're going to go to commercial contract, but that's got to go right back through legal and you know, you might be still having your solution deployed. And so I think it's a dangerous area. The way that we do, we always try to push for a one year contract. But if we have to do a pilot with many of these large enterprises, they require some sort of observation phase. We'll build the pilot into the one year contract. So it's a one year contract, but it will include a thirty day pilot, sixty day max, but thirty day hopefully pilot that will auto convert to a one year. And that way, all of the legal documentation and infrastructure and all of that is pre-approved, it's all part of the normal agreement, and everybody's on the same page. Obviously, you need to make sure that you deliver in that thirty or sixty day window so that you can get that auto conversion. But that's hands down the best way and to answer your question, when you talk about like, how do you get it, that's a really good way. Because it still is a light enough ask to the customer, their feet aren't necessarily held to the fire if they don't like it. But on our side, we've got some insurance that as long as we do what we said, we have that commercial agreement.
00:51:45 · Pablo Srugo
[00:51:45] S2: So I love that idea. But between them saying, yeah, okay, this is interesting and then them signing that one year contract with let's say with a pilot out.