The Physics of Startups
Most 0-to-1 and product-market fit advice is a pile of things that worked for someone, once. This show is built on causal relationships, not tactics.
Rob Snyder has helped 50+ startups go from $0 to $1M ARR. He's the creator of the PULL framework and author of "The Power of PULL" which explains why customers buy and why some startups scale and others stall.
For VC-backed and bootstrapping founders who are tired of advice that sounds smart but doesn't work.
More about Rob: https://www.robsnyder.org
The Physics of Startups
The PULL Quickstart Guide (a PMF hierarchy)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Rob has distilled PULL into its most important elements - arranged in hierarchical order so that a founder knows where to focus first. This conversation includes the common error of getting the order wrong, Rob's commentary on the three most important parts of PULL, and examples of how these show up with founders.
Highly recommend reading the full substack post, "The PULL Quickstart Guide"
Links
- Rob's Substack: The Physics of Startups
- AI Rob waitlist: https://robsnyder.org/ai-rob
- Work with Rob 1:1: https://www.robsnyder.org
- Get The Power of PULL: Amazon (https://amzn.to/48KC1yv), Barnes & Noble: (https://bit.ly/4dyMTSv)
- Connect with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsnyder1/
Hey Rob, how's it going, man?
SPEAKER_00Good. Good. How are you?
SPEAKER_02I'm I actually think I'm a little more alive than last week. Which is crazy, given that uh your your daughter is like having sleep uh sleep issues. But um Rob, this is an epic, epic post today. Like this is one, it's called the Pull Quick Start Guide Applying Pull. Uh we'll link to it in the show notes. It's one for folks to bookmark. It's it's kind of like um I was thinking of I was like, what is this thing? And the closest analogy I have to it is like, you know, orange juice concentrate. It's just like everything like sort of, and then you add water to it. This is like your writing concentrate version. And uh, you know, there's a bunch of things that connect to it, a bunch of places to go, but it's like if you need the essence of uh like Rob Snyder's thinking and understanding pool and understanding PMF and uh how to deliver, uh, this this is it. So literally like bookmark this thing and come back to it every once in a while. But Rob, why don't why don't you give us context on like what is this thing and uh why is it on your mind?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so we are almost done with another round of PMF camp. And the thing that I keep noticing or that I worry about is that people will come through. There's you know, five sessions that cover kind of every single part of product market fit and sales that is relevant to pull. And I come out of it worrying that people have learned a lot of things and are applying a lot of things, but that they don't have a quick start guide almost or like a here's what's most important. Here are the you can take away a lot of different things from here, but there is a almost like hierarchy of importance. And so I I actually wrote this as an internal doc for the like PMF camp folks. But I was like, you know what, screw it. I like I wrote it while on a plane, just on my phone. Uh, and uh uh I was like, oh yeah, this this would actually be a helpful thing. We can put in a blog post, maybe we can we can just open source it. And I think it will help specifically one of the common error modes I see, which is being right about things that are downstream and wrong about things that are upstream. And that is actually a massively important concept that I think plagues basically all of entrepreneurship thinking and a lot of business thinking as well, which is that these are these are we are very right to a precise degree about something downstream that is irrelevant because of what's upstream.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Can you give an example of that? What what what could it feel like to be right down, or maybe it's even like focused on getting something right downstream that's uh or downstream that and well not fixing the thing that's upstream or something like that. But what does that look like with them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so like the classic example is like being super, super rigorous about your discovery interviews. Whereas you're you know, you're doing, you know, you this is what a ton of founders do, which is you've been told to do discovery interviews. And so you get a super detailed interview guide, you do it, you like analyze it with claw, you do like a ton of analysis on it, and you get super good at discovery interviews, which are irrelevant, are generally irrelevant because they miss uh just a fundamental thing of why do people buy things? And given that that upstream concept, you would not be doing discovery interviews. Like, like if you understood that upstream thing, you would not be doing this downstream thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. A couple areas that I've uh reading through this hierarchy, I was like, yeah, I did that before I did the thing before it, or the thing, six things before it. Uh, one was building supply, like overbuilding supply before like really understanding the ICP um and and identifying pool because pool tells you what the supply is that you should build. And then uh another one is there's like certain things that you get kind of hung up on. It's like, how do I price this thing? When it's like who cares? Almost like until you've until you've figured out what they're trying to accomplish and how to sell to them and stuff, it doesn't, it almost like doesn't matter. And you you articulated that in this post in a way that was like kind of light bulb moment for me. That's just one example of that. I wish it would have been light bulb 18 months ago, but uh, you know, unfortunately it's light bulb today.
SPEAKER_00Uh let me let me give another example too. This this is a this is one that I've seen actually very, very common in in our world, which is there's a lot of sales advice out there. And there's, you know, like you have to be really good at sales, which I I don't disagree that you should be good at sales, but being good at sales is downstream of something that is way more important than upstream. And so, like, I I I wrote about this this week online where it was, you know, they I've watching a sales call, probably the worst sales call you have ever seen. Just unbelievable. You know, like a any experienced salesperson would watch it and probably vomit. And it didn't matter. It lit it like yes, they should improve. Yes, I I I like nearly punched this person, but it did it it didn't actually matter because what was upstream was that there was somebody who was so stuck that they would have eaten dog food to buy this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, where it gone through waterboarding or uh a boot boot camp with a uh like a marine boot camp in order to purchase a product. Um, you know, there's there there's one thing I'd like to call it before we get into the hierarchy. I thought this was a really clear articulation of um basically what you're doing, essentially. Um, and it you you wrote, we don't know what causes not PMF to PMF. So it's unclear what to do pre-PMF. This is what I call the pain cave, where infinite things could work, but it's not obvious what will work. We can limp along in the pain cave forever, because basically every startup spends time in the pain cave. And then the this is the thing. And startups that escape the pain cave figure out one specific thing, pull. And that that connected a couple of the things that you've written and that I've I've been around that maybe like intuitive, like sort of sunk in, but it was like, okay, the the predictive path to getting to product market fit is actually the pull the pool framework, which I you've probably said that 15 times, Rob. I don't know why it's uh it's taken me this long, but you know, when I read that, I was like, oh, it's like it just simplified kind of everything in that. And so this post is the, as you mentioned, the hierarchy of things targeted at that, getting out of the pain cave and like understanding pool so that you can execute on it and find product market fit. Do you agree with that? I don't know if that is that a fair characterization of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. That's that's exactly how I think about it. And and it's right. And so what's happening though, as you're doing that, which is which is really interesting, um, because right, I've said this before, but I haven't, but either I haven't said it or you haven't internalized it in the stack, in the hierarchy of things, right? Or you put it somewhere lower in the hierarchy of things. And so what I'm like the what I'm trying to do is figure out how product market fit works, how to make startups take off. And specifically, that requires this hierarchy of what is most important that nothing else is upstream of. Yeah. Because if you get something right that's downstream, or right or or or worse, that feels right, but is actually only true post-product market fit, it's a symptom of product market fit and taking off, then you're just gonna be totally wrong in unpredictable ways that will make no sense to you. And so that that's the real this is the real challenge of this like stupid exercise that I've been on for the past decade. It's like that it's you know, it's trying to figure out what is causal upstream and what's the full hierarchy from there. And the I just like you just shouldn't wish this on an enemy is so awful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you're you're you're in the like pink cave art of articulating the uh the uh the causality and and startups. Uh Rob, why don't we let's hit that hierarchy? Um, and I actually maybe before that, I think this is for basically all founders that are trying to understand how product market fit works. Uh maybe founders that are in the middle of the pink cave are it's well it's not just so it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00I'm getting called into like doing executive briefings on poll at like companies that are big, which is interesting. And so basically everyone is trying to understand this hierarchy and like the the the why are some of our products taking off and others aren't, and why can't we seem to predict that in advance? And so it is like this is a think of this as a way to boot pull thinking into your brain in the correct sequence.
SPEAKER_02Love it, love it. I'm gonna start calling all of our meetings uh executive briefings for for now. I was I was uh you can start telling people I was in an executive briefing with uh with uh kids and family media company. Yeah. Um and it was really like you and I were hanging out, having a drink. Um anyways, so let's let's get into the list. Let's take it from the top. Or um, how did you think about the hierarchy before we get into the elements themselves?
SPEAKER_00Um how did I think about the hierarchy? So uh what I thought about was first you actually need to understand the theory behind it. You have to understand the the pull framework, what causes a purchase and what doesn't. What makes somebody weird not to buy when everybody is like most of the time weird to buy? And that's the like there's and like what are the kind of general implications of that? So you have to have that in your brain, otherwise you're gonna be in push mode in everything you do, and you're not gonna kind of you're just not going to understand, it's not gonna become intuitive. Then the next step on the hierarchy, I've re I realized that the kind of like number one step on the implementation side is the ideal customer profile, the the kind of who you serve. Everything is downstream of that. All your sales tactics, your like your product is downstream, like all of everything is downstream of the person that you choose to serve. And they're like the way you would typically make an ideal customer profile is you'd write, you know, I sell to people named Rob who live in Mexico City, and do in you know, like media. If you're honestly, if you're if you're a taco seller, that's actually a really good starting point for for this, but but it's but so you're gonna define it in terms of just kind of like static characteristics. And everything is gonna break downstream of that because you defined it in terms of static characteristics. Instead, you have to define it based on pull. If you define your ICP based on who has pull, who has a high probability in any one given moment of having pull, then it's life, it's super clear, like everything downstream of that just like will work or is relatively intuitive, is based on that. Because it's it's really like everything is downstream of finding somebody who is stuck trying to do something but blocked by their current options. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's interesting. So if we um maybe to contrast the two, a a traditional view, um, so for my my company, we we um you know, we produce family media and then we sell it or we partner with businesses and stuff like that to that want to be in front of families. I don't know, that's like sort of still is a not the right way of framing it. But a previous way of of framing it in a more traditional route is like uh we sell to mid-sized brands that are trying uh or that um uh that sell to moms and dads in the United States. Something like that. It's like just a description of a product or you know, and the um a version of it that is aligned to pull would be there is a brand marketer who um is under pressure to um improve performance because meta is declining and getting more expensive. They're looking for uh alternative uh creative partnerships in order to do that, but they're having a hard time because XYZ reasons that we don't it's like they're uh am I internalizing the the the difference?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so you can you can define your ICP in a variety of different ways, like so in your case, you could have defined it just like as a general kind of like company attribute. What most people will do is they'll do a step worse than that because you've already kind of you already have the pull framework in your brain, so you've kind of defined that. The worst version of that is which I think you've also done before is who do I want to sell to? Yeah, right. And it's and that's great, that's cool. They don't want to buy. Uh and then the second layer on it is who could we add the most value for or who would benefit the most, who should want it the most, who has pain points and problems that we could solve, right? And it's if you get if you do any of those things, basically nothing else is going to work very well downstream of that. And so that's why the ICP definition based on pull is the top of the hierarchy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, interesting. Even but even before like outbound, or yeah, it feels like some like some of that like kind of goes hand in hand, like who you're doing outbound to, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or or because this this is gonna determine what method you're going to use to get in front of those people. If the people with pull are Fortune 500 CEOs who are stuck in a very specific situation, you're not gonna be doing outbound. Yeah, necessarily. You're gonna or you're gonna be doing a very weird approach to outbound, but maybe you're gonna get intros from some other like you're gonna, your your entire business approach and product approach is downstream of this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, fascinating. And uh I love it. I I'm not I'm not gonna I was gonna say something also it's stupid. Um why don't we continue uh from the ICP down into uh you call it product here, actually, which which kind of like threw me for one. I was like, I thought we talked about supply, but you said product and then in parentheses are supply to their demand. Um uh you write or actually before I say that, why is that the second why that it surprised me that that was this high um that product was there? Why is product the number number two thing here?
SPEAKER_00Uh we have to have something that fits the poll. If we don't have something or some shape of a thing that that could unblock them, then it doesn't matter. Um then like not again, nothing else matters. Um and so that's where the it's you know, you have to find somebody. You have to have some it doesn't need to be something fancy, it doesn't need to be fully built, but you need to have at least the concept, the high-level requirements, what we'll talk about here, to to uh as something that you can at very least put in front of them, show them or say the words to see if they actually pull.
SPEAKER_02It it makes me that makes me think of God, was it Cyber Starts? I'm forgetting the name of the VC firm um that we we talked about, I don't know, maybe two months ago or something like that. And they started with the first one, which is an ICP. They had a very clear uh they had a very clear kind of persona, I would say, which was um chief security or information security officers at um you know uh at companies. Um and then their first step was that first one, define your ICP. And they were essentially filling out pool. Yes. And then they figured out supply. Uh and so it wasn't that they were doing them at the same time. It was actually like they would spend, I think, like six months or something like that, um, which ended up being a formula that worked with. Is that how you internal uh like interpret them? It's like um even if you don't it's not that the first thing is the ICP and at the same time you need the product, the first one could actually be understand the ICP and then start putting the product in front of them in the form of like uh either a description, a one-page uh mock-up, like it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily mean I need to code something and I need to be able to pull up like an actual product.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's and it's if you define your ICP in a way that fits pull, right? Like you're there's not actually product or service shape as part of it, right? Like we're pull is product agnostic. It is this thing you're looking for out there, which is I'm trying to find a person who is stuck, trying to do something which is not by a CRM. It is, I'm trying to organize my sales data, I'm trying to, whatever it is, yeah, who is stuck because their existing tools, methods, options are not good enough, and they are so stuck that they will pull something out of your hands. And then it will then we have to kind of just say, okay, what's the something? What's the shape of the something? And and uh that's you have to have a rough shape of that for them to say, yeah, that's that's what I'm looking for, or even just buy it.
SPEAKER_02This I think this is a spot where founders get really uncomfortable. Maybe companies in general get really uncomfortable around this, because it's like, how can I have these conversations if I haven't built the thing? Um, you know, that's something that that's popped up with uh some of the the founders in the last couple of weeks in the conversation, and it's just like, how do you how do you talk with founders about getting comfortable with a like your version of an MVP is so simple? It's like you know, you ran a business out of Google Sheets. You uh, you know, it's like don't worry about coding something until you've validated your ICP and and their pool. How do you um, you know, what do you tell founders when they're like, how can how could I possibly go sell something before I have a like a product that they could open up and go into a portal for whatever it might be?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh what I what I've typically done is write out the pull framework with them and then say, okay, cool. If somebody's stuck in this situation, what's the thing that they will rip out of your hands? And then, okay, can we just write that on one slide and maybe mock up a visual of it or just a flow chart of it? Yeah. And that's your MVP.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. That's that's essentially um under your tutelage, uh, what I what I've been doing. And golly, it's so much simpler. Um, let's continue. You you then go sales the vibe. What do you what do you mean by sales the vibe as a third most important thing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so uh it's it's actually your approach to sales. Your the way you think about sales is more important than literally anything you do in the sales process. Because if you get the approach right, you'll intuit, you'll like intuitively do all of the rest of the things. And like downstream of that are tactics and whatnot, and those are useful. But if you come at it with the wrong way of thinking, the wrong theory of causality of what your role is on this call and what their role is on this call, then you're just gonna mess everything up. And the the ways that people mess everything up or or they try to convince people, they try to interrogate people, they, you know, I don't know, they we we uh craft uh uh I've I've realized actually that most sales decks, when I see them first, are are making a legal case for purchasing. So like if you agree with this logic, you will buy our product. Yeah, I'm guilty of that.
SPEAKER_02I think you've said that verbatim to me on a complication.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, gotcha.
SPEAKER_02I backed you into a corner. You can't not buy my product now.
SPEAKER_00Right. Oh, you have agreed that you have these pain points. Yeah. Now I have unveiled my product and you have nodded. Right. And it's and so if so, if and so if you're thinking about that wrong, you're gonna do everything else wrong in the sales process. You're in it, and it's and worse, you're not going to get the signals to improve. You're not you're gonna misinterpret what's happening, which I have done. And so you have to get you have to get your mind right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and the um way to get Your mind write is uh in this case, chill, don't do the legal case. Um, you write, show them the product, or uh it's basically like articulate pull to them, understand their pool, show supply that fits that pool, and if it if it works, they'll pull it out of your hands.
SPEAKER_00And most upstream of that is like again, if they have pull, they will pull. You have to chill the heck out. Calm down, stop trying to convince them. See, like the goal here is to see if they need help. Yeah. That's it. Do you need help? In what form do you need help? In what ways are you stuck? How could I possibly unblock you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you if you approach it as like, I'm here to see if you need help. If you don't need help, I'm not bothered. Yeah. It's a just a totally different mindset than coming in like I need to convince you of this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Which is loading yourself with pressure over something you really don't have control. A sales call like should be zero percent stressful. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm still in the in the path to achieving that. Um the uh uh Rob, how do we want to keep going through this list? Do we are there a couple ones that um we want to make sure that we hit?
SPEAKER_00No, I mean I think the the then it's like okay, cool. I'll just talk through the hierarchy of the rest of the things. So, okay, so once you have the kind of like vibe or approach to sales, right? Then it's like, okay, cool, how do you execute a sales call? Well, discovery is you have to fill out their poll framework, and there's like some tactics that you can do there. You can't you can't pitch and demo effectively until you actually know this person's pull framework. And so that comes downstream. Then if it's like cool, discovery demo, this seems like a fit. Your approach should be okay, let's optimize for velocity. Let's not try to sell everything at once. We're trying to just get something done relatively quickly because we want to optimize for learning. We won't and we can only learn once we've delivered and see how see what happens post-sale. And so that's what I'm kind of optimizing for. A sales process takes form based on that. And then, like, okay, cool. Then there is, and I wasn't quite sure where to put this in the hierarchy, is how do you get people to talk to you? Yeah. Again, that that I think is still, I think that's downstream of the kind of like sales process, sales. It's definitely downstream of the thinking about sales. Because if you think your job is to convince people, you're gonna send terrible outreach. Like you're gonna do, you're just gonna make a massive butchery of the English language in your in your messaging. Um, and so like and there's people pre and post, yeah, yeah. You're you're gonna offend people and feel gross uh when you when you do it. And and so, yeah, and so there's pre before you've figured out poll ways of getting people to talk to you, and after you've figured out poll ways of getting talked to you. This is again super important, but also you couldn't just get warm intros, you can just go places, and it's like if you can't do if you can't like figure out what people want and offer offer something that fits, again, it is you can do tons of conversations and it doesn't really matter.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, interesting. I'm glad you hit that one. One there's a couple other uh gems in here we won't spend a whole lot of time in. I actually hope you'll write about some of these, Rob. I've got a I've got a running list while I was reading this, and I was like, Rob should expand on this, Rob should expand on this. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if you're if you're well one of the three people listening, actually, now people have I had multiple people reach out claiming to be the listener. So either I've never looked at the analytics here. I've just been saying it. It's an AI persona that's uh that's uh impersonated multiple personals. There are pieces in here, and I'll write this in. But if there are pieces in here you want me to expand on, let me know. I I I have plenty of things that I could write about, but yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I love uh a couple of my favorites are um uh how about how to work with a champion and uh deal strategy, uh where what you write there about pricing, I think was was uh very insightful. Um and actually uh is something I've been thinking about lately and making a big mistake on, and uh the way you articulated that was uh was um illuminating. Um anyways, Rob, what should founders do with this?
SPEAKER_00Follow the hierarchy. You you if you're not if you haven't defined your ICP as it relates to poll, do that. That will inform everything else.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Um well uh like I like I mentioned at the start, this one is called the Pull Quick Start Guide Applying Pull. It's bookmarked on uh for me, it'll be out on on Friday. Uh highly recommend not just listening to this podcast, but like take 10 minutes and actually read through it. There's gonna be something in there that jumps out to you. Um and if there's nothing else, Rob, we can let folks go. Cool. All right, awesome. We'll see y'all next week.