Lenny Rachitsky: evaluation

Transcript context

…I said, so which of your four customers is your favorite? Which one, if I got them on the phone, they would rave about you. They would be salivating openly with a chance to evangelize what you're doing for them. And they was like, oh, that's clear. It's this one of the four. Great. Tell me about them. And what you start to see and pull apart from that is the founder does have an ideal profile. They do have a dream. Now, there are all sorts of risks about is the world too small? Is it not a big enough market if they get too tight, and founders get so caught up in that and it's a mistake because all we're- ... so caught up in that, and it's a mistake. Because all we're looking for in the beginning is a white-hot center of opportunity, a small population that is an enormous fan that's getting enormous impact. We can worry about adjacencies and expansion later. I like to remind them that Amazon just sold books. We can start with one thing and be great at it. So where the founders often get hung up on for us is that they've moved towards selling without contemplating ideal customer profile, without contemplating qualifications, without contemplating discovery questions that get to that. And most importantly, kill criteria, if this is true do not sign them, even if they want to go out on a date with you. I'm glad you said that because that's exactly what I believe and I hear often on this podcast is how underappreciated picking your customers in early leads are. And if you think about this funnel you described, figure out who you're selling to, how do you motivate them, find them and then sell them, all this trickles down from who are you going after. You will know how to motivate them if you know who you're talking to versus the opposite. If you're talking to everyone- It's the most expensive mistake of those four.…

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