Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Hours are worthless. Replace them with this.

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Hours are worthless. Replace them with this. · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
You raised the seed round. You sold the dream to investors.
0:03
You sold the dream to your team. And now comes the part nobody
0:06
budgets for. The dream might be a nightmare.
0:09
Ollie from Wednesday has seen this movie 1000 times.
0:12
Founders obsess over signups, views, downloads and then wonder
0:16
why revenue is allergic to them. His move is brutal and simple.
0:20
Sprint 0, audit the pirate metrics that actually matter,
0:24
Retention, referral, revenue. Then force a 30 to 45 day road
0:29
map guide to real outcomes. Not vibes, not vanity data.
0:33
Customer poll. Here's the cheat code.
0:36
Record your customer calls, send them to Ali's team, and they'll
0:39
help you separate insight versus noise.
0:42
Because customers will say yes while silently meaning no.
0:46
He even gives retention guardrails.
0:48
B to C day 150% retention rate day 725%, day 310 to 15%.
0:55
And if you're B to B 20 to 30% retention over the 1st 30 days.
1:00
If you missed that, you don't need more features.
1:02
You need a new direction. Welcome to AI for founders.
1:05
I'm Ryan Estes, so here's the founder gut check.
1:07
Are you building what makes you feel smart or what makes
1:10
customers come back when nobody's watching?
1:13
You'll learn how to move from MVP to real PMF, how to cut your
1:17
failure odds and how to build around demand.
1:20
This is for seed Series A founders who want momentum that
1:23
actually sticks. Now, if you like Founders
1:26
playbooks without motivational poster energy, then go to AI for
1:30
founders.co and sign up for the newsletter.
1:32
I'll send you the tactics you can steal before your next
1:35
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1:37
Sign up at AI for founders.co and let's turn your big vision
1:41
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3:08
OK, so let's start from the beginning of the engagement.
3:12
You, someone just raised, let's say C pre C, they're coming to
3:16
you. They've sold their vision to
3:18
their investors. They've sold their vision to
3:19
their team. They need to sell their vision
3:21
to Ollie because ultimately it's going to get built.
3:25
How do you like to begin with a customer?
3:28
Yeah. So it really depends on where a
3:33
customer is in the journey. Well, having an MVP is one
3:38
thing, but then there are different, there are different
3:40
types of businesses. You can have AB to C business,
3:42
AB to B business. So it really depends because the
3:45
metrics for each one are going to differ.
3:48
But we'll start with doing an audit of really looking at where
3:53
they are in terms of usage. So we call these metrics pirate
4:00
metrics. It's activation, referral,
4:05
retention, revenue. And we look at these metrics and
4:10
we try and identify what are the numbers really looking like.
4:13
Because truly speaking, many a times founders are really going
4:17
after vanity metrics. They only talk about things
4:20
like, you know, number of sign ups or like number of viewers or
4:23
number of app downloads, etcetera.
4:25
But none of this matters in reality.
4:29
There might be APR mention or a fundraising round and there's a
4:32
spike, but that doesn't mean that people are willing to pay
4:35
for it because there's no retention.
4:37
So we start by identifying, you know, what are the numbers
4:39
remain looking like? Then we look at the strengths
4:43
that the founder has. Maybe they have an active, you
4:45
know, distribution channel and maybe they're really well known
4:48
in that small community of users that they serve, etcetera.
4:54
And then we start creating what we call is a product of road
4:58
Map. Now this is a very interesting
5:00
exercise because here a lot of assumptions are actually, we
5:05
force founders to really validate those assumptions.
5:10
I've never met a founder who hasn't had like in the in the in
5:13
the first couple of meetings that doesn't have like a three
5:15
month road map. And when you start digging down
5:20
and identifying, you know, why do you want to build this?
5:22
Like what is the business outcome that you are hoping to
5:24
achieve that will come out of it?
5:27
Usually the intentions are very good, but they don't have any
5:31
data to back the fact that building this is going to change
5:34
this metric. Whether it's number of sign ups,
5:37
activation, retention, referral revenue, they don't know.
5:40
So they really need help identifying what to build and
5:45
all of these things that I'm telling you is what we call a
5:47
Sprint 0. So a Sprint 0, the outcome of a
5:52
Sprint 0 is identifying a road map.
5:55
And we don't want a very long road map.
5:57
We typically want a one month or 1 1/2 month road map.
6:01
That's it. And we really force founders to
6:04
just talk to customers and we'll go down to even like telling
6:09
them record that conversation and send it back to me And we'll
6:12
drill down and we'll identify, you know, what did the customer
6:15
actually mean when we ask this question?
6:17
Because many of times customers will just say yes, but they
6:20
don't really, they don't really intend to purchase, doesn't
6:23
really mean that they're going to purchase.
6:25
And we identify all of we try and convert all this information
6:30
into insights. We identify what is an insight
6:34
and what is just noise. And we try and convert that into
6:37
a road map. There's a lot of work that the
6:41
founder has to do during this phase, but what comes out of it
6:45
is a road map that we are sure of in terms of the sort of reach
6:52
we have that there is merit in building this.
6:56
That's when we'll actually move to Sprint one, which will be
7:00
executing on that. So let's say when we do a Sprint
7:04
zero, it may lead to two sprints of work or three sprints of
7:07
work, which will be implemented in like a Sprint wise manner.
7:12
That is a minute plus Sprint. And after each Sprint, we again
7:15
reach out for feedback. So it's really geared towards
7:19
looking at the data, forcing founders to go out and actually
7:23
talk to the right ICP and see if you know, is Sprint on Sprint is
7:28
their customer put. We don't want to just sell it to
7:31
them. We want to see if they're
7:32
actually pulling this out of your hands and going and telling
7:35
five other people say use this, you know, on, on the B to B
7:40
side, on the B like B to C side. It would be very different.
7:44
Yeah. Is it important to you that
7:47
you're involved in kind of the early validation process?
7:50
What if I came to you and I was like, Ollie, I don't want to do
7:52
Sprint zero, I want to do Sprint one.
7:54
I already talked to like, I talked to like four or five
7:56
people and I am very confident that this is exactly what I want
8:00
you to build. We've had many of those cases as
8:02
well. And honestly, see, nobody knows
8:07
what they're right. The answer is nobody knows
8:09
what's going to work. Ultimately the market will
8:11
decide in the end, customer will decide whether it's something
8:13
that they want to buy or no. We can just help reduce the odds
8:17
of failure. So what we consult, what we tell
8:21
customers is that, you know, they're not saying what you're
8:23
saying is wrong, right? But the cost of going wrong,
8:28
like we want to make sure that you have Max.
8:31
OK, so let's let's consider that, you know, you and I are
8:34
running a startup and we've raised X dollars.
8:40
We typically have a timeline at which we need to prove whether
8:44
what we what we set out to do is going to work or not.
8:47
My job is to make sure that Mac runway extends as much as
8:51
possible and you're not spending it on doing the wrong thing.
8:56
The minute I start having a conversation like this, they
8:59
start to listen. But you're right, like every
9:04
conversation that I've had with the founder, they're extremely
9:06
confident that what they want is going to going to work.
9:08
But on the other hand, I've also seen like every, every company
9:11
that we've worked with, all the unicorns included, what they
9:14
started off as, what they will build is not what they are
9:17
today. They are completely different.
9:21
Companies that started as B to C products are now marketplaces.
9:25
You know, there there's some companies that started off as
9:27
just being like a health assistant and now they're
9:29
sending like medicines online. It's completely different, you
9:33
know? So, yeah, I mean, the sooner you
9:36
realize that the journey is about not you, but what the
9:42
customer wants. And your job is to figure that
9:44
out, figure out where demand is, you know, exchange.
9:50
I love this place right here. You know, entrepreneurship is
9:54
like an addictive drug. You know, there's I think
9:58
largely because the lows are so low and the highs are so highs.
10:02
But the really interesting part is going into this with an idea.
10:06
And I think you've done it enough times that you, you
10:08
realize that an idea is just a large assumption, you know, and,
10:13
and kind of to your point, I love that you just introduced in
10:16
the beginning, like, hey, I don't know, you know, nobody
10:19
really knows what's going to happen, what's going to hit,
10:21
why, at what time, for which person.
10:24
You know, it all this is kind of a mystery, but you can lower
10:27
your, your chance of failure. If you're like you're looking
10:31
for distribution with a particular customer and you're
10:33
satisfying their needs, you're quick to value.
10:36
They're using it, they're referring it to, to your point,
10:39
you know, just kind of anecdotally, you know, there I,
10:42
I've worked on different products at different times.
10:44
One I was working on a cookie company, like literally, we sold
10:48
like really high quality cookies and the whole, the whole
10:52
transaction took place through SMS.
10:55
So you can get a text message that had the cookie of the week
10:57
and then you'd were shipped cookies a week.
10:59
These are expensive, really nice cookies that photograph well.
11:02
Well, the company kind of flopped, just it didn't really
11:05
work for a variety of reasons. But the exact same time, there's
11:08
a brand called Crumble Cookies that absolutely exploded.
11:12
You know, so it's like, why did the my Cookie company go nowhere
11:16
and this one just boomed? Well, there's just a myriad of
11:19
factors. It's not that the idea is good
11:21
or bad, but I think that is to say that when you're in this
11:24
early position, particularly if you're working with somebody
11:27
like Ali who sees products all the time, and still it's like,
11:31
hey, man, I don't know. We're going to start here with
11:34
this assumption. We're going to go validate that
11:36
assumption. But at some point, if this is
11:38
going to be successful, we're going to pivot to a completely
11:41
different business model. You know?
11:44
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11:47
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11:50
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14:18
No, I couldn't agree with you more.
14:19
I mean, when I look back and I look at the factors that have
14:23
led to success for the companies that didn't make it, few things
14:28
that stand out to me are the the founders who do make it are the
14:33
founders who are surely on the search for demand.
14:37
So they are not really focused on the what so much, you know,
14:42
they're focused on The Who and really what does that who want
14:47
and how can I service them, You know, so the shape of the
14:51
solution, they're open to change.
14:55
I also think that the founders that I have seen 6 succeed have
14:58
had phenomenal teams. They've been amazing team
15:03
builders. They don't have like fixed
15:05
assumptions in their mind saying I have to do everything except
15:08
they're they're able. And you know, what's really
15:10
interesting for me is that, and this is true for me as well
15:13
during my journey, unlike, I mean, I'd like what you read
15:18
that people say that you should surround yourself by a group of
15:21
generalists, etcetera. I believe the opposite to be
15:24
true. Like, for example, especially in
15:26
the early journey, it's better to have specialists who are
15:31
really, really good at that area of work than a generalist.
15:38
Because truly the, the role of the generalist in this is to
15:41
like try different things and figure out what sticks, which is
15:44
your role, right? Or it could be you are some
15:50
somebody in your Co founding team.
15:51
You're constantly thinking as to, you know, what is going to
15:54
work with this customer. But get the specialist, the, the
15:58
people who've identified that, you know, maybe I can get a
16:00
specialist to just do this and then see if it works.
16:03
Maybe get another specialist to see if it works.
16:05
That's a much better way of experimenting.
16:08
And I've seen a lot of tech companies, SAS companies failure
16:12
because they try and hire too many developers, designers,
16:15
etcetera, at different levels. They don't know what to build.
16:18
They just become project managers and lots of blunders.
16:21
The ones who succeed are the ones who've got the right team.
16:24
You know, they, they hire specialists when they need them.
16:28
They're focused on The Who they know how to identify demand or
16:31
those guys they typically win. You know, and there's a certain
16:36
luck that's involved. Yeah, it's, well, yeah.
16:39
People that make are are willing to make decisions quickly.
16:43
They kind of capitalize on luck the most.
16:45
So if we're talking about the assumption we're going into a
16:49
problem and the solution may change over time, which is to
16:53
say the solution you're providing there might have to be
16:56
like a kill rule, you know, which is they like, we're trying
17:00
this, it's not working. What are some of those kind of
17:03
like indicators that you're like, look, man, that we, we
17:06
have something, we're around it, but what we're doing right now
17:10
isn't it? So we're going to have to change
17:12
directions. What are some of the?
17:13
What is the feel or texture of those moments?
17:16
The the answer to that question is in the data.
17:19
So if you're building AB to C product, let's say you've built
17:23
something, you want to look at retention metrics on day 17 and
17:28
30. So for example, if you are on
17:32
day one, you want retention metric to at least be 50
17:36
percent, 50% of the users who are using it should come back.
17:40
If you are at day seven, it should be 25 and it should be 10
17:44
to 15% at day 30. If you get these numbers right,
17:48
then you're probably headed in the right direction.
17:51
And if you're AB to B product, it needs to be a good 20 to 30%
17:55
constant for the 1st 30 days. If you get these numbers, then
18:00
you're headed in the right direction.
18:01
And again, this is an indicator. This doesn't mean that it'll be
18:04
successful, but this is an indicator.
18:06
Another thing that we look at is the time to value.
18:09
So any product is basically a set of steps that the user takes
18:14
to get value. And what at that value is
18:17
whatever you promise, whatever you're trying to sell, you want
18:20
to make sure that there's least friction to get there, which is
18:25
why we keep telling them the focus, you know, have like a
18:28
small feature set. Yeah, and oh, go ahead.
18:31
Sorry. No, no, go ahead.
18:34
You know, this is what gets me so excited about building with
18:36
AI is because time to value can almost immediate, you know, and
18:40
so it, it changes the way you start thinking about software,
18:46
you know, at least for me, because now I'm more thinking
18:49
about like, what is 1 very specific problem I can
18:52
completely eliminate for a person forever, You know, so I
18:56
and I love these kind of like this data, which is to say, OK,
18:59
B to B product at 30 days, I need a 20 to 30% retention rate.
19:04
Otherwise, what are we, what am I doing here?
19:06
You know, though, with AI you can go time to value very
19:10
quickly. So kind of what I'm seeing there
19:13
are a couple of things. Well, actually just kind of
19:15
wrote down notes of what I like when I'm developing products,
19:18
you know, you know, one, I think typing sucks.
19:22
I don't want to have to type a, a chat bot, you know, 2, I want
19:26
1 button just to solve my problems and I, I want it to
19:29
work magically. I don't need you to hammer me
19:31
with the AI, whatever. Just like just make that thing
19:34
go away and fix itself, you know, So everything I'm kind of
19:38
thinking in terms of that. Do you think that's a wise way
19:41
to approach product development in 2026?
19:46
100% I think the wise way to approach product development is
19:50
to use what is currently available and to see the changes
19:54
that AI is bringing in the end consumer.
19:57
And everything that you told me right now is exactly the changes
20:00
that we are seeing. In a nutshell, what you're
20:03
telling me is you want the product to be hyper personalized
20:07
to you. These are your preferences.
20:10
You know, you want it to fix itself, you want it to be like
20:12
smallest time to value like I'll give you an example of something
20:16
that we're trying to do right now.
20:18
We're working with a sort of GLP one manufacturer.
20:23
They sell GLP one drugs and they've created, they want to
20:27
create it, create some like an assistant that people can use in
20:31
their journey for weight loss. And if you really think about
20:34
it, there are so many different types of people who are on this
20:37
journey for weight loss. There may be someone who is who
20:40
needs so much like emotional reinforcement to be on this
20:44
program. And there's someone who's so
20:46
data-driven, he doesn't want anything.
20:48
He just wants to see his stats, right.
20:50
And you can offer his such a personalized experience
20:53
depending on preferences today. So I think the way to think
20:56
about product engineering is hyper personalized is to figure
21:01
out, because now it is possible, is to figure out, you know, how
21:07
do you really provide an engaging experience without all
21:12
of the slot that used to be around products.
21:15
I also think that today you really need to think about your
21:18
product as a part of a big ecosystem that the user is
21:23
already using. So, for example, don't try and
21:26
build another app, but if somebody is so used to using,
21:29
you know, WhatsApp all the time, try and find a way to integrate
21:33
it within their, you know, ecosystem and you'll find more
21:37
retention. You don't need to create
21:39
something new. Try and fit in.
21:42
And I think that's the right way to do it.
21:44
See, I, I, my fundamental view on this is that, you know,
21:48
building software is easy. There is no doubt about it.
21:52
In fact, when founders come to us with an idea, we go and tell
21:55
them you need to go and build an MVP yourself because we don't,
21:58
we don't do idea. We work, we start at MVP.
22:04
But I think getting that, what's difficult is still getting the
22:08
form factor of identifying what it is that people want, really
22:14
turning the product into a business.
22:16
That's still difficult, you know, Yeah, that that's still
22:20
the tough part. Like nobody knows what's going
22:21
to happen and you still need to iterate and, you know, do all of
22:24
that and you need to do it in the most cost effective way.
22:28
It's interesting, you know, as execution gets cheaper and
22:31
cheaper, the the bottleneck then becomes kind of more of a
22:34
business. Yeah, like a business problem,
22:38
you know, which is to say like, how are we going to charge from
22:40
this? How are we going to adapt
22:42
pricing? You know, what's kind of your
22:44
take? We're we're, I mean, you're
22:45
obviously you, you stop billing hourly, you're like, hey, we're
22:48
going to outcome based pricing, which makes a lot of sense.
22:52
It also puts you in a position now where you're almost like a
22:56
psychologist or a philosopher first.
22:59
You know, it's like, hey, it's going to get built.
23:01
What are we building? Yeah, you know, yeah, you just
23:05
like describe our calls. Yeah, the guy.
23:07
Well, is the question, what is it?
23:09
The question was you know the the pricing models you have also
23:13
usage based pricing based on kind of LLMS also on tokens and
23:17
stuff like that. Where do you see kind of pricing
23:20
going, let's say, let's talk about B to B, SAS and software
23:23
products. I don't know why and I think
23:26
this is a really difficult one. Everyone's trying to answer this
23:32
question in their own way. At the end of the day, I feel
23:40
like we're moving towards a world where people will only pay
23:43
for outcomes, which means move this, which means primarily I'm
23:49
buying because it is convenient for me.
23:53
And I'm, I value my time more because I need to be doing
23:57
different things, right? So I need to be doing different
24:00
things. You know this, you are a
24:02
specialist in this, whether it's a product or service I buy, you
24:06
move this metric for me. But I don't know how feasible
24:10
this is practically in the services space.
24:13
We've identified how to make this more practical by managing,
24:16
you know, because we have a sitting cost, you know, people
24:18
actually work at Wednesday. So we we need to figure that
24:23
out. But on on the product side, it's
24:26
very difficult because there's server cost, there's product
24:31
cost, there's steam cost, etcetera.
24:33
So I don't know, I've seen people do it on a token basis,
24:39
people do it on a SAS pricing basis, on a per seed basis.
24:43
Very few are doing outcome based pricing on the product side.
24:47
And even if they are, they're still doing some basic token fee
24:51
or you know system. But I think we're headed to a
24:56
world where everything will be outcome based, which means that
24:59
you're only able to like, your only differentiator is if you
25:02
get a result. Yeah, it's interesting and it I
25:06
think it could be successful. But while we're getting
25:08
philosophical, you know, I often remind myself that it's not
25:12
about the destination, it's about the journey.
25:15
So like you're talking about like, OK, we're doing a software
25:17
component for GLP 1, you know, and it's like, maybe the outcome
25:21
is like, look, if you don't lose 30 lbs, then you don't pay for
25:25
it, you know, So then you get to the 30 lbs.
25:27
But, but really it's the process, the agonizing,
25:31
excruciating pain in this case of losing 30 lbs.
25:35
But you know that that becomes like the, the, the, the juice,
25:39
that's what you paid for. It's like the experience.
25:41
Because maybe you are a bar graph guy.
25:43
I really love on this subject just to give a shout out to Cal
25:46
AI. They have a really cool app that
25:49
you know, you can take pictures of your food, it does your
25:50
macros, it gives you all the charts, but it also gives weight
25:53
loss. They're really pulling on all
25:55
the emotional triggers. So I, I guess that's just a long
25:58
way around to saying like if we're going to out base outcome,
26:01
base pricing, it does it devalue the process to get to the
26:04
outcome? Yeah, it is a philosophical
26:09
question and it probably does. But you know, in an in an era of
26:14
abundance, right? Like that's what we are in
26:18
effort may not be worth a lot. I don't know.
26:25
I don't know what's going to happen because at the end of the
26:30
day, a lot of jobs are actually measured by effort.
26:33
Not everybody has an outcome or, or something like that.
26:37
But I don't know what's going to happen.
26:38
But I feel like the value of that is being sort of
26:43
depreciating year on year. I know and, and maybe I'm just
26:48
sentimental about certain things, but it's like, you know,
26:51
my kids, my guy has a 17 year old and a 18 year old and they
26:55
both are really into music, which is awesome and they have
26:57
great taste. But you know, everything is, is
27:00
in Spotify, like literally everything.
27:02
And I was telling them like, you know, when I was 20 years old, I
27:05
managed a record store. There used to be thing called a
27:08
music store. And I was like, what you do is
27:10
you go there and you'd you'd have to listen to each
27:13
individual thing and wonder if you want to buy this one or that
27:16
one because, you know, ACDA cassette and LP, it's like 25
27:20
bucks apiece. So you know, it's an expensive
27:23
hobby. So you'd listen in the store,
27:25
you'd figure out what you like and then you'd look in the liner
27:27
notes and the liner notes would mention samples used by this
27:30
person. Then you'd go find them.
27:31
Like I had to it. It was kind of turning a light
27:34
bulb on their head because I was like the discovering music was a
27:37
physical real thing you had to do in a special place.
27:41
It's like this wild Chapel called like a music store, you
27:45
know. So again, I'm sentimental
27:47
sometimes at times about the experience of the the of the
27:50
thing because that ultimately feeds the value of it, you know?
27:55
But I could be completely wrong because, you know, you pull up
27:58
your favorite song on Spotify, you have zero time invested, and
28:01
you get, you know what you want all right out of the gate.
28:06
In the example that you're mentioning, I think what's very
28:08
interesting is experience in this example is can be like can
28:16
be thought of in in terms of context, the fact that you're
28:20
actually going to the store, putting in that effort, like
28:23
listening to all the different types of, you know, tapes,
28:27
etcetera, and then deciding it it it shows that you have taste.
28:31
You've built taste, right? And that is insanely valuable
28:37
today because people are actually paying for that, right?
28:41
So the effort to develop taste will help in getting outcome.
28:50
So I think which is why we are moving to the era of
28:53
specialization. If you have built, if you have
28:58
seen like 50 or 60 products fail, you know, over a period of
29:03
like 3 years, you know far more in terms of what not to do,
29:07
which is just context. And you also have you also
29:11
develop some kind of taste, right?
29:13
You know what may work. I mean, taste is just the
29:16
ability to decide. It's judgement and judgement
29:19
requires contests and experience and people would pay for that.
29:23
And it's just sort of packaged as an outcome, but it's nothing
29:27
but experience. Yeah, I love this idea too.
29:31
I want you to keep talking about taste because it does seem to be
29:34
more and more important. And I think there's an attribute
29:38
of taste that like, let's say you develop taste, you have to
29:41
go super deep for a long period of time in one little domain.
29:46
So with me, it might be like jazz broadly or very
29:50
specifically, it's probably modal jazz that I'm really into
29:54
from like, you know, the, the late 50s to mid 60s.
29:57
So like I, I've developed a taste that I appreciate for a
30:01
lot of different varied reasons. But now when I'm thinking about
30:05
something else, because I spent so much time there, if I get
30:08
into like baking sourdough bread, like I don't know
30:12
anything about sourdough bread. However, the texture and taste I
30:15
developed for jazz, I point that and I know that there is this
30:19
basically delta I'm about to travel if I really want to go
30:22
into it. So which is kind of like, you
30:24
know, Musashi had this great quote that says, you know, if
30:27
you you if you find the way deeply in one thing, you see the
30:32
way broadly in all things. Would you agree with that?
30:37
100%, 100%. I, I have so much respect for
30:44
other people who have, you know, spent like decades doing one
30:48
thing just because I've done the same.
30:53
And I so my way of building a team like my number one metric
31:01
or #1 like litmus test is if I can delegate that piece of
31:08
responsibility to somebody and not be worried that this will
31:13
get done or is it going to be done correctly, etcetera.
31:16
That is just like a lot of respect for me.
31:21
So and I, and it has never been somebody who has not spent like
31:25
a decade doing that. And it can be anything like it
31:28
can be like business related, life related, you know,
31:30
whatever. So I 100% agree with that.
31:35
We, and it's actually a very interesting point because I've
31:38
been thinking about this for such a long time as to, you
31:39
know, we are in this era of abundance.
31:43
There's going to be so much, so many different options available
31:46
to people in like all facets of life.
31:50
You know, what is, what is like business going to be like, what
31:53
is like a team going to be going to look like, you know, 10 years
31:56
from now. And my answer to that question,
31:58
the more and more I think about it is it's going to be like a
32:00
really, really small team. I don't know what the number
32:04
would be. I think to each his own, but it
32:08
would be a really small team of people that have insane trust on
32:11
one another. And it would be a team where
32:15
each person is just an like insanely good at that genre of,
32:22
you know, that part of the business.
32:24
There wouldn't be anybody better than that person.
32:27
And this sort of small team would be capable of far too many
32:31
things that one could imagine. You know, it sounds like you're
32:35
talking about the X-Men. You know what I mean?
32:39
Yeah. Yeah.
32:41
Specialized power and you come together, you know, 100.
32:45
Percent, yeah, I think we're totally moving towards The
32:48
Avengers that are the X-Men, what have you.
32:51
But yeah, that's that's actually a very good sort of way to think
32:53
about it. I think it's probably pretty
32:56
appropriate because you're right, you know, the ability for
33:00
automation with AI is kind of like, yeah, whatever, that's
33:04
cool. We can like simplify some
33:05
things, but the opportunity to augment it's going to be have to
33:10
be hyper personalized of like, OK, what are my what is my zone
33:15
of genius and how do I amplify that specifically for me?
33:19
So the automation pulls everything out.
33:21
But now I'm going to turn into cyclops because that's what I do
33:24
really well as I shoot laser beams with my eyes.
33:26
You're not Then I then it it provides you to go find storm
33:29
and storm can summons the the weather.
33:31
You know what I mean? It's interesting to think about.
33:35
100%, I think that exactly what you mentioned is, is, is what I
33:39
think like the future of business, which is going to be
33:41
small teams there can be no cap on like the revenue numbers,
33:46
evaluation numbers, They're going to be able to do far too
33:49
many things. I think management as a concept
33:54
is going to change the a lot of the problems that people like
33:59
you really talk about. And I think most of the sort of
34:02
literature is around like team and management, like doing all
34:06
of those activities. How do you create a cohesive
34:08
environment? I I genuinely believe that that
34:11
that may no longer be a problem. Fascinating.
34:17
What about you? Where, where?
34:18
Where do you feel like you've developed really good taste?
34:22
I think, you know, it's, it's not like when we started
34:25
Wednesday, we knew exactly what we're going to do.
34:28
We, we started Wednesday is about 6 years old and we started
34:31
Wednesday, You know, we were doing the typical, you know,
34:33
offshore engagement that we would charge per hour, etcetera.
34:38
And we realized that, you know, that's really not something that
34:41
we enjoy because when I thought about an engagement with a
34:46
customer, let's say in the US or anywhere, we realized that just
34:50
by giving A-Team to them, they are turning into a project
34:55
manager. But as a founder, they should be
34:57
doing so many different things. And that's when we really
35:00
started figuring out, you know, how do we create like a service
35:03
that has got like a proper metric for billing and you know,
35:07
how can we offer an outcome, etcetera.
35:10
But I think what we are really good at and what we've really
35:13
enjoyed is just helping three PMS companies find BMS.
35:18
So our sweet spot is that CDC, when you've got some things
35:23
working but you don't know the answer to really like, you know,
35:27
cross the GASM, that's what they're really good at.
35:33
Saying that's a fun place. I mean, you know, when you get
35:37
that that that, you know, double, double, triple like that
35:40
kind of like momentum. I mean, there, there's almost no
35:44
better feeling than that one thing along your clients too, I
35:47
wanted to ask about because I was looking in clutch and you
35:50
have a lot of projects, small to gigantic, but they're all very
35:55
highly rated. I mean, you have a lot of
35:58
positive sentiment coming from your clients.
36:01
What, how do you kind of manage that when you're thinking about
36:04
like stickiness and retention for, for your own product, your
36:07
own clients? What are important indicators
36:10
from from your clients and and customers that you guys are
36:14
doing a good job? You know, and I, I'm genuinely
36:18
grateful for everyone who's worked with us internally.
36:23
They designed the service to have a lot of checkpoints.
36:27
So my Co founder Matt, he actually, you know, runs the
36:30
entire show and he's playing a very pivotal role in just
36:35
creating this service, which just makes things so much more
36:40
streamlined for founders and reduces their risk to find BMF.
36:44
I mean, the reason why people like have given us those reviews
36:47
is because they have got results.
36:49
Many of the companies that you see over there, they have
36:53
achieved BMF, they've raised their next round and they're now
36:56
growing. Many of them have created
36:57
internal teams. They're working with us on
36:59
building battle products. They've they've done
37:02
phenomenally for themselves. And I think that's primarily
37:05
because these founders, they were heads down focused on what
37:11
they need to do, which is not be involved in day-to-day product
37:17
development and really be out there talking to customers.
37:22
And of course in many cases we've had to push for that
37:25
because many founders, it's unfortunate, but I think it will
37:29
change especially in the digital space.
37:32
They come from an engineering background and it is the most
37:36
easiest thing for them to do, which is why they keep coming
37:39
back to do doing more of day-to-day product engineering
37:42
work. And we have forced them and tell
37:44
them that this is not what you should be doing.
37:47
But yeah, I think, you know, a lot of the internal quality
37:49
checks that we have is, you know, we try to measure these
37:52
metrics, you know, Sprint on Sprint and we try and see
37:55
whether there is retention when we have these conversations with
37:59
customers, you know, talking about, you know, is this really
38:01
moving a business metric? We try and validate what they're
38:03
building. Many of times they realize that
38:05
their assumptions are wrong. They need to pivot, they need to
38:08
change, they need to figure out how to ask the right question.
38:11
We, we, we audit on their sales conversations.
38:14
If it's AB2B product, trying them identify questions that
38:17
will lead to pull and those lead to an experience that is far
38:22
more superior than a traditional offshore agency provides, which
38:27
is typically here as a team. I'll charge you X dollars per
38:30
hour. You tell them what to do,
38:32
they'll do it. That doesn't lead to any result.
38:37
Just because they do what you say, it doesn't mean that it's
38:39
going to move a business like outcome.
38:43
That's what I wanted to change. Nice.
38:47
How do you deal with the tension between the speed and the
38:51
quality? Because you know, people that
38:54
just raised a Series A and they're ready to go.
38:56
I mean, obviously founders it like the clock is ticking, like
39:00
let's get this done. But there there could be like a
39:05
possibility of creating kind of like speed debt, which is to say
39:08
like, OK, we're pushing, we're getting it out there.
39:10
We're finding product market fit.
39:11
The whole thing could blow up if the quality isn't there.
39:14
Is there? Do you do you feel that tension?
39:18
Wait, I don't think that this this was a problem, but I don't
39:23
think it's that big a problem if you've got your basics right.
39:27
So as a company, we are a big blood code user and every
39:33
project that we work on just got many, many quality checks in
39:37
place in terms of, you know, how is the code that could, how is
39:40
the code going to be generated? We have all of these, you know,
39:43
mock down files that'll make sure that the same programming
39:46
patterns are used. We have quality checks that
39:49
ensure that test cases are written.
39:51
All of this is AI driven, but there are enough quality checks
39:54
to make sure that we aren't running into technical debt.
39:58
But having said that, you will, no matter how much you try, you,
40:01
you will incur some of the other debt.
40:03
But I do feel that in the age of AI, their change or the risk of
40:10
change isn't so high. Managing that debt seems far
40:17
more feasible, which is why we keep telling founders don't
40:20
focus so much energy on technical excellence.
40:25
The effort that you need to put in for technical excellence if
40:28
you have a million active customers versus a few thousand
40:32
active customers needs to be different.
40:35
You know, you don't need to be thinking about technical
40:37
excellence. You know, if if you're a few
40:39
1000 customers, you don't need like to have some crazy kind of
40:44
AWS infrastructure and a tuning deployment process.
40:49
Go to market then becomes like incredibly powerful, right,
40:52
because you like technical expert.
40:54
Hey buddy, we got you. Who are we selling to You know
40:58
you like in in 2026. That's really where a founder
41:01
should be spending their time. Yeah, I think so.
41:04
I, I, I, I 100% believe the founders should be spending all
41:07
their time on The Who and what they need, What's the demand
41:12
rather than, you know, what is that they want to do or what do
41:17
you think they need? But at the end of the day, you
41:21
know, I've, I've this big belief that the market has swings.
41:28
So, for example, everyone today is talking about distribution.
41:33
Distribution is the biggest lot today.
41:35
I mean, every, everything that I read here or learn, even on the
41:40
podcast that I'm listening to, they're all suddenly just
41:42
talking about distribution being the vote.
41:44
But this was not the case six years ago or five years ago or
41:46
pre COVID. I think it's very important to
41:51
identify what your strengths are.
41:54
There's still a lot of merit in just building a good product and
41:58
people recommending you or service.
42:01
Like whatever it is, focus on what your strengths are and
42:07
don't go after what the market is telling you.
42:10
Like many founders today are trying to start YouTube
42:12
channels. They've never really done any
42:14
kind of marketing in their life. Recipe for disaster.
42:20
So I, I, I don't think you need to do that.
42:23
But there are other creative ways to solve these problems.
42:25
But do it when it is actually needed, you know?
42:29
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I, I wonder, I mean, product
42:32
based marketing is almost over. You know where I, I think a lot
42:36
of people saw like Mr. Beast launch Beastables and the Paul
42:39
brothers launch Prime and like create billion dollar markets
42:44
overnight and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
42:46
Distribution. There's something here, you
42:48
know. No, I completely agree.
42:50
I think that I think a lot of the a lot of the a large market
42:56
point will come when by just surely identifying what people
43:01
want. And if you provide them a very,
43:04
very nice personalized experience that fits within
43:08
their day-to-day routine or life of using different kinds of
43:13
tools that they're already used to, you will see adoption.
43:18
You don't need to do all of the fancy stuff.
43:21
You just like stick to the basics.
43:22
And you know when you reach that point you will find a solution
43:25
for it. Yeah, You know, I obviously the
43:30
listeners of this podcast know I, my whole thing is
43:32
distribution. It's something I learned early
43:34
on, 15 years ago, and I was going to develop my first
43:37
software product. And I had a similar conversation
43:39
with these these folks up in Boulder.
43:41
And they're like, hey, man, yeah, we, we can build this.
43:43
It's, it'll cost you $250,000. Happy to do it.
43:45
But then what It was like, oh, you know, so I had a light bulb
43:50
moment, you know, but I think also the the just kind of the
43:55
cultural milieu right now, it's like business is cool and it
43:59
it's open to everybody like never before.
44:02
So kind of like infotainment business entertainment, podcast,
44:06
all these different things where like you're hearing these
44:08
stories. It's much more relatable, I
44:10
think, to people and more interesting and inspiring than
44:13
like kind of your classic celebrities.
44:15
You know, nothing wrong with a pretty face, you know what I'm
44:18
saying? But but now you see a whole rise
44:21
of like kind of like business entertainers almost.
44:24
You know that it's just an interesting how to your point,
44:28
it kind of ebbs and flows. And right now we're definitely
44:30
in in kind of that flow. While we got a couple of minutes
44:33
left, I wanted to ask you about one quote because what's fun
44:36
about reading about you, Ollie, is like you got some hot takes.
44:40
So one that I really love is you're in the camp of this
44:44
company is not a family. I love that.
44:49
So can you expand on that a little bit?
44:51
Why is Why is your company not a family?
44:58
I think a lot of small companies, I mean, I think I
45:00
think of us as a small company. The number one mistake that the
45:04
founder starts making is that they keep talking to their team
45:07
saying, you know, we are a family, which is really stupid
45:10
if you think about it. If you think of a family, there
45:15
are so many different interpersonal relationships.
45:20
And I've never seen any family where there's no black sheep.
45:24
There's always one or two and everybody in the family is
45:28
trying to protect that person. They're trying to cover up,
45:32
they're trying to do more. This is very good for a family,
45:37
but very bad for a team. I want to build a team that is
45:46
hyper focused on getting results for our customers, that is
45:50
extremely specialized, that can own their pillar, whether it's
45:55
design, engineering, product, whatever they need to own their
45:59
specialization. And for that I need to create a
46:02
merit based system. I do need a family.
46:06
And it's very interesting that you that you asked me this
46:09
question because in almost we also have an internal sort of
46:13
newsletter that we shared just to be a Slack.
46:15
It's like a weekly message that we sent to everybody.
46:19
In almost every message, we always try and find out who in
46:24
the team that week has done something that is different,
46:28
that is worth mentioning. And we never mentioned anybody
46:33
just for the sake of mentioning it.
46:35
It's always when that person is actually achieved A tangible
46:38
result for that particular business, that's when we
46:42
mentioned them. So the whole culture is just
46:45
built around merit. Like I, I wanted to build a team
46:47
that is, that is as driven about helping our customers as I am.
46:53
Yeah, because I've, I've been through this journey of building
46:55
products and it's extremely hard.
46:56
And I, I found it very difficult to build a team and I just
46:59
wanted to build that type of team for all the different
47:01
founders that are out there. Yeah, you know, I, I love that,
47:06
you know, it. A merit based system is always,
47:10
it seems the most fair, you know.
47:12
Well, I mean, that's exactly true.
47:13
Because if, if the merit is basketball and I'm going against
47:17
LeBron James, it's not fair that he's, you know, built like that.
47:20
And I, I'll never succeed, but so is life.
47:23
You know what, what I think is interesting and maybe my
47:26
question is about what we were talking about before as we're
47:29
moving from hours to outcomes, we're moving from technical
47:34
merit is now kind of like dispersed.
47:37
You know, everybody has the opportunity for technical
47:39
outcomes. How does that affect kind of the
47:40
org chart and seniority and roles?
47:44
You know, where do you see kind of the evolution of like
47:47
management roles kind of coming down from the founder?
47:50
And then, you know, if it was before seniors, juniors, these
47:53
kind of things and you kind of had very clear benchmarks of
47:58
when somebody graduated, how do you see that changing?
48:02
I think roles have already changed.
48:04
So for example, just in this last one year, I've seen two new
48:09
roles that have like really taken center stage.
48:12
Maybe you must have seen more. 1 is a GTM engineer, this role did
48:15
not exist like 2 years ago. And another one is a forward
48:20
deployment engineer. These roles did not exist, you
48:24
know, like 2 years ago. This is all new.
48:26
So I think the Arch art chat is going to rapidly change the way
48:30
I see it is there'll be a core team of generalists, which is
48:34
going to be extreme, which is which is not going to be hired.
48:38
It's either going to be Co founders or it's going to be
48:40
specialists turned into generalists.
48:43
And the only people who are going to be hired are going to
48:45
be specialists. And they're going to be doing
48:48
very different things. They're they're going to be
48:49
doing. I think there's going to, all
48:51
engineers are going to be prompt engineers sooner or later.
48:55
Designers are going to be doing product and design.
48:59
They're going to be, there's going to be some overlap there.
49:01
Engineers are also going to be doing product and design and
49:04
then the product manager or the product person is going to be
49:07
doing product and marketing. There's going to be a lot of
49:10
change. A lot of the, the operational
49:13
work of just doing your job is going to be taken over by AIA.
49:17
Lot of time is going to be spent on figuring out what to do, why
49:20
should we do it? Is this the right thing to do,
49:23
validating that, etcetera. Well, I'll just give you an
49:26
example, a project that we would have done with let's say 6
49:31
people, we are now able to do with let's say 3 and we are
49:35
charging. And because we are offshore and
49:38
it's a smaller team, the first Sprint price is far lesser and
49:42
1st Sprint we're able to do 3X what we would were able to do
49:46
before. So that's just the magnitude of
49:48
change. So the role is no longer you are
49:51
a tech lead or you are a software engineer, you are a
49:54
prompt product engineer, you're a product designer and you're a
49:57
product marketer. You're 1 pod and that's the
50:01
that's the outcome is let's say change this business metric.
50:06
So I mean, we're seeing, I mean for us, we are able to service
50:12
more customers with the same team size, be able to do more
50:18
per Sprint, charge less. So all of this is a function of
50:23
the rules being changed and also people changing their
50:27
day-to-day. Incredible.
50:31
I'll leave the time got away from me.
50:33
I've just got a couple of minutes.
50:34
I'm not going to keep you over. This has been extraordinary.
50:37
Again, the the website is Wednesday dot IS and what's a
50:42
good place for people to connect with you personally online?
50:46
Just LinkedIn. You can connect with me on
50:48
LinkedIn. I also run a newsletter which is
50:53
available on my LinkedIn, so you can sign up for that.
50:56
Romandis Ollie, thank you so much for joining me.
50:59
It's a pleasure. Thanks.
51:04
Ollie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining
51:06
me. I'm excited to be here.
51:09
Yes. And specifically I want to talk
51:11
about products. You sit in a very interesting
51:14
chair, which is you see a lot of products because you build
51:17
products. One thing that really jumps off
51:20
your website and I'm talking about Wednesday dot IS, IS, is
51:26
it says you work with 10% of India's unicorns.
51:31
So give us a brief introduction of Wednesday and the projects
51:35
that you really like to work on. Sure.
51:39
So Wednesday is an it's a product engineering agency.
51:44
What we do is we work with seed and Series A founders and help
51:48
them go from MVP to PMF. And we also work with Series B
51:52
founders and help them build parallel products that really
51:56
drive revenue to the core offering and help these parallel
52:00
products find PMF. Unlike a typical agency, we
52:05
don't charge per hour. So what typical software
52:08
development or offshore agencies do is they'll basically sell you
52:11
other people's time and bill you per hour.
52:13
We don't do that. We charge per Sprint.
52:17
And what we really focus on is we use, we use a proprietary
52:21
method called the adaptive engineering framework and we
52:24
focus on iteration, learning and speed.
52:29
And we use these frameworks and tactics to really help founders
52:35
go from, you know, MVP to PMF. Now, the customers that you're
52:38
talking about, which is 10% of II's unicorns, many of these
52:42
customers have actually started with us from the CDSA journey.
52:45
And we've seen these sort of balloon and grow and, you know,
52:48
become the companies that they are today.
52:51
So we've seen all the cycles of, you know, early days, you know,
52:55
having that rapid growth, building multiple parallel
52:58
products or entry points into what you offer.
53:01
And we've seen the engineering journey, we've seen their teams
53:04
expand contract, go through different things that happen in
53:08
this product journey. But yeah, that's pretty much
53:10
what we do. Incredible, and I'm glad you
53:13
brought this up because that's part of when I was doing some
53:15
research on you. I just found the great quote.
53:17
It said AI makes ours worthless, which I, I love that because you
53:22
have to start to look for a different unit of value,
53:26
particularly as you're leading A-Team.
53:28
So like how do you what, what is the unit of value then as you're
53:31
kind of assessing like progress week to week, let's say?
53:35
Yeah. So I think the unit of value for
53:38
like the founders that we help needs to be different from what
53:41
we sort of use our unit for measurement or the way that we
53:45
build for our services is just for Sprint.
53:49
So what we'll do is, let's say in a typical engagement, we're
53:52
working with the founder. We really focus on helping the
53:57
founder figured out what to build because in this journey of
54:01
finding PMF, technical excellence is not really needed.
54:08
I've hardly come across a company that has had some MVP
54:12
and is on their way to find PMF still because they had like a
54:16
bug or something like that. It, it's never happened, but far
54:19
too many founders focus on technical excellence.
54:22
But I think what really matters during this time is identifying
54:28
routes that will lead to customer pull.
54:32
And that requires rapid iteration, which for us is
54:36
basically a Sprint. That's how we build.
54:39
We help people prioritize what to do and we do it for Sprint
54:42
and we build them for that. But I think for the founder, the
54:45
unit of really value needs to be how many conversations are you
54:50
having with your customers? How much time are you spending
54:53
marketing? How much time are you actually
54:54
participating in sales calls? Let's say if you're AB to B
54:57
product, how much time are you spending doing fundraising?
55:00
Because really at MVP, just the way a child has a developmental
55:04
milestone and it needs to do different things.
55:07
A founder needs to do different things.
55:08
Once you have an MVP, and that is just focusing on these four
55:12
things, which is marketing, sales, talking to customers and
55:15
fundraising. If you're doing anything else
55:18
that is not of value. Yeah.
55:22
And that's where you come in. So let's kind of begin this
55:25
journey from the beginning. And I think it's helpful and I
55:28
love having conversations about building the product because
55:32
founders need to have the vision.
55:35
They need to be able to sell the vision and they sell it to their
55:38
investors. As you kind of said in
55:40
fundraising, they sell it to their team.
55:42
And now they're like, OK, we're ready to to we're talking to
55:45
Ollie. We're going to build this thing.
55:47
You know, so they've got to come and bring it to you and they're
55:49
going to sell you on it with that same passion, but you're in
55:52
a different position because you've done this many times.
55:55
And So what do you think is some of the misconceptions founders
55:59
may have? Now?
56:00
I like that you're talking immediately about like how many
56:03
customers have you talked to? Like, Are you sure this is going
56:06
to fly, you know, and also Are you sure this it needs to be
56:09
done? So there's a couple of things
56:12
operating here. One, there's a a product that's
56:16
going to be built, but it sounds like in the beginning what
56:19
you're doing is saying like, Are you sure you want to make this?
56:22
Because we're going to make it, you know, Is this what needs to
56:25
be made? Is that kind of the process in
56:27
the beginning? Oh shoot, Ollie, can you still
56:36
hear me, buddy? Hello.
56:48
Can you hear me? I can't hear you, buddy.
56:57
Hello. Here we go.
57:08
All right, you're back. I can't see you, though.
57:13
You can't see me? Yeah, I can see you now.
57:15
OK. Something happened.
57:16
OK. OK, cool.
57:18
I'm going to hit stop and then we'll just I'll bring it back
57:20
with that question. OK.
57:24
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57:26
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