Building Confidence In Yourself and Your Ideas

They will take something, you know, Anonymous arvar 42 said, as like gospel and base their entire life philosophy around it. Yes, yes, don't do that. Don't do that. All right, welcome to Dton Plus, Michael, and today we're going to talk about how fast is too fast for moving a startup.

I'll start with the story. I was talking to a YC company. Could have been this batch, could have been a previous batch. Yeah, let's anonymize it; we don't want to probably every batch, to be honest—common story. A summary of what they told me was: "We got into YC with this idea, we called 25 companies, mostly startups of course, over the last two weeks. None of them wanted to buy our product, which doesn't exist; it's just an idea." And so we decided to pivot, and so can you help us?

And people may not know why we think that's funny. Okay, please. This is funny to us because that was very low effort, yes? Trying to contact 25 people, and be like, "Well, I guess we're done. I guess no one wants it," is so low effort as to be funny to us. So carry on with the story.

What was interesting to me about this was that these two founders had a vision in their head. The second that the path in the startup didn't line up with this vision in their head—which was that, "Well, I think this idea sounds good. Well, I see fun in this idea, so therefore everyone else must think this idea is good," they got a little freaked out.

But then the second thing that I love is that the instinct to talk to startup founders was like, "I want to vet this with startup people often because I feel like it's easier to sell them," even though this isn't a problem that startups have. The overarching thing was like, this was not even rigorous thinking. Like, where these people used to work, if someone they hired said this to them, they would like laugh at them. Yet they're doing it themselves.

Yeah, why do they do this? The version of this that I see a lot is people—the way they start with their company is to cold email a bunch of people on LinkedIn. They're like, "Okay, we're doing our startup; we're going full-time." Um, well, so cool. Well, what are you doing?

"Well, we LinkedIn in-mailed. We spammed a thousand people, yes, and we only got three responses, so I guess no one wants this." Yes, and that doesn't work, friends; like that's not sufficient, no.

This is very superficial validation, yeah, that people are doing, right? And so I think people do this because no one told them differently. Here, actually, here's another one for you on this topic, yeah? I think that a lot of people are trained as PMs, and they're trained to do user research.

Yes, and being trained to do user research... I remember taking a user research course in college. You're trained to sort of like interview people rather than sell products to them. Yep, and if you can't even interview people, you're not really sure what to do. And so I think my argument is if you've been trained to be a PM or trained to do user interview research, you struggle with getting first customers because the skills that you learned to do this research don't apply.

I also think that if you come from a big company, either in product or engineering, more often than not you've never solved your own problem. Like, you're working on other people's problems. And so I think that your instinct when you start a company is like almost a consulting instinct: "I need to go around; I have to talk to a lot of people to figure out what their problem is, and I have to solve it," which I think is tricky because it resembles what you did in a big company, but it probably doesn't represent what the founder of your big company did to start their big company.

Right? It's like, who should you copy? Like yourself, employee 10,000? Or what about employee one? What did that person do?

So, you know, you talk a little bit about this concept of when people pivot quickly. They're not building the muscle of building conviction. Like, talk to us about that. You know, we have a few different metaphors. I'll mix them. So one of the metaphors is, what constitutes a high-quality rep? Yes? What constitutes completing a full pivot cycle? Yes? And to learn anything, you need to complete it all the way.

Yes, so again like being like, "We built a product; we spammed 10 people on LinkedIn; none of them replied, so let's throw it all in the trash." I am arguing that is not a high-quality rep. No, you didn't do anything; you didn't really do anything. You didn't really learn anything; it was sort of just like a waste of everyone's time. You did spend time, so you're right, okay? You wasted time.

And so, congratulations. The metaphor I sometimes like to tell people when they're pivoting is: the most important customer is yourself. And the founder psychology thing you want to do is build conviction in your own mind that this thing is worth working on.

Yes, and so it's not to make investors happy or your YC partner happy, yes, or whatever; it's to convince your brain that more time spent on this idea is time well spent. Another way I like to think about that is to convince yourself this customer is worth helping. Yeah? Like you're going to enjoy spending time with this customer.

And I find a lot of founders kind of want to skip that part. Yeah, oh, I just want to be in this industry. I just want them to buy my thing. I don't want—like don't talk to me. I don't really care about—just buy my thing, make my number go up, and I want to raise my Series A. It's like—

And so in terms of like founder personality traits or things you can develop, I think a lot of times how good of a programmer you are is one thing. How good you are at sales, how good you are at fundraising, all these things are like, you know, important.

Yes, but someone that has low conviction and struggles to ever build conviction on anything, even if they're great at all those other factors, is not going to make it. Isn't that crazy? Versus there's people that are worse at some of those other things. Imagine this: this was like a baseball card of their skills—not the best programmer, not the best salesperson, not the best fundraiser—but very high conviction and able to focus their energy one direction in a superhuman way. Those people do have success; case in point, Justin Khan, my co-founder.

I totally agree, and what's funny is like every good startup team has at least one of those people. You need one. Yes, yes, you need that. And the "too cool for school" teams, where it's like, "Oh no, I can't be too into anything, right? Like my bar is super high," it's like, sorry, you'll just pivot until you run out of speed, right?

And so, like let's talk about exactly what conviction means. I think it doesn't mean believing in things religiously, exactly; it's more of not letting yourself get blown off course. So this happens to us a lot. We've seen this at YC. A founder is working on an idea that it's going well; they go to fundraise; the fundraise is hard.

What happens if you're not high conviction? "You got to pivot." They give up. So if just meeting with investors causes you to give up, causes you to give up on your idea, by definition, I'm arguing you don't have high conviction. Yes, because you're blown off course. If every time you talk to a new customer you decide to change your product, that is low conviction. You do not have conviction.

Let's go back to the investor one. The thing that I hate about that investor one is that if you look at the history of really big companies, so many of them, most investors thought that the idea was horrible. Yes, so it's like empirically a lot of investors thinking your idea is horrible is not necessarily a bad sign.

Correct? Yeah, it's not necessarily a good sign either, by the way. We're not arguing, "Hey, if it's bad then it must be good." We're not seeing that. It's more of a neutral—like it's not a key indicator either way, I might argue. But when you take it as a key, when it's the only key indicator, yeah, oh, it's so—it's almost like when you spend all your time trying to triangulate what other people say is good, and that's how you decide what startup idea to work on—yeah, you're going to have a bad time.

So I think that, um, I've been trying to unpack why do people do this? And more specifically, like why do people kind of think logically and rationally in their job and then come to their startup and just their quality of thinking decreases by 90%?

And you know, I've talked about this before. You know a big thing is fear, and in the context of the YC batch, I noticed a big thing specifically related to fear is I literally like fake information. You know, I had a company tell me like, "Oh man, well we started looking at this problem and realized it was going to take a little while to build, and you know, we looked at our batch and 75% of the companies already have launched products that are growing." And we were like, "We can't."

And I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, pause." I was like, "He said it with such conviction for a second. I was like, wow, that's a good job. We're killing 75% already launched. The batch hasn't started yet." And then I was like, "Wait, like why do you like—why do you think that?"

And they were like, "I just assumed!" I was like, just making up. Yeah, and I was like, you can look. Well, and this is what's funny for the founders that read a lot of Twitter or Reddit or blogs is they will take something, you know, Anonymous arvar 42 said as like gospel and base their entire life philosophy around it. Yes, don't do that. Don't do that! Especially when you can look up the real answer; like you can tell which company—like when you're in the Y Combinator, you can tell which companies are launched and which ones aren't.

The other one was, "Well, an alum told me I won't be able to raise without, you know, $10,000 in MR." And it was interesting because I had to sit down with this founder and say really simply, some companies enter the batch with a post-launch product, with users; some companies will enter the batch with an idea.

If you were a rational investor, would you judge those two different companies with the same exact rubric? They, of course, not. And I was like, "Okay, and if an investor did, would you not call them kind of dumb and maybe wouldn't want to work with them?" Like, yeah.

So then why are you doing that? Of course, the expectations are different from something that comes into a batch with just an idea. But I think that these kind of false expectations create the fear, and then the fear creates the bad thinking, and then it's like once you're in bad thinking, you're kind of fine.

I love that technique that you just mentioned. I like to do this one sometimes too when someone is trying to get a first customer, yeah, which is like, "Okay, in your past job, your team evaluated different software to buy, right?" Yes. Yes, and I'd be like, so you have actually been on the other side of the customer conversations a lot.

Yeah, so which of the sales tactics that you're trying would have worked on you? Like, how often do you respond to cold emails on LinkedIn? Yeah, oh, never. Okay, with name kind of poorly replaced in the template? Is that like—and suddenly their brain—the gears in their brain re-engage with like, "Oh, we evaluated things all the time, and we would do this."

And I had the, like—like, "And I'd be like, so basically you're actually an expert at understanding your customer because you bought a lot of software on the other side of the table?" Yes? What if you just tried to come up with tactics that would have worked on you and would have made you buy your product? And they'll like stop and be like, "I've never thought of that before."

Yeah, and so that's actually a really great technique is to remember back when you've been on the buy side for stuff. Yes? And think about what would have appealed to you or got you over the line, and then that screens out a lot of this junk because the low-effort pivots—if you run the thought experiment, they'd be like, "Oh yeah, I would never buy this."

I think what's so funny is like when the founder has that realization, "Oh, I actually am an expert in this," like, "Oh, I can actually lean on my expertise." The thing I often say next is like, "And that's why we funded you." Like, yeah! Like it's almost like they didn't realize that we funded them because they knew something about the topic they were pitching.

And then when they want to pivot really quickly, we're like, "Wow, now you're moving into an area you know nothing about." And we have to like, "Hey, remember—like remember, you know, you're here. Like others will respect that too, like your customers."

So no, I think this is so tricky because fear really drives everything. But I do think this is one of the reasons why I like the new YC standard deal because I think that before, founders would be like, "Well, if I don't raise in demand—" and now I can just say to them, "It's like look, imagine no raise in demand; you have half a million dollars; you're fine."

Like, there is no gun—the only gun to your head is the one you're lifting because you keep pivoting over and over again, and you never build conviction. Like, when you're low conviction, yeah, money ain't going to work; money's not your problem. So sometimes it's like, "Hey founders, just put the gun down."

All right, so we often encounter these companies, and we've talked about this before—companies that get into pivotitis, right? And got a bad case, a bad case of pivotitis. Right? And I think what's interesting is that like a company that will build something, learn over a period of time, and then pivot will often pivot from a place of knowledge and actually continue to make forward progress.

But we also see a different version. How would you describe that version?

Yeah, have you heard the term random walk? People like, so random walk is where you use like a random number generator to decide which direction you go, and basically when you random walk, you actually never get anywhere. Like imagine a starting point, and then you walk one direction, and you roll the dice and choose a different direction—you do that over and over again. Yep, you never get anywhere.

That's kind of like emailing 25 startups and asking them if they like your idea a little bit. It's a little random, right? Doing that again, and then doing that again, and doing that, yeah. And what happens is, imagine you're like, you know, a rowboat in the middle of the ocean trying to get back to land.

If you just keep changing direction every once in a while, you're never going to get—you're going to be lost at sea. And so you kind of have to get on a vector that even if you have to change a little bit, yeah, there's some forward progress you're making in some specific direction.

And I think that what we see that's so unfortunate is that when you do that random walk enough, you just run out of energy. Yeah, and you know, I always see it like somewhere in like one and a half to two years—if you don't feel like you've learned anything and you've spent two years kind of doing the thing, one, your experience isn't going to be good.

No, two, you won't feel like you used the time well, but three, you're just going to be tired and for no good reason. You can be tired for no good reason. And, well, you've never sunk your teeth into anything, so it's like you feel like you've been running a race, but then it's like, so what have you learned? They're like, "Well, I learned what not to do."

Yeah, like it's harder—it's kind of harder to articulate why that was a good use of your time. Yes? No? And I think that what's sad is that oftentimes those people have a very bad memory of startups, right?

Yeah, and, um, I wish they didn't. Like the folks who learned and didn't succeed are often motivated to go out and do it again or go work in a company in that space. Like this is an additive experience in their life, even if their startup didn't work. The ones who do the random walk, like they realize, "Man, this probably wasn't a good use of my time."

So anyways, I think that the last point I always like to bring up here is another version of this kind of random walk or email 25 people, then pivot, is like launch a product that will help no one, yep, and then pivot. And in the founder's mind, they'll say, "Well, I launched an MVP and nobody wanted it."

And you know, we talked about this earlier—it's like, is it an MVP? MVP is one of those terms where we people say it so much, it's assumed that there's an agreed-upon definition.

Yeah, but when you ask for details, I am not convinced there's an agreed-upon definition of MVP. So what's your definition of MVP?

Well, you know, I think that I used to not assume I had to define it narrowly, but now that I think about it, if you can't get anyone to use your MVP, it's probably not an MVP.

Well, it's not the V; we're missing the V, which is viable. Yeah. Like basically, if it doesn't work for anyone, yeah, how—it is hard to argue that it's viable. No, and like shouldn't an MVP— it seems like the cool thing about an MVP is you can do things that don't scale and cheat.

Like you can make it—you can kind of will it to work for one person, right? So the fact that it doesn't work for one person usually means that like you weren't even trying to make it work for them; like you were trying to do something else.

This is a—a—a—something that comes up a lot when I'm reading applications or in interviews for specifically developer tools, you ready? Yeah, it'll be like, "Oh cool, so I built this tool and it helps your code, and you're way more efficient and it's better."

And it's, you know, "We're building our MVP," and like "we're getting—we're emailing people on LinkedIn now." Yeah? What is the question I asked Michael? Do—do you use it yourself? Yes?

I will say great, so tell me about your usage of it. Yeah? And they'll be like, they'll be like, "Okay, so let me get this straight, this is helping programmers and you're out selling it. You're trying to get stone-cold strangers to use it, but it's not good enough for you to use yet, right?"

And then is that what you're saying? Usually, they're like, "Well, it doesn't have..." like they can list the thing. "Well, it doesn't have this, this, and I mean like I would never use it."

And so the argument—the earnest point is you should at least be able to use your own tool, yes, and be proud to use it or feel like it's providing some value—the V and the—it's viable for you.

Yes, and if you can't even get your—you can't bring yourself to use your own product, it's a little weird to be trying to sell it to people. More than a little. More than a little weird. And so that should be the bar for a lot of folks, is that they are willing to use their own product.

Yes, right? That's a good bar for—especially, I mean, if it's solving your own problem, then like at a minimum, yeah. That doesn't apply—there's some that doesn't apply in some cases, but for a lot of things, at a minimum you should be able to use it.

So yes, so once we started looking at it this way, I started realizing like how many companies never build an MVP, 'cause that—that's like, it's typically seen as kind of like the first real baby step, right?

And how many folks never get there? They never made one customer happy, and sometimes when I talk to founders who have these big high-fluent plans, like I bring it back to like, "Can we just go one?" You know, the path to 10 million happy users?

Yeah, let's talk about that later. For today, how about one? One?

And you know, you can't do that. Like you can—you can—all right, everyone can do that.

Yeah. So, um, maybe the long story short here is that, one, it's going to take maybe longer than you think, so don't have expectations that screw you up. Two, fear makes you think real bad—like don't let fear turn a really smart person into a not very smart person.

Three, man, it helps to solve your own problem and then to be your first customer—that's a good bar. At least you could say you did that, you know, if you're doing a random walk. Maybe start with, um—

And then four, like understand that like you're— you called it a good rep—make the analogy?

Because in lifting—like make the analogy. Yeah, I think it would just be in any kind of exercise or movement—if you want to build strength, you want to like have good form.

Yeah. And you won't get better if your form is bad, or you might even injure yourself, actually, right? Like if you want to learn, I don't know, how to swing a golf club, yep, and your form is bad, A, you probably won't learn, and B, you might injure yourself.

Yeah, and you're not going to have fun. You're definitely not going to have fun. So you kind of want to have good form, yeah, when you're trying to do something that's hard.

Run a good rep. I like it. All right, man, great chat. Cool. Thanks man.

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