Office Hours with Kevin Hale and Qasar Younis at Startup School SV 2016

dramatic entrance I was easy easily please Allah crowd uh we have a favor to ask of all you guys out there um how many people follow Justin on snapchat alright great so Justin's not here oh but there should be punishment for there should be punishment for that so just send him a message if everybody sends in the message right now it's gonna completely mess up his phone such a few hundred messages to Justin right now would be appreciated we'll give you ten seconds today castor says hi okay so uh my name is kasseri eunice I'm one of the partners here we don't have a clicker okay clickety-click that's Kevin Hale he's one of the other partners here at YC one of the things that we do at YC or one of the kind of core things to do i YC is office hours and there are three types of office hours we do in the program the first is individual office hours where a partner will sit down with you and talk about a specific problem that the company has and really dive in deeply and and that's we're going to emulate here on stage today most of the partners are using their own experience as being founders and as being engineers or whatever the problem might be to help kind of solve that problem and one of the things that I say and a lot of partners say is when I'm giving advice I don't tell you or the companies that will be up here what they should do I can only tell what I would do if I was in your position and obviously we're different people the founders who are running companies are different from us different contexts and different experiences so it just ends up being a blueprint of how to solve from one you know from another person a problem so anyways individual office hours is something we do we also do this thing called group office hours where multiple partners will sit together and then six or seven startups will sit together we do a bi-weekly when you're NYC and then the third type of office hours we do our external office hours so we'll bring an apple or we'll bring in Android to help with you know the App Store's etc and so today we're emulating the first type now couple of key points here is this is kind of a bad example because we don't do them on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people so naturally this kind of you know presentation is slightly awkward for that reason number two is we tend to be pretty direct in office hours and obviously doing in front of group of people is we're going to kind of temper that a little bit and I also want to just in advance thank the startups who are kind of brave enough out here to to talk through the problems that they're having with us yeah so thanks and apologies in advance one thing to know 90% of you guys out there um volunteer to like do office hours on stage with us so like I'm super delighted that you guys gave us opportunity to look at sort of like all the ideas you're working on and then the one last point is these are these are not pitches so we're actually you know we're going to try to avoid from going into like what do you do and why is it so great much more in kind of diving into a problem we actually do are doing a pitch section afterwards so well you'll you'll see how how that's different that's office hours three companies that we pick today we kind of did on a theme this was all a bit different from other times that we've done this all three companies are marketplace companies and the reason we pick that is because they're very different kind of startup when you're working with them so most companies when you work with it what you'll notice that like it's tends not to be a zero-sum game so they're usually in any space there can be multiple winners but in a marketplace kind of play it tends to be one kind of company tends to end up dominating over everyone else and the thing is like when you can make that happen that can make you very very large and very very lucrative and investors get very excited about marketplaces it's a category that we see actually lots of different investment firms and people are very interested in very specifically that being said they work a little bit different in terms of how you work with them and tends to be always kind of a similar kind of approach on you trying to identify what's apply what's demand what side you're going to be working on and so we're going to see this kind of thematic thing where all three of them even though they're very different companies they'll have very different similar approaches in terms of how we ask questions how we think about their problems and how we should go from there that's it let's rock and roll first company is traveling spoon let's good man alright give a warm welcome welcome I think the camera guys are now having a zero yeah I think they see all the markers on the floor explicitly said don't move the chairs and the first thing I do is move the chairs haha sorry so tell us your names and tell us about what traveling spoon does I'm Steph Lawrence I'm Asha veil we're the founders of traveling spoon traveling spoon is a food and travel marketplace so we connect travelers with local authentic food experiences from meals to cooking classes to market tours all with local people in their homes around the world so I I'm going to let's say Thailand and then I would how would I find about your website how would I find that you exist as just as me going to Thailand welcome to our first challenge question so a lot of our travelers hear about it it's through word of mouth right now and finding the right channels is one of our challenges that you know we're excited to talk to you about um but right now most of our travelers find out about us either through word of mouth through um press or also through some of our partners so we work with partners who are distributing supply like our so travel experiences so first questions I usually ask about a marketplace I'm asking about sort of like what is the conditions of the two sides that you're trying to grow and then how well are they being connected so like what do you guys consider supply what do you guys sort of consider demand my instinct is the supply is the people who are offering meals inside of their homes and then the demand is all the travelers that happens on there what's the rate of growth for each one of those so you're absolutely right our supply side consists of amazing hosts who give marketers cooking classes and meals we have over 225 hosts now in 40 destinations in 20 countries 50% of that growth has happened through host referrals and we've been growing the supply side of the market place fifty percent in the last six months under supplies is there a reason you're in so many countries and so just because I mean if I guess why wouldn't you have chosen like a country like Cambodia and just say we're going to get a bunch of hosts there so if we're going to Cambodia we're definitely gonna get a match yeah it's a great question one of the first questions we got from every single investor we talked to at the beginning was this question of breadth first depth for us where it came down to is that in the travel marketplace specifically you really need to have some breadth to show relevance so it was really hard for us to be also like how did you came to that conclusion but your traveler said like I won't use this website because you don't have 200 countries covered yeah no not that um so a lot of it came from our suppliers who would say you know we're sending travelers to Cambodia Vietnam Thailand like we want experiences in all of those destinations so sometimes suppliers like some of our clients and partners that we're working with so we have channel partners we sell directly through our website traveling spoon comm and then we sell through some channel partners as well so some of it was coming through our partners some of it was coming from directly from our travelers who said I traveled here and who are the partners to our operators people who really plan two-week trips from start to finish the now's demand growing what's that right yeah so demand so we as a two sided marketplace one of the challenges is you have to kind of pick is it growing 30 percent month-over-month is is sort of our traveler side that's been going through but that's healthy so just like um ideally for a startup you guys have been operating for how long we launched our site a little less than a year ago a little less than a year ago okay so like at least 20 percent but 30 percent that sort of grind but then that's just people signing up or people actually like well that's that's revenue and travellers served so travelers would booked and then gone on complete those period as a pie chart of you know where they're hearing about the product how much is it these channels and how much is it word of mouth so word of mouth is really a big part of direct growth and worlds are working on advertising right now and just a percentage like what what percentages 60 percent is direct and 40 percent is through our partners right now so what you guys most worried about finding the point at which travelers are making those experiences and planning their trips and booking with us so how do we get in front of travelers at the point of their decision-making process how do you get to travelers at the point of the decision-making process so are the partners not good and no I mean yeah so we want to find more of the right partner so we've started working with one partner who's serving almost 25 percent of our of our travelers right now and we're trying to find more of them so who are the right travel distribution partners that are that are supplying many travelers are we talking about hundreds thousands thousands okay it's a I guess to me like the direct model doesn't correct me if I'm wrong direct model doesn't make sense because number one like if I'm traveling to Cambodia this year and maybe next year I travel to India like I have to remember your company and the chance of that actually happening is really slimmed one way to think about our lease I think about applications is they fall into two categories apps that you wake up or products you wake up every day news you open up Gmail you open up you know snapchat without thinking about opening those up and then there's a second group of apps which fulfill some mental query that you have so I'm going to find eat a restaurant I look up the app I need s I need to address navigations I use Google Maps like so your product falls into the second category but the problem is you so infrequently have that mental query you're no one's going to remember it that's the thing that makes me really nervous it's like this is not an activity that I'm doing many many times like uber has it vanished that's like you might have people of you multi times even with an ADD X not brushing your teeth it's not writing an uber and that's definitely something that we we struggle with in terms of finding finding the right customers I mean our vision when it comes to you so with that context yeah why not focus on channel partners because that's all they're doing yeah so we've drawn a lot of inspiration from Airbnb as an example our vision for the company is to be a brand and to be the brand for authentic meaning your vision for the company is grow and make tons of money yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like I created a really great brand I'll push back a little bit the mission is really important to us we want to make a ton of money but the mission is why we started the company and we want it I really just to just interject there I'm not a what Kevin isn't saying is like you just should be like money-hungry capitalist that's that's not the take the VCS keep saying yeah that it's not it's just a proxy for making sure that you're working on something that people actually want so it's it's important that you know I think you can do both yeah but you just don't fool yourself and use that as rationalization for maybe an ineffective strategy yeah fair enough but I guess go back well I'm not addressing is see there's this mix you have all these partners the thing is like you have all this word-of-mouth growth what's the percent uses like sixty percent coming from word of mouth and then what's the percentage that have really like done a second booking we have 10% repeat travel in the last nine months 10% repeat travel in the last nine months even higher that's even higher than I expected right the but so if you take that context of people are not going to remember your product for a while for like many years I think to me that just is like you have to work with channel partners because that's that's going to be the way that you that's what I would do I I don't know you know what you would choose you should do but for me I'm thinking I gotta get that consistent growth word-of-mouth and having a brand that people recall is very it takes a long long long time I mean the the kind of benchmark in which that people automatically remember you like even Airbnb even today has that problem and Airbnb is like a lot bigger than your brand we have one minute left here's the thing I feel like I would just started one of the big things that you need to think about is like where they're like the most power hungry like users on the system the people like one you're like working with channel partners for who does like act as salesman on your behalf because you can't afford that for the price acquisition but the other one is like where do you find people that are addicted to this service right people who could use this over and over and over again because like those are the people that to be both gonna talk about it so like are there like power travelers that people are going back and forth to the same countries over to vient where it's like every single time this is going to be part of my experience that happens on there and then like like does that sort of exists because otherwise it's just going to be slow and steady and so there's two types of companies that I get excited about because there's two paths to like getting very very huge there's one that you have like everyone glorifies is the startup that like grows very very quickly and like shoots up and they become like this sort of great success overnight there's another kind where it's just like you do this solid sort of growth but you figure out like how do I make a company that's going to last for 20 years right and so the fact that you're focused on is like we care a lot about the mission that's set up on there but the thing is like what is the mission like it's the mission is like I'm passionate about feeding other people's food just like I'm passionate about like helping these other people have some kind of income I'm passionate about like having people have an interesting travel experience there's like three different things that happens on there and the real thing is like I think your core idea is just like when you travel and you do it through us you're going to have something spectacular something very different it's the same thing whatever B&B is like yeah it's a lot cheaper but it's far more interesting as a result and I think that's like a similar idea that you need to have on here also going back early in the conversation about breadth versus depth I'm still not convinced the breadth strategy here is the prudent one only because you can't find channel partners you can find local agencies that work just in Thailand who can be booking hundreds if not thousands of meals a week that's where the business because powerful and the reason I think that approach that that concentrate approach is better is once you find those power users like Emma was talking about you can figure out okay this is what work in Thailand let's figure out what's going to work in Myanmar's configure when we're in India etc and that's actually exactly what we're doing now is focusing on Thailand specific that worked so good my wife's pie and pie I'm bias that's right just like that time is up we're so with all companies we're going to talk afterwards because this is just like such a weird thing to do just ten yeah so we're talk to all of them afterwards and just dive into more stuff well thanks so much thank you thank you thanks next company human surge what a name like a soft drink my first question is how did you come up with that name so delicious storming on that yeah okay do you want to do a quick introduction of who you are and what the company does absolutely my name is Luke and CEO co-founder of human search it's a global emergency roster for humanitarian responders and we the marketplace bringing together eight workers around the globe and connect them with organizations responding to disasters or emergencies in real time on demand and to enable them to scale when needed so that sounds really lovey-dovey are you nonprofit no I'm for-profit we're like a social enterprise seeking social impact but yeah we founded the company as a for-profit we actually thought first to launch as a foundation or link up with with nongovernmental organization but actually the sector needs this kind of development of a platform it needs a reiterative process we need to go through mortars like a startup process just to make sure I understand because the the removing machine-gunned a little bit of the description is so a disaster happens like a tsunami I'm a non-profit I Google I need volunteers or helpers and I land on your website and I basically order help and then you send volunteers based on the criteria I put in is that right partially indeed what happens indeed when there's a major emergencies organizations respond and they scale to the operation but we're talking not volunteers we're talking enumerated professionals that work around the globe and crisis situations okay something to stop you there so you can ask one question yeah yeah why a marketplace why isn't this just like why don't you have if you already have these people what why is this concept of a marketplace there they're struggling actually to scale operation of work over nonprofit organizations and other organizations responded to these kind of emergencies a word over a decade in the sector and I've experienced it firsthand either you're with incomplete team they're people missing on the team or you go for two three months and they're asking you kindly if you want to stay because you didn't find a replacement for you right so how does the business model work so you have all these people signing up to volunteer analyst I take it you charge the nonprofit's for accessing that list that's correct where the business model now is to get an annual fee and your subscription to Access database search and you can search the platform is very much like you would search for hotel or flight nowadays so you just say okay I need a logistician with more than five years of experience has been in Africa before speak French what have you know whatever is the criteria that you're looking for and you'll see the top candidates that indeed recently confirmed that they're available I think we should take a look at that now that we've asked the questions we're gonna do a UX review okay I know you're like I'm going second I'm safe no you're not safe we switched it up okay so wait we took a look at your website and what we decided to do is just basically we're gonna go through it's like what is the thing you most want to optimize what's the thing that drives the core of your sort of business um your kind of website is very typical for lots of marketplace websites that I look at it makes the same kinds of mistakes that a lot of them sort of make um so the first thing is like we're always interested in sort of like how do I quickly understand sort of like what this company sort of does and so like I couldn't find the simple copy and paste sentence that was like on the regular website went to your about page you have this thing on here I notice as I talk to you you'd like to use lots of extra words explaining things on there and to me I'm just like yeah you know human surge that like Mechanical Turk or AWS for like volunteers for nonprofits and Iulia no not volunteers that are enumerated professionals or hub set up on there's like I can't remember that you're ruining my word of mouth it's it's it's important that there's an important point there I it is hilarious but it's also an important point which is you don't want to use words like that better that we're putting up on the overhead right now because they're loaded they're they mean a lot of different things to different people so when use a word like a single platform platform can be like something that's like in the water or it can like infrastructure a platform can be many many different things so you might think as a founder who's trying to describe your company I'm using clear words you're not because those words can be interpreted many different ways the next thing I noticed is up in the upper left hand corner you got this like big label here that makes me not want to sign up I'm just like like it's like I have to deal with the disaster right it's like I use this beta product it's like you just say don't try me right so the thing is like I see so many companies that do this all the time they put in beta and here's what I thought was the best part about your website your FAQ your very first question is like why are we in beta um which is yeah which is good question but basically what you're said it in here is just like hey this is basically we're still working on it right and we're going to be improving stuff and if something goes wrong let us know so you have a edge tags that are showing I don't know so I'm gonna let you know that but the thing is like every company you're going to be constantly working on stuff and then you have issues you want them to let go there's nothing about you being in beta like all you're saying is like I want insurance for like if I make a mistake quite frankly people are understanding of people right so the more you try to make yourself look like a faceless organization the harder it's going to be for someone to be like oh whatever it happens on there all you can do is be responsive and make things work like enterprise it's actually one of those things that is counterintuitive for a lot of people working on enterprise and b2b companies they're just like what if I make a mistake of things that happens on there be responsive fix things really quickly you're smart you're creative you'll figure all that so that was a way for us to manage expectations a little bit with the organizations and the professionals right thinking is like the best thing that could ever possibly happen is that you have so much demand for your stuff on there and then you figure that out like that's the problem that you want to have do not ever be afraid of alright okay so let's go and do just just a just a pause on this page if you before Kevin circled that that call-to-action it's not obvious what the call-to-action is and that that's a big deal I think if you ask me you did a quick straw poll of the audience and you said what am I supposed to click on they wouldn't know and one way you can do it is you just kind of squint and look at the page and try to figure out where to your eyes ago and they go to about four or five blue sections and logos at the bottom it's just not obvious what you want me to do the thing is like it's because your market bus you sit I have two sides therefore I need a website that does both the thing is like that's just never going to work out really well even if you go to Airbnb uber lots of different places you see they're always optimized for one side of their marketplace so you need to decide is like what's the thing I most need to happen and then I'm other professionals finally there would be our target main target audience right so my feeling is like a lot of the self-serve is going to comfort the professionals it should be optimized for signing up the professionals and the volunteers the organizations that's what you're going to be signing up doing b2b you're going out there you you're hitting the pavement to happen that's going to be on a separate landing page indirect them that there's actually a second landing page indeed if you go in here then it would allow you immediately as a professional to register with your emails were trying to direct people to that second page so one thing that is good about the land on this landing page I think the folks can take away from that last page is that the imagery is very clearly you don't actually need to read any of the text to understand generally what this what the product is about so you did that well alright I'm just gonna go through this real quick because that's so what we're going to do is go through the process of signing up as an organization doing the one thing that helps you make money alright so I clicked on that button and I get to this page and this page this is the top half of the page it's a big map don't know what it's just to do on here you scroll down you see like how many people join a bunch of dropdowns and then I see the pricing plans a big gap scroll down alright our call to actions are down here so these are the things that you want me to click to you make it really hard to get to them yeah so if you're if you're talking to somebody who's never used a product before you're just asking a lot now they have to find that call to action the first page and just scroll down at the bottom and then read which most people don't and then recognize select is the call to action yeah okay so let's go through here now one thing I noticed this like obviously it's like before I'm going to pay for a service like this I kind of want to see how does the directory sort of work I actually feel like your directory is basically going to be a search this is not a typical like search kind of interface with all these sort of dropdowns I can figure it out happen on there but it's one of those things like it doesn't use affordances and it's one of those things were like I talk to people all the time where they like people like I'm gonna build an interface that no one has ever seen before because I want to make my mark on the world and users usually go like I've no idea how the to use this because I've never seen anything like it like if you want to be an artist you should be an artist this is a it's a very different type of design okay so let's go through here I'm just like I want to go through this as fast as possible gonna do my first guy I do my first surgery I guess your results this is what you're relying on me to get that select button he's trying to set expectations right uh and then I scroll down and you've got this button we have a bunch of Spanish that's are talking to me we're beta you're in beta right right okay all right so I finally find something it shows me results I go great I go through this and I get hit this button you from is this button actually takes you to the sign up page for registering as a professional instead of the organization so this will take you down a really weird rabbit hole where you want to take them to somewhere else and I didn't realize I was going to go to that until I read this stuff that's below the callback ssin alright so this is the form that you want them to go through I didn't actually end up going through this when I do the site on there how much time we have Tom's gonna kill us okay really quick on here there's a lot of stuff to go through the sign up on here so you go through this there's this action that happens it was this that explains it I go through out here there's all this information asking me as a professional and quite frankly it was one of those things where I'm just like like how much money have I managed I'm just like I want to volunteer and help like why won't you let me help ya I get through here these are like kind of the main questions that you have that you show up on the site I see this thing on air I don't see the word volunteer which is what I think I am oh yeah it's not for volunteers and here's the thing I'm gonna put them into a bucket um I get to here it says like tell me an elevator pitch it would be great if you gave me exam so like I'm like let me just get through this right I could to this this is technically the ending of this I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do next eventually figure out that this is a link actually I've actually want to go back to this the stuff that I need to know here the only thing I care about all that information that you collect on there is actually what information does a non-profit actually need what's the minimum that they need to be convinced that there's a professional or volunteer that's not formation we are collected here after talking with you ages to capture that core information that they look for when they scout for a professional indeed that's the information that we capture in this first cream so I picked up some snapshots but I think it looking at better if you look on the right I think I would disagree I mean I'll say iiiii I think the big issue here isn't the point that Kevin's trying to drive home by showing all these steps is you're trying to tackle a lot as a very young company trying to tackle a lot in terms of functionality and features and I think that's maybe not the best strategy like you know Kevin said if I want to if I want to not as evolved as I'm a professional if I just want to submit a little piece of information to get onto the site there's so much I have to go over but I probably won't make it to the end and that's a big problem for you because that means a big part of you don't have a market place you don't have actually people who are in the directory 1200 people are 1,900 people started 1200 people completed the profile and confirm their email so and we have over 100 pets creping contacted now but over 12 yeah oh so it's already in the yet but indeed and it's addressing is actually an issue that all these organizations are struggling with now they're all managing this on but all by themselves on an excel sheet so we're saying okay we'll just bring it online on a platform there I totally get totally get it the whole thing is I I'd optimize framework as um any you know like I actually would be like hey give me your name give me your email address and then like tell me like are you professional or you volunteer just like grab that and then you send them all through the follow up information later on like I just be harvesting names the second thing is I want to make it so that like those people are super impressed by the listing datatype online so I wouldn't give ticket to chance that someone's going to search your database which isn't fully completed whatever and be like maybe there's going to be resulting things happen on it be like look do you need people like within a month you need people in this category we have this many in that category this meaning in this this meaning in this if you're interested in try it out give us contact or call just make it so it's just feel like I'm already going to win just by looking at the information they were now in the stage and they trying to work with these dozen organizations to get their feedback and see how they want to use this platform there are more functionalities that you know we're trying to define together with them to see how we can optimize it for them I guess it's an ongoing process yeah I appreciate the feedback yeah just just as we're out of time they're like signaling like these undies am maniacal signs in the backstage the just that just a couple of a couple of quick points before we wrap up you know we're showing you know thank you for coming out and letting us work through your site this is actually better than a lot of sites that are better that are a year old or six months old but it's used as an example a lot of founders are focusing all these things in their companies and they don't recognize that so many people the first time they see your company is going to be through this and so it's very important to make sure you as founders are showing your product to people who don't know what the company is to make sure they understand what the landing pages make sure they can get through that sign up because that is you know for every time that you tell somebody by your company there's a thousand other people that are going to be hitting that website and maybe getting an incorrect uh understand the stuff we do this is not complicated I just walked through the site I just tried to follow the path and the thing is I tried to follow the path if I was the fastest way that can get to what I want or what I think you want from on there and when you noticed that like it's super hard to get to that point do I get to touchdown and win then well there's the lead you don't show it but there's the leap home page where you can just leave your email and say register just the email a register and then I should totally being really obvious the but why not that be the site period homepage oh yeah there isn't it like this this this uh don't let like you're like big companies have all this crud that kind of builds up over time when something isn't working dump it and replace it with some that's the nice thing about having a small company okay I think we're way over its thank you thank you thank you so much thank you he said everyone can register I don't know what have them to yours okay last company power of you I hide we're not we're not doing a UX review don't yeah I was listening to the laughter in the comments and I was like oh god this is gonna happen all right introduce yourself and tell us what your company does yeah my name is Casey of Milani I'm the co-founder of power of you we help people take control of their data I can't see anybody over there conversation with us we help people take control of their data and we are starting by monetizing this data through market research so helping brands understand their consumers through actual behavior data rather than the claim behavior to you when you say when you say you you mean a consumer correct and then and the brands are our supply side so I think one of the questions was from a demand and so actually demand becomes our brands and supply is the data from consumers so people like you and I and everybody here is like the thing everyone's worried that Google is doing 12 they are doing it not but they don't sell like first person data or anything like that so they're not I guess that brings us to the first question yeah why would I want to do this as a consumer so it's already happening to your point earlier about Google so it's not just I mean so there's companies out there Facebook Google and other companies actually all doing this for billions of dollars they're helping us some get something back so I use Gmail I love it and use it for free and I want that but in here I'm not just getting money I said I get what why would I use also you like email in return what do I get in return are you monetize it so you do get paid money and which I money claim a how much can I make we are we're monetizing at $15 to $65 per data instance which that what is the data is instant so anytime your data is use for an insight for a brand 15 to $65 yes how is that what that that's that's how much I mean we're doing market research so the average user that signs up the platform how much money are they making ah they would well this is so on average because it's not you only get paid if your data is used yep so on that's gonna be about $35 if your data is use it a year a day every time so I mean we're still we just started monetizing six months ago and so it's early data points what percentage of total users are actually a ting paid and then how much have you paid out in the last six months okay so percentage-wise it's going to be about that's a very small percent about 8% people have already gotten paid it's it's a matter of contact like consolidation of people other brands and all that combination of things and the amount of you distributed back is about three thousand dollars already so what's your biggest problem right now our biggest one is actually the sales cycle to brands that's our biggest challenge so what's your sales like a look like it takes it can take anywhere from two months up to six months and sometimes it drops out in that time do you have enough supply to entice brands that is something yes we do have enough supply in the areas that we're targeting heavily so specifically UK and US so if I'm well I'm whatever a Pepsi and I come to power of you I how much do i which my normal payout what's a normal contract look like so it's normally if we come to me right here yeah so I would love for Pepsi to come to me that day hey there is some people are starting to come which is awesome like as you see the value of the data and the whole laws around regulation stuff the amount the base that we start off with is at fifteen thousand dollars for a couple of three week project where essentially the project is you would be bringing people on board like we have the people that you are interested in 18 to 25 year olds in San Francisco who watch a little I getting that how many people do I get well what am I to be anywhere from hundred to 200 people okay would be in this project okay so you're worried about trying to build up your pipeline that happens on there so like how often are you closing new business so it's four I'm I mean we have three clients right now that we're working with already and we are how often are you trying to bring in new business well it's on it's an ongoing process it takes so long to do it but the we have these clients also renew on average how long does it take um it's gonna be at least six months great and then how many people do you have potentially in the pipeline that you're like oh we have about eight people on the pipeline right now eight people how many people are emailing a day we're not even probably I can tell you per week we email at least three people per week Wow that is three a whole three people cuz I know the problem the challenge there is you want it because it takes so you have to get to the right person and to define it right your Savior you have more specifically identifying three decision maker exactly that's got so I'm just like I'm good answer looking up like blow your head like do you need to be contacting like a hundred people a day this is like the first thing that we start telling b2b companies right away and that is it's one of those things like it takes six months right and that's say for example like you're working on the stuff you're trying to hit certain kind of growth on there that means like everything that you do right now to get to that point like that helps you like feed into what's going to happen into the future yes and the thing is like a lot of people just like they get stuck on saying like yes I need multiple touchpoints but they keep overthinking what that touch point is right that means so for example a lot of them things like the only touch points I have is like definitely a key decision-maker it has to definitely be meeting or whatever but really like the first touch point should be like a simple email to as many people as possible where it's just like hi I'm one of the founders of this we're doing this we're making this valuable and what you're trying to find is low-hanging fruit right those people where it's just like they just get it they understand it clicks that happens on there and the only we're going to find low-hanging fruit is that you're doing this like shotgun approach you look in sales like the best lead is the one that hangs up on you because then you know you have to dedicate any more time to it yeah so that this phase of your company there there isn't a lot of value in being very precise to find a specific brand and specific decision-maker because you just want information from your customers about do they actually want this both brands and consumers right you want to be promiscuous at this stage and the thing it's like you don't like you're trying to predict like oh I think the key decision-makers are which kind of company's going to like this and its really as one of those things is like I see this kind of company they like us I'm gonna find a thousand enemies that's exactly like yeah like what yeah you might not mean like like you might find that like hospitals or some random group that you never even considered are actually the people who are most responsive and before you know what those could be your first you know 100-200 might ask if this is a real office hours I'd be like alright three-day are three a week or whatever see that's not enough what I want you to do is like basically find a list of like top fortune 5,000 companies and figure out how to email like everyone that you think is in that top position there's also a sub point there which Kevin is making which is the more the more companies or Tina potential customers you email the more you're going to have to go outside of your preconceived assumptions of what is an ideal customer and just with outside of your line of sight might actually be the truth and I think that there there's many many examples of startups which are very similar to huge companies but ultimately fail because they just didn't they just didn't get that one iteration that's a little outside so early on you you almost have to be very skeptical about your assumptions about what your brand with these brands and these customers want and that's another reason why just doing high-volume well you know we'll get you like learnings and expand your tasks from there then is like a lot of people said I'm Beauty beyond enterprise like what number should be tracking because I'm only going to be closing maybe 1 or 2 deals over a year or whatever it happens on there and this is like all the numbers you're tracking is all the stuff about like how effective your being I'm contacting 100 people a day this is my response right this is my open rate this is my click-through rate these are line people ask for demos is how many meetings I've signed up if you're going to compete against someone who's got like a giant salesforce team you don't compete with them by going at one at a time you have to start think - and the thing is like there's tons of technology now available to people doing outbound sales more than ever before we fund tons of those companies now because we see that that's the future for how people are jump-starting businesses yep thank you so so you you have through your your that's one kind of problem ok that's what I was going to ask for another problem but that's one type of a problem will do quickly one more what's another thing that your that goes on the other side of the kind of equation is communicating our what we're offering to consumers to people better so that they don't freak out oh and they understand what we're doing that it's perfect you're looking for people who are like I don't care yeah right so it's just like mean I would do a lot of things for $65 I mean if you can't even if you can if you can cut if you can pay me 65 bucks and I would just lead with that was like look you give this data you can make between this and this much money oh and you're something you have to do anything just connect all your stuff that happens on there and it comes passively exactly that's the only story I need to tell it's super simple the thing is like resume when I go to your website you do not make that simple at all you're like look at all these areas of like dimensions and grasses they don't care about the graphs $65.00 got it yeah okay definitely all right we're out of time thank you so much thank you so much yeah okay real quick takeaways so marketplaces identify supply identified demand see how the rate of growth is try to figure out where you're sort of constrained if you do that b2b stuff work in mass yeah work aggressively outside of year and just try not to be too confident resumption is one thing that you guys can see in these these three very different companies similar with different companies is Kevin I are just focused on what are the as we said at the beginning what are the bottlenecks to growth and really focusing on those as a founder there's a limitless amount of problems that you have to deal with you have to work on I implore you and we employee in the thing that we work on most I see in the program is focusing on those things which are bottlenecks to growth and because it's it's it's a night it's a nice TrueNorth when you wake up in the morning you know what you got to work on rather than oh I have this company and all these different problems I have to do what you can just focus on that one thing but anyways that's thank you

Channel: Y Combinator

Views: 16,045

Rating: 4.8636365 out of 5

Keywords: YC, Y Combinator

Id: TZLlcyJfZBs

Length: 40min 26sec (2426 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2016