Rob Snyder: McKinsey to Harvard MBA Founder, ​​Cracking Product-Market Fit & Accelerate Or Die - E472

· Podcast Episodes English,Founder,Start-up,USA

 

"In my bootstrap software company, we've taken a dozen startups from zero to a million in ARR using a process that's really simple. First, we write a case study that we believe will make one customer say 'hell yes.' We then present this case study to multiple customers to gather their feedback. Inevitably, the first 10 to 20 conversations do not go as planned, but we use this as an opportunity to refine the case study and our product. Once we fine-tune it to the point where we get that 'hell yes,' we replicate the process repeatedly. This is how we approach finding product-market fit, ensuring it works both pre-sale and post-sale." - Rob Snyder, Founder of Reframe

​​​"I also didn't realize how crucial not just the sale but the post-sale was. I would have changed my approach during the first six months to focus intensely on the post-sale, essentially building a bullet train to a 'hell yes' post-sale. Because while many customers were happy, I didn't fully understand why. And when some weren't happy, I couldn't discern why not. I needed to redesign the system so that every customer would feel satisfied post-sale, and we could have refined our pitch pre-sale. This would have been a much faster learning process, instead of me figuratively hitting my head against the wall with our first three hundred customers manually, one-on-one. In retrospect, I probably could have learned these lessons with just 15 to 20 customers, not 300." - Rob Snyder, Founder of Reframe

"The 'accelerate or die' mantra holds significance, especially in relation to AI. It embodies the essence of startups—you create your own momentum. You either do the work or nothing happens. Every moment of every day, you face a choice: give up now, or push forward to the next challenge. Focus on what's most crucial. You are the creator of your own velocity. If you're not accelerating, if you're not pushing to move faster, then what are you really doing?" - Rob Snyder, Founder of Reframe

Rob Snyder, Founder of Reframe, and Jeremy Au discussed:

1. McKinsey to Harvard MBA Founder: Rob detailed his initial career moves from political philosophy to starting at McKinsey, where he developed critical analytical skills and professional discipline. His time at Harvard Business School was shaped by the “Founder's Journey” course, which provided a realistic portrayal of the challenges in entrepreneurship through case studies and alumni insights, preparing him for t ing Product-Market Fit: Rob's strenuous two year journey to identify product-market fit was marked by numerous strategy pivots. Direct customer feedback led to a streamlined product offering and catalyzed a growth spurt, increasing revenue from zero to $4 million ARR. He shared on how and why psychological barriers like confirmation bias were harder to overcome than the actual pivots.

3. Accelerate Or Die: Rob reflected on his parents’ traditional career paths and his aspiration to do more with his life and opportunities. The intense pace and high stakes of startup culture are both the norm and the reward for high-performers.

Rob and Jeremy also explored the psychological resilience required for startup success, the influence of family history on risk-taking, and the significant learning moments derived from near-failure experiences.

Please forward this insight or invite friends at https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VakR55X6BIElUEvkN02e

Join us at Geeks on a Beach!

You don't want to miss Geeks On A Beach, the unique premier startup conference in the region! Join us from November 13 to 15, 2024, at JPark Island Resort in Mactan, Cebu. This event brings together tech enthusiasts, investors, and entrepreneurs for three days of workshops, talks, and networking. Register at geeksonabeach.com and use code BRAVESEA for a 45% discount for the first 10 registrations, and 35% off for the next ones.

(01:44) Jeremy Au:

Good morning. Good evening, Rob.

(01:46) Rob Snyder:

How are you doing?

(01:47) Jeremy Au:

Thanks for taking your time. I know it's like what a perfect 12 hour time zone difference. So, appreciate it. But again, I want to say you have such a hard banner going on behind you, accelerate or die. So got to get into it. But first, could you introduce yourself?

(02:01) Rob Snyder:

Yeah. So I'm Rob my background, I worked at McKinsey, went to HBS, thought I was fit to start a software company, raise some money, and then just got punched in the face for a couple of years, trying to find product market fit. Then eventually found product market fit and started scaling. And so that was a totally, it worked totally different than I had learned previously. And yeah, since then I've been launching B2B startups, helping others launch B2B startups and fascinated with the world of how finding your first 10 customers work? How do you find product market fit? What does that even mean? So that's, that's me.

(02:33) Jeremy Au:

Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Rob, what was your, McKinsey to HBS? I mean, we both went to Harvard and we met there, but what was that early journey and career journey like for you?

(02:43) Rob Snyder:

Yeah. So I got into HBS through their two plus two program, which means I was a political theory student in Pittsburgh, Had no idea what business school was. Applied on a whim over a summer got in and then did a google search for what people do before going to HBS. Everyone said consulting. So I got a job at Mckinsey. Worked there for two years. It was actually super useful because I hadn't worked like a professional job to the first year at Mckinsey. They just like professional work expectations into me. And then you know, I kind of figured out what I was doing. And thenat HBS I had decided before then that I didn't want to work in corporate I knew I wanted to do a startup-type thing. I used HBS to try to figure out what the startup world was and what company I could start.

(03:29) Jeremy Au:

What's the HBS experience like? Because, I was similar, I went there,I knew that I wasn't going to do government slash pure nonprofit work anymore, and that I wasn't going to do management consulting. So I kind of knew what I wasn't gonna do, but I was trying to look for that thing. What was your search like?

(03:43) Rob Snyder:

Yeah, it was very much like that. I love my experience at HBS. I would totally do it again. My section was awesome. Met some of my closest friends through that. And we, weare still in touch today, which is great. The education was also really good I spent all of my time not necessarily doing homework, but like, trying to go to as many events about startups as possible, spending a bunch oftime in the innovation lab, whiteboarding startup ideas, trying to figure out what idea I was going to kick off and launch. Yeah, I feel like I spent a couple hours a week in class and the entire rest of the week devouring as much startup stuff as humanly possible.

(04:19) Jeremy Au:

Anything that kind of stood out for you from what you learned during that process, the two years there?

(04:23) Rob Snyder:

The things that I found the most interesting that I didn't appreciate at the time were all about how difficult it is to start a startup. So there's a course called founder's journey where they just beat failures into you. Did you take that one?

(04:37) Jeremy Au:

Oh, yeah. Professor Chicago. Yeah. Fantastic guy. He was what? Master of the Internet Universe by Forbes. What a, another hard name to have. You know, wow. What a how to live up to that, I gotta say.

(04:47) Rob Snyder:

That You'll be there someday. I don't doubt it. Yeah. So that was, super interesting and useful for me. There's a bunch of other classes that I took that were interesting, but that was the most relevant type of class of just like, here's how difficult and ambiguous it can be, no matter how smart you are and how prepared you think you are, this is gonna suck. Was a really useful message that I don't think I fully internalized, but since then, I have internalized itmore and more. Without that class, I I would be in a much worse spot today, I think.

(05:19) Jeremy Au:

And I'm curious from your perspective, when you say that startups are hard and you learned that startups are hard, why did you decide to do a startup after that?

(05:26) Rob Snyder:

Oh yeah. Cause I was an idiot.And I thought, yeah, it's hard in theory, but it'll be easy for me.

(05:31) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, that's a classic, every founder, like,I know that HBS has taught me that only one out of 40 starts to succeed, but that one is definitely me.

(05:39) Rob Snyder:

Yeah, exactly. There's that old quote, right? We don't do this cause it's easy. We did it cause we thought it was going to be easy. And that's like my entire life.

(05:46) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. So could you share a little bit more about the startup, how you're punching your face, searching for product market fit. What was that transition like?

(05:52) Rob Snyder:

Yeah. So we raised. Just over a million bucks in a pre seed round, and then we raised a couple extra million through extensions. We had a big vision and a big idea for how we wanted the world to change. We had a couple unpaid pilots and, had done all the classic validation work the spreadsheets, the PowerPoint presentations, the pitch competitions and all that kind of stuff. We basically spent two years trying to find demand and customers. Nothing seemed to work and we kept pushing harder and trying to learn how to sell better and better and just didn't feel like anybody was ever pulling and so we went through what's now called pivot hell where every couple months we were on to some new configuration of the idea and went through the process of being super excited and then absolutely miserable in increasingly short cycles that was basically two years post HBS and that doesn't feel good.

(06:47) Jeremy Au:

And then you decided to call it a day, right? So how did that happen?

(06:50) Rob Snyder:

We actually threw a hail mary last ditch hail, mary pivot approached it totally differently And in two yearsit started working and we actually scaled the next two years, zero to 4 million ARR, which was basically broke my brain on how startups work. Was a really awesome learning experience that I don't know if it was worth the two years before, but I am very grateful for the learning experience onwhat do customers want to buy? How do you build something people actually want? There's a lot of noise out there. And we got down to the essence of it where for the firstsix months, it was me in a spreadsheet just delivering for the first hundred K ARR.

And then eventually we built more and more and the whole thingevolved and it became obvious over time where the business was. It wasn't like, it didn't make any sense in advance and it just made more sense over time. So that was a really cool thing. And, scaling that up had a bunch of learnings, a bunch of places, we made dumb decisions and messed up, but the process overall was, probably a better learning experience than HBS. And HBS was a really good learning experience.

(07:48) Jeremy Au:

Why did it break your brain?

(07:49) Rob Snyder:

The core thing is I thought that the way the world worked was you figure something out in advance. And then you go and do stuff, right?I thought that I had to have the answer and then go and convince the world that my answer was right and persuade the world that my answer was right. and I thought I had to do all the research to prove that I was right. The way it actually worked was I needed togo with essentially no hypotheses at all. Sell whatever one person would buy and try to repeat that and make the logic work from there, which is not how we've ever done anything before. That's not how we're normally wired. I don't know about you, but that's not how you get into HBS.

(08:25) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. What's the process? Because, we were catching up recently and, you feel like you figure out this set of frameworks and thinking about that process. What are your thoughts about that?

(08:34) Rob Snyder:

So basically the way I now approach it for my, bootstrap software company, and I've helped a 12 startups from zero to a million ARR. The process we use is really, really simple. It is write a case study of what we think one customer is going to say hell yes to. Then show that case study to a bunch of customers and get their feedback on it. See if they see the case study and say, Oh, hell yeah, I want to buy that. And when they inevitably don't do that for the first 10, 20 conversations, use that as a chance to debug the case study, debug what your product should be and figure all of that out.

And then once you get to a hell yes on the case study, try to repeat that more and more. That is essentially the process of finding product market fit. It has to work pre sale and then also post sale. And so that's what I've done with my kind of like new startup. And we had nothing, really no code written at all. We just had a five slide sales deck and I used that to figure out what people actually wanted to buy. And it's made it obvious what the product needs to be without us investing a ton or raising a ton of money to build a company.

(09:39) Jeremy Au:

Yeah, I think what's interesting is that, you're making a set of decisions about not just the companies that you're building, but also a set of decisions about the process to build those companies. And I think it's been interesting to see you navigate that because, I remember I was catching up with one of my best friends, and he sent me this deck over WhatsApp, and he was like, dude, you gotta read this guy. This guy is so good at talking about product market fit. I put it up, and I read it. I was like, yeah, this is pretty good. And then at the end, it's like, Rob Snyder. And I was like, what the? There's only one Rob Snyder I know. I feel like this is not a common name like, I don't know, John Lee or something like that.

So, I was like, pinged you, and you were like, ah, shit, it is you. So, there you are, like, codify. I noticed you tinkering with those things. And of course we'll link to that in the show notes, but I'm curious, from your perspective, how are you testing or retesting these frameworks?

(10:21) Rob Snyder:

Yeah. I think the most important way I'm testing it is on my own businesses and debugging it as I hit walls. That is critical. I can't stand seeing people who haven't built shit before, telling founders how to build stuff like that, I think that is a lot of the reason why there are so many bad pieces of advice out there for startups. The other way is I'm working with a bunch of startups to help them get from zero to a million ARR, mostly B2B startups, although they've done some B2C startups. And again, just trying to implement this hitting walls, seeing where people get it and don't get it and trying to debug. And then also teaching, I go back to the iLab and help them out with events on product market fit and how to think about your first 10 customers and seeing where lights turn on in people's brains and what causes that has helped me keep refining these frameworks. So yeah, it's a mix of what makes sense to people and what works in practice and just constant iteration and literally like this is all I think about ever. So that's a way to do it.

(11:22) Jeremy Au:

When you look back on that process where I broke your brain, it was like going from point A to point B, but now you're looking at point C, looking back at your point A to point B startup journey. Were there things you should have done differently that will help you approach and reach that product market fit earlier from your perspective?

(11:38) Rob Snyder:

Oh, hell yeah. Absolutely. And even when we figured it out, there were so many things that I would do differently now.basically I was just flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't know like I thought I was just doing everything totally wrong.

I was the product for the first 100K ARR, just me in Google Sheets and a couple of no code things, trying to hack things together. I had no idea how to take that and turn that into a product in any sort of like elegant or efficient way. I also didn't recognize just how important, not just the sale, but the hell yes post sale was.

(12:12) Rob Snyder:

I would have changed how I approached the first six months to focus way more on Hell Yes Post Sale and how to build essentially like a bullet train to Hell Yes Post Sale because I'd have customers who'd come on and, many were happy but I didn't really understand why they were happy. And so when some customers weren't happy, I couldn't tell the difference. I needed to redesign the system so that every customer would say, hell yes, post sale. we could redesign our pitch pre sale. that would have lbeen a way faster way to learn versus me hitting my head against the wall, doing this for 300, like I onboarded our first 300 customers one on one did all this work manually and only then figured it out. I probably could have figured this out in 15 to 20 customers, not 300, 350 customers.

(12:54) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. And, you're making a set of decisions today and there's a difference between the role as a builder, versus being an advisor. So what would you say are some of the differences from your perspective?

(13:05) Rob Snyder:

That's an interesting one. My sense is that I am essentially a builder who sometimes can give advice. I am not an, a general advisor. I want to get as close to ground truth with any of the companies that I work with. I want to watch their sales calls. I want to look at how their customers react to certain things. What I've noticed is that a lot of people who quote unquote do advising come in with like some fancy theory or framework but don't get into the sales conversations, don't hear it from customers mouths. And so I just try to stay as close as possible to what our customers literally saying and literally doing, are they buying, are they not buying? And how do we reverse engineer that? So I view it as kind of like, I'm probably a bad advisor in that way, or, or not a traditional advisor, but I just try to watch as many sales conversations and customer success conversations as possible.

(13:58) Jeremy Au:

I think that, you're making a set of decisions along the way, as a founder and, product market fit feels like a foundational piece, because product market fit clicks or doesn't click. It's obvious, whether it's growing or not growing. But it often feels like the challenge of product market fit is actually psychological. The founder has a perspective of what product market fit is, So it feels like to me, as a founder and builder as well, who sometimes advises that feels like the harder part advising others and seeing that hurdle, but even for myself, when I am thinking through the problem So I'm just curious how you think about that.

(14:28) Rob Snyder:

Yeah.a lot of this is psychological, right? A lot of the pain we go through is because we see the world like we want to see the world versus how the world really is. And Prone to discovery interviews, hearing what we want to hear, asking questions that we don't realize are biased and setting ourselves up for pain later, then, when we raise money we have to send investor updates that seem cheery. And so, we send investor updates that seem cheery, and then believe ourselves on that kind of thing and then set the goalposts for product market fit. I've heard people say, Yeah, I found product market fit. Now we just need to get customers, which is the worst definition I think I've ever heard of product market fit. You prove that you have product market fit when you have a lot of customers who are buying fast. And so a lot of it is mental. And then you have all this where you're operating at a level, I don't know if you feel this way, but I always feel like when I'm in builder mode, And I'm really stressed out because it's not quite working I feel like my IQ just like instantly cuts by 25%. And i'm just way less effective in those moments. And so all of that comes together at one point in time and makes What is not an easy thing to figure out that much harder.

(15:39) Jeremy Au:

How do you crack that? Because you've worked with a dozen teams through that piece. I feel like the tackle part is more obvious maybe because, but I can imagine that coaching from zero one. I think I remember myself also like you took a lot of work to understand and get through that psychologically. And also with the team as well. how do you work with teams to get through that psychological hurdle?

(15:58) Rob Snyder:

Basically what I try to do with teams is get them into as many sales conversations as humanly possible.10, 15, 0 20 a week, and overwhelm them with the volume of sales conversations with potential customers. Then, what we're trying to do in those sales conversations I'm trying to change their mindset about what those sales conversations should work like and what they should be looking for in those. They tend to come into this thinking I need to pitch and convince these people that they should want my product. And that is the absolute wrong way to think about product market fit it's not the right way to find product market fit. I try to go into their brains and turn on that little switch that says, nobody woke up this morning and said, today's the day I want to buy a new software product.

Nobody's ever said that. I can't convince anybody to buy something they don't actively want to buy. all we have to do in the sales conversation is figure out what are they actively prioritizing. And if we're a good fit for that, they might want to hear about that in the form of a case study of someone just like them. And that's our job, right? what it does is it removes a lot of the stress. It's just low stress, not pushy conversations. We're going to hear from customers what they're actually trying to achieve and how they think we might fit in there. The stress level decreases, it's still hard to figure out where exactly you fit when you're hearing slightly different things from different customers. But you get more reps and see the world more clearly through your customer's eyes. And it's like a lot less emotional of a decision and it's a lot less you're a lot less prone to confirmation bias

(17:28) Jeremy Au:

So, when we think about confirmation bias, why is it such a factor?

(17:33) Rob Snyder:

Yeah, it's such a factor because we do a lot of research on our startup ideas. I did a lot of research on my startup idea. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I was doing basically confirmatory research to confirm that This is a big market that this is a big problem that There's no other companies who have my same thesis here, right?

(17:52) Rob Snyder:

All of that is confirmatory. Then you do a bunch of discovery interviews with customers, which is what you're taught to do you might read the mom test, but you're still gonna bias them they're still gonna tell you what you want to hear, then you're going to lie to yourself in a lot of different ways. This gives you A false impression of the world which gives you false confidence that you should go raise money, build a big product, and then go show the world and the world will buy. Trust me, I've done that. A lot of other people have done that. The second you move from I'm doing research, to I'm selling, there's a record scratch moment, and you realize nobody cares. Like, nobody cares, all your research, or most of your research was nonsense, and you've just been lying to yourself and playing pretend this whole time. And that is a terrible feeling, and so, yeah, that's largely driven by confirmation bias. Plus a lot of, in my opinion, bad advice on, how much research you should actually do before building a company. But yeah, that's why it's bad.

(18:45) Jeremy Au:

And on that note, I wanted to talk about the banner that you have behind you it says accelerate or die. And there's an image of a snake, with a giant network map on top of it. Could you share a little bit more about, I think obviously what it means, but also why you chose it to be your background for every Zoom call you make.

(19:00) Rob Snyder:

Yeah, yeah, so this is, I know a lot of your viewers are not like American, and so this is a classic American Gadsden flag that's just made weird. this was from the revolution. The original one was join or die, which is unite against the British, fight together, or we all die separately. The accelerator die, I think, means something as it relates to AI. I just like it as a mantra because it's all about, like, startups are you create your own momentum. You do the work or nothing happens. Every single moment of every single day, you have a choice on, are you going to give up now? Or are you going to push that next thing forward?

Are you going to focus on the most important thing? You create your own velocity, accelerate or die, if you're not moving faster, if you're not trying to push faster, then what are you even doing?

(19:43) Jeremy Au:

It's just the customers don't wanna buy. That's what I'm saying. What am I doing? I'm working my ass off here, rob This is like the part of the movie where you're probably like one third in a movie and there's a crisis moment. The coach is sharing is a slogan the accelerator die.

(19:55) Rob Snyder:

To be clear, I don't know that this, I didn't know that this helps me at all but I like it in the back. It might just be a reminder for me, yeah.

(20:03) Jeremy Au:

Yeah. Yeah, I get it. I did think about this American illusion as well, right? It's join or die, right? so, guess, is it so important for startups to saturate? Like, why can't it just grow linearly, for the sake of argument?

(20:14) Rob Snyder:

You can. There's no reason you don't have to. If you don't raise venture, you can grow at your own pace. I just think, if you're not pushing the pedal, like, yeah, fine. Like, it's totally, no stigma against anybody who wants to build a small business. In my opinion, if you're not pushing as hard as you possibly can, and trying to create something new, unique, and different in the world, and putting your soul into that, then future you is going to look back on current you and, and be like you left some out there on the court. And I don't, I don't want to do that.

(20:43) Jeremy Au:

Obviously, we're talking about your philosophy. So why did you end up picking this philosophy? You're also a philosophy undergrad so lots of slogans you have picked, right?Out of manyI'm just gonna give you an example. There could be one slogan, I don't know. And one slogan is, I don't know, finger licking good, delicious. I think that's KFC. I mean, there's a lot of slogans you could pick in life, right? So was just kind of curious.

(21:04) Rob Snyder:

Yeah honestly, it resonated with me as a mantra for what I need to hear on a daily basis, what we do is really hard I feel like you and I come from a similar place where before we went into the entrepreneurship world, you get points for trying, you get points for trying hard, you get points for showing up, for doing your best. And that's not how it works. In the entrepreneurship world. You get points for winning in the entrepreneurship world. I still go back in default to like, I worked hard. I tried my best. And that's not good enough. And so I need this as a mantra for me that like, if I'm not pushing harder, if I'm not actually getting results, what am I doing? I'm letting future self down.

(21:42) Jeremy Au:

When you think about all this could you share a time that you personally have been brave?

(21:46) Rob Snyder:

Yeah, I think, I think launching what I'm doing now I basically went from venture backed startup, solid salary, to now bootstrapped, no salary, no safety net, building up a services company and a software company at the same time, like there's a good chance that this wasn't going to work and I was going to like need to very quickly scramble to find a job. And I don't know if you've seen the U S job market right now, but it's not great in tech. And so, yeah, just going all in on this and trying to build a business or two with no safety net has been scary and has required me to accelerate or die.

(22:22) Jeremy Au:

What about it is brave for you from your perspective?

(22:25) Rob Snyder:

My family came from a corporate background. My dad worked his way up, his dad worked in a factory. He went to college got a corporate job and worked his way up the ladder for 40 years. That's what I grew up in, you do this for the 401k, for the safety net, you take a safe job, I grew up with that in my veins saying, no, I am officially unemployable, I am going to do this myself, no matter what, it's not natural, and it required a certain amount of braveness, perhaps, self confidence, or just total stupidity, naivete, I'm glad I did it now, like, I'm in a good spot now, I've got, both a profitable software business and a profitable services business, but, it wasn't clear it was going to work at the time.

(23:08) Jeremy Au:

How do you think about that? Because, we contrast our careers against what we know, right? Which is our parents. Like family modeling as role models. And then either we, contrast with them or we imitate them and it's a mixture of both, right? so I'm just curious how you think about that in generally.

(23:24) Rob Snyder:

Yeah, I honestly didn't think about it very deliberately up until I just assumed I was gonna have a corporate job all the way up through into McKinsey at some point at McKinsey, I was like sitting in some conference room working on a model I didn't care about for a big company that didn't care that I was working on a model for them eating cafeteria lunch food and I was like I just would rather do literally anything else I think that's where this all came from.

(23:47) Jeremy Au:

I like the part where you said the company doesn't even care that you're working on a model for them.

(23:51) Rob Snyder:

I guess at some point you're like, okay, I'm this little insignificant cog in this massive machine that's just doing work for 14 hours a day for no reason. Like, maybe entrepreneurship is better. And it wasn't, but at least I am on this side of it now.

(24:07) Jeremy Au:

I think that's a funny way of looking at it. Looking back on, your, HBS days, right? And let's just say you travel back to campus, 2016, Any advice to give your younger self, as you entered your grad school, ready to let go your corporate cog job and suddenly something new, what advice would you give yourself?

(24:25) Rob Snyder:

I'm actually curious what your answer is. My answer is actually a couple things. One, spend more time learning sales and don't think you're above sales. Just because HBS doesn't talk a lot about sales just because they only had one sales class at the time doesn't mean it's not one of the most important things to learn. And even if it feels uncomfortable, that's probably the number one that I would do.

And number two is probably just like there's a couple of books or podcasts that if I had read back then I would have probably felt a little less pain. Not necessarily related to HBS, but just because I had free time, read stuff on Jobs to be Done, read,, some of that good stuff that's probably what I'd tell myself.

(24:59) Jeremy Au:

You said two things. So, first is sales. What's the second thing?

(25:02) Rob Snyder:

Oh, yeah, specifically read books like, Demand Side Sales 101, that. Read John Seddon's Freedom from Command and Control book. And, maybe one other book that, if I had read it at that time, it would have saved me probably a lot of dumb pain along the way.

(25:19) Jeremy Au:

You asked me what advice I would give my younger in year one, HBS, I feel like I did the broad strokes, right? Because I did get advice from other folks that graduated. I remember going on campus and was like, the three things I want to do was like meet someone new every day. Secondly, I felt like I had been a good founder, but I wasn't a good CEO. so I wanted to learn some of those CEO skills. Thirdly, I wanted to join something I cared about, or if not build it. Eventually, I did build something I cared about. So I feel like, I think on the kind of like utilitarian out of what HBS was, I got what I wanted because I got advice but I think the advice I would give myself that's very personalized would be like anxiety is normal,, something like that. I mean, I think I got the stuff I would say, but I was always anxious and building and working very hard and very much feeling as if I shouldn't be uncomfortable, you know what I'm saying?

I shouldn't be lost. I shouldn't be searching for answers if I could go back in time, I'll be like, hey If you're going to join consulting again, you have very few questions and you will not be very anxious and you will be partying on a boat with everybody else because what's going to happen in a couple of years and what's going to happen if you climb the ladder for 10 years but if you're choosing to do startups you're choosing to be a founder. Of course, you're at the frontier of a company that's never existed with a product that's never existed. So being a customer that doesn't know the problem exists in the way that you articulate it, of course is super pain in the ass.

So of course it's going to be hard. Of course, you're going to be anxious it's like someone joins the special forces and was training up to it. And the guy's like, why am I feeling stressed? And I'd be like, yeah, of course, if you're stressed, you're training for the special forces. I mean, it's a tough thing.

(26:47) Rob Snyder:

de me think of one more piece of advice I would have given myself in 2016. If you work hard for the next eight years, you're finally gonna get invited on Jeremy's

(26:59) Jeremy Au:

Buddy, this podcast only launched like three plus years ago. On that note, let me summarize I think the three big takeaways go from this conversation. First of all, thanks so much for sharing about, your early career, about why you went through McKinsey and also HBS from that. I thought it was fun to hear about some of those early career decisions, not just because of what you thought they were, but also what you learned after joining them.

Secondly, thanks so much for sharing about your learnings about product market fit and thinking through what it takes to both figure it out technically, which is being part of sales conversations, but also thinking through and overcoming the psychological hurdles because of this confirmation bias. There's the pride of having done the work and obviously the standard corporate training of having a plan and making sure things happen to the plan versus the plan changing versus the results.

And lastly, thanks for sharing about accelerate or die, your philosophy and talking about how that's important because, from a personal philosophy, from what you've learned over time versus what you've learned about observing your parents and other people around you. And I think it was just nice to brainstorm a little bit about that personal philosophy on that note. Thank you so much, Rob, for sharing your experience.

(28:02) Rob Snyder:

Thanks. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.