Uri Levine: evaluation

Transcript context

…So for me, it's usually personal frustration that leads me to start to think about it, whether or not we can change it. I hate traffic jams, right? I hate leaving money on the table, right? So there are many things that I ran into and I get frustrated and I tell myself, "No, no, no. There must be a different way to do that." But in general, look, the problem itself needs to start from you, right? Something that really bothers you, something that you care about, and then it's the validations of the problem that you speak with many people, try to realize. Now if you'll tell me, oh, this is a B2B, then speak with many businesses, right? Speak with those that you believe actually do have this problem and I understand their perception. Once you validate that, then there are few things that you need to realize. One is about the journey itself. This is going to be a multi-dimensional journey. It's going to be at least three dimensions and maybe fourth, right? So the three dimensions, one of them is it's going to be a roller coaster journey with ups and downs and ups and downs. And look, if you'll tell me that all the businesses in the world have ups and downs, I agree, but the frequency of those when you are building a startup? Way higher. I think that I heard the best quote on that from Ben Horowitz, Ben Horowitz from Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm, and before that he used to be a CEO of a startup and he was asked whether or not he was sleeping well at night and he said, "Oh, yeah, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours and cried." And that's really the reality of that. The frequency of the differences are so dramatic that there is nothing compared to that, a roller coaster journey. It's also a journey of failures. Look, we are trying to build something new that no one did before, and even though that we think that we know exactly what we are doing, we don't. So we try. We try one thing and it doesn't work. We try another thing and it doesn't work. Or if we keep on trying different things until we find one thing that does work. Now, if you realize that this is going to be a journey of failures, then there are two immediate conclusions. The first one is that if you're afraid to fail, then in reality you already failed because you are not going to try. Albert Einstein used to say that if you haven't failed, that because you haven't tried new things before. If you're going to try new things, you will fail. Michael Jordan used to say that, "I've failed over and over and over and over again and this is what made me successful." And so this is the first conclusion. The second conclusion is that you really want to fail fast. Just think about it, right? If you fail fast, you still have plenty of time to try another attempt and build another version of the product. Try another go-to-market approach. eally want to fail fast. Just think about it, right? If you fail fast, you still have plenty of time to try another attempt and build another version of the product. Try another go-to-market approach. Try a different business model so you still have plenty of time to make more and more and more attempts, and the more attempts that you have, you simply increase the likelihood of being successful. Just think that you play basketball, right, and you try to score from half court. If you have one shot and you are not Steph Curry, you are very likely to miss. But if you actually have a lot of shots, one of them you're going to make. That's it. Just think about it. The biggest enemy of good enough is perfect. You don't need to be perfect. You need to be good enough in order to win the market, and the way that you are going to become good enough, by the way, is really simple. You start with not good enough and you iterate and iterate and iterate until you become good enough and then you'll win. The third dimension is that this is going to be long journey. Very long. Way longer than you think it is. And the longest part of it is until you figure out product market fit, and product market fit goes into the different phases of building a company. To a certain extent, I would say, look, the difference between a corporate and a startup is that a corporate knows this is our value proposition, this is the product that we are selling, this is the pricing of this product that we are selling, this is the target audience, this is how we are going to sell them, this is how we going to the market, and all we have to do is keep on executing and hopefully nothing will change over the period of time. When you start as a startup, you don't have a product. You don't know what's the business model. You don't know what people are going to pay you for. You don't know how to grow your business, and you need to figure out all of those, and this is going to be a long journey. Now, the longest part is usually figuring out product market fit and product market fit is really simple. That means that you create value to your customers. If you do not figure out product market fit, you will die. As simple as that. You never heard of a company that did not figure out product market fit. They simply died. That's it. Now, once they do, and for a second I want you to think of, with all the applications that you're using every day, right? From searching Google, using Waze, WhatsApp, Facebook, Netflix, Uber, whatever it is, and ask yourself what is the difference between any of those today and the first time that you have used that? And the answer is that there is no difference. We are searching Google today the same way that we searched Google for the first time in our life. We're using Waze today the same way that we used Waze for the first time in their life. So once a company figure out product market fit, they don't change their product anymore because this is the value that they created to the customers and you don't want to change that. What we don't know is how long did it take them to get to this point, right? hange their product anymore because this is the value that they created to the customers and you don't want to change that. What we don't know is how long did it take them to get to this point, right? Beforehand we never heard of them and after that they don't change that anymore. It's a matter of years. For Waze, it was four years. For Microsoft, it was five years. For Netflix, it was 10 years. Now if you'll tell me, "Oh, today is very different. ChatGPT just started a year ago." No, they're seven years old. It took them six years until you heard about them for the first time in your life. So it does take time to create value and this is something that is really significant. Now, at the end of the day, product market fit have one metric. One metric. That's it. Retention. That's really simple. If you create value, they will come back. If they're not coming back, that means that you are not creating value. Now think about your episodes, right, of this podcast, right? Most of your listeners are returning, right? Because you create value for them and they are coming back. That's it.…

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