Literally Helping Startups, with Robert McIntosh and Jonny Boyarsky

Podcast (du-entrepreneurship): Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | RSS

Transcript:

Joshua Ross (00:03): 

My name is Joshua Ross and welcome to the 17th episode of the Entrepreneurship and DU podcast. 

Rob McIntosh (00:10): 

A lot of the founders we meet with have the traction problem. Either they’re too early in their product, they haven’t developed a product, they don’t know where to build traction. 

Joshua Ross (00:19): 

Building a business is hard and at times it can be lonely. It is a gift to have people like Rob Macintosh and Johnny Bosky whose goal is to support founders as they develop their idea, find product fit, grow their business, and eventually raise capital. 

Jonny Boyarsky (00:37): 

There’s no idea that comes to us that we don’t want to understand as deeply as we can. 

Joshua Ross (00:44): 

Literally helping Startups was founded by Robert and Johnny because they believe there’s a lot of room for improvement in the venture capital space and that startups need help with no strings attached. Here’s my interview, Robert and Johnny. Rob and Johnny, welcome to the entrepreneurship at DU podcast. I appreciate you joining us today. I was really excited that you guys were going to pop onto the podcast, especially after you joined us at our accelerator program over the summer and had such an amazing impact on our students. So let’s get rolling. I just want to start off by asking a very, very simple question that might have a long answer, but explain to us the name of your business, literally Helping Startups and your website tagline, which I love. We help startups, no strings attached. 

cI (01:36): 

Yeah, so Johnny and I both were founders ourselves. We worked in vc, we worked in the accelerator space, and we kind of just realized that it’s a little bit of a predatory environment. If you’re a space, really an early stage founder, it’s hard to navigate. There’s usually some caveat to joining the accelerator or some type of group, whether that’s giving up equity, having to pay a large fee. And so we were talking about the name, this is probably a little over a year ago now, and we’re like, what if we just call it literally helping startups? And we thought it was stupid at first, but then we’re really, what if we just called it that? And so we kind of rolled with it because we wanted to be upfront and transparent with our mission and our vision, and that’s what we’re sort of portraying quite literally. And yeah, no strings attached. You talk with us, we’re not going to charge you some backend fee and say, Hey, we’re not going to work with you anymore. And we just wanted to be very clear with the founder space because Johnny and I had been through it ourselves. Johnny and I both lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in our first iterations of our startups that we’ve done, and we’ve seen it happen in the accelerator and startup ecosystem. 

Jonny Boyarsky (02:51): 

Yeah, I gave Rob a really hard time about the name. I thought it was kind of stupid. And I was like, all right. He got more convinced. And so as time went on, I was like, we’ll just leave that as a placeholder. And then when we went to incorporate and create the website, I was like, all right. I was like, the name never ends up mattering in a world where everything is sort of a sexy Uber or Airbnb and it’s got some rhythm and twang to it. We were like, this is as direct as we can be with our name. And so I think that it usually gets a chuckle and most of the founders we meet with kind of say something that’s super validating to both the name and the idea of what we’re doing, which is they’ll be like, what’s the catch? They’ll be like, when are you going to charge me? What’s the deal? And we’re like, there’s nothing. It’s like we make investor intros to founders that are doing the right things. We introduce people to potential partners, potential clients, just because we realize how difficult it is. And to sort of sum up a big reason why we we’re doing what we’re doing, I would say that if a 30 minute phone call with Rob or I can save you $50,000 or get you a $50,000 investment, I’ll take that any day of the week to help other founders. 

Joshua Ross (04:05): 

So you are helping startups in the startup space to create businesses, to create value, to generate revenue, eventually create profit, but you are not doing that yourself. So what is your business model for? And I got to keep saying it, literally helping startups. 

Rob McIntosh (04:25): 

We started this with just the concept of providing value for free and we would kind of stumble upon business models. What we ended up finding was a lot of founders started asking us for more help and wanted us to provide more deliverables. And this is sort of transing us into a business model of some sort where founders can say, Hey, I need help with X, Y, and Z. We want you on board and we’re willing to compensate you in some type of way, whether that be equity or finance or some form of financing. And we make sure to be very upfront and clear with what we can do and what we can’t do. And so we kind of went into that, and I always give the example, it’s sort of like the in and out menu. If you’ve ever in and out, they have this whole secret menu in the background that you can order from. 

(05:10): 

And we never push founders into any sort of cash compensation with us or anything like that. It’s purely if they, if they need assistance, because like Johnny was saying, we can help them in those fractional positions where they’re trying to operationalize or something like that. And then we got a lot of outreach, and I think I was telling you before this, you start building a community, having a little bit more of a one-on-one approach. So we’ll always meet with any founders for free. That’ll never change, but we’re kind of stumbling across a business model that founders want more from us and we’re trying to provide it. So 

Joshua Ross (05:50): 

Awesome. So how did the two of you meet? I’m very curious to hear that story and it’s a good story. Along those same lines, why are you two the ideal candidates to literally help startups? 

Rob McIntosh (06:04): 

Johnny and I met through a failed accelerator that we had worked at. We kind of started becoming friends. We’re both very avid chess players right now. I’m the better chess player as of yesterday. But we started just talking. We started becoming friends. We started talking about the concepts and the philosophy of the startup space right now and realized we had a lot of agreement and realized that there’s a lot of holes within that. So Johnny, you have any color to that too, of what you thought of me from a perspective or, 

Jonny Boyarsky (06:42): 

Yeah, I think that Rob and I really just see eye to eye on startups in the space. And I think that the one reason that we are actually the best people to do this is because I think Rob and I have actually worked with thousands of startup founders over the last three to four years and have been founders ourselves. And so I think that when you put that together, it’s really, really difficult to have anybody that has that kind of experience just because of the sheer amount of time that it takes to work with that many startups. And so whether you are a biotech startup that’s trying to get past their first stage of FDA trials or you are a social media startup that’s raising a series A or you’re just two guys in an idea trying to figure out what to build, Rob and I have seen it all. 

(07:33): 

We’ve seen everything and we’ve lived it. And so I think that there are very few people out there who have worked closely with that many startups. And I think that we’ve seen the trends and we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work, and we know the tools that are changing. And so when it comes to helping people, when somebody approaches me and says, Hey, I want to make an app that allows you to split the tip, Rob and I can be like, we’ve literally been pitched this idea 25 times. We’ve seen 15 people try to build it. Five of them have brought it to market and failed. So let me tell you, it’s going to be really difficult. And I think that we also have a sort ofor, a radical candor if anybody’s read that book and those ideas, which is, we’ll be honest, because we don’t want people to waste their time or money. We know how precious those things are. 

Rob McIntosh (08:19): 

We think that the ecosystem could be flawed in a major way with only with 90% of startups failing. And we saw that huge gap. And it’s either the structure and the education which is being taught is allowing entrepreneurs to enter the ecosystem too early or they don’t understand what it takes. And we’re not startups. Yes, we have a lot of experience and worked with a lot of founders, but I think more so we have a willingness to change it. I think, not to sound too corny, but if we increase the success of startups, even one to 2% throughout the world, this has a vastly great economic impact and societal impact that I don’t think a lot of people are talking about. They just assume it’s hard. And that’s it. And it’s like, well, with AI we’re trying to get on Mars. There’s got to be other reasons. Then it’s just hard at this point. So yeah, 

Joshua Ross (09:15): 

I love that approach and I love what you’re doing. Johnny, though I have to push back a little bit. Don’t deny the world another split the tip app. Okay, let it get out into the universe. 

Jonny Boyarsky (09:28): 

Well, it’s funny, one of the joking things that I threw Rob’s way recently was every time I get pitched to startup an additional time, the amount in revenue and hundreds of thousands of dollars goes up before, I think that it’ll be real. So if I get pitched the idea 10 times, they have to have a million dollars in revenue before I’m like, this is going to be the one that takes off. 

Joshua Ross (09:48): 

I like the way you think. Not 

Jonny Boyarsky (09:49): 

To say that it’s a bad idea, it’s a perfect example of one that I actually think there’s a problem. I think there’s a solution. It could be value add. The difficulty is how are you going to make it convenient enough and how are you going to pitch it to the right people so that you can actually get users? 

Joshua Ross (10:01): 

That’s a very good point. I want to go back to a thing, Rob, you said, and talk a little bit about community. You’re building a community and that word gets thrown around quite a bit and there’s a lot of different ways people look at community. What are you all doing with community and can you provide a little bit of color on that? 

Rob McIntosh (10:21): 

Yeah, John and can add his thoughts too. But we wanted to remove a degree of separation between all the fragmentation between the ecosystem. Generally when you’re a startup, especially if you’re idea stage, it’s like, well, s***, where do I go? And most founders default and they Google it, they ask their friends, they stumble on and accelerator and all these other kind of methodologies that are disconnected and let’s say make it out of the pre-seed stage and you get into a seed stage and then you’re talking about investment and all these other kind of things, even in the pre-seed stage. And then you’re trying to interact with investors, you’re trying to outreach an investors. And if you’re a first time founder, it’s like, well, how do I build a data room and all these pitch decks and all this other kind of stuff, how do I pitch? How do I tell my story? And then you start talking about product market fit and all this other kind of stuff. So it’s very convoluted and hard for somebody that’s not in the space or hasn’t gone through that trial by fire. And that was the purpose of the community is start to provide these resources, connect other founders with each other to know that their pain is shared in this process or success for that matter. Yeah, so that’s what we’re trying to accomplish there. 

Joshua Ross (11:37): 

So who is the ideal founder for literally helping startups? Are these founders that are at the idea stage? Are they at the prototype MVP stage? Do they have to have a hundred paying customers, people using it? 

Jonny Boyarsky (11:53): 

Really everybody. I have been working with somebody that was doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue and had some really, really big clients and they were looking for some venture debt. And so I worked with them to help find people that might provide that. And if to anyone listening, if you do know companies that are doing five to 10 million in revenue, don’t think that they’re too late for us. We’re happy to help. I think everybody, and then we also work with two people who got an idea yesterday and just want to talk through it. And I’ve never built a startup, so because Rob and I have spent so much time working with different founders, we are happy to meet with anybody. And the biggest thing that we try to do and where we think that we’re really different than everybody else is we meet people where they’re at. 

(12:38): 

And you sometimes have these founders that come in and they’re so buttoned up and they’ve got the best board of advisors that you could have a perfect pitch deck, great storytelling, great revenue and traction. And for those founders, I’ll just introduce them to investors in my network. And then we’ll have people who are just getting started and they need some help on the product management side of things and they need some help on the go-to-market strategy. And they might not know as much about everything you need to do. And so we’re happy to meet people where they’re at and provide them information, contact resources to sort of supplement knowledge 

Rob McIntosh (13:07): 

And skillset. And to his point, I think it’s a common misconception, the experience of the founder, let’s say from the pre-seed to series A stage. It’s like you built an idea, you have some sort of traction, and then you get into seed, you raise some money or whatever you do and you hit some type of scalability. And then you’re at your series A potentially. And if you’re a first time founder, it’s not like overnight you just became a genius at operating a business and doing all these things and realizing your holes and having the emotional intelligence. So in the startup world, you feel like a series A is pretty advanced, but there’s a lot of founders that are doing millions of dollars of revenue that maybe started to find their product market fit and hit scale, but it’s like, well, what the hell do I do now? How do I manage this? I don’t know investors at this higher check size level or VCs for that matter. And so I still think there’s kind of a misconception between the education and knowledge between all those gaps and stages. 

Joshua Ross (14:07): 

So along those lines then, what are some of these common challenges when entrepreneurs approach you some of the things that they’re struggling with trying to work through and how do you guide them? 

Rob McIntosh (14:21): 

That’s a tough one. We get a mix of, I mean I would say common challenges is the traction element, especially for pre-seed and seed stage companies, series A, you’re looking at more scalable issues, but a lot of the founders we meet with have the traction problem. Either they’re too early in their product, they haven’t developed a product, they don’t know where to build traction. They’re not thinking more granularly with who they’re outreaching to. That’s probably more on the product, just startup side of things. I mean, probably a lot of our calls are just how do I get in contact with investors? How do I reach out to investors? Where do I engage them at this point? There is a mentality out there that I think is flawed to is where they have to go out and start raising money to be successful. And I don’t think that has pushed the founder enough to actually develop a product. 

Joshua Ross (15:15): 

So are there disconnects when these founders approach you? So they believe that they’re in a certain stage of their startup journey and where they actually are and what the reality is could be completely different. Has that happened to you? 

Jonny Boyarsky (15:28): 

Yeah, I think that the biggest thing that happens there is the amount of people that think that they’re deserving of VC investment is absurd. And you get founders who are like, oh no, I’ve built the next big app, the next big thing, do you understand the vision behind what I’m building? And I’m like, I do. This could be huge and you’ve proven none of that. And so I think that it’s just that kind of open and honest conversation of saying, what is it Rob 0.05% of startups end up getting VC funding. So just know that for every 200 startups that no 2000 startups that get started, one is going to get VC funding. And so it’s so much of the advice out there is aimed at founders that are raising and it’s like, guess what? That’s most likely not going to be you. And so I always try to set milestones so that people can understand what they need to do in order to get VC funding. And so I’ll usually say, hit this number in revenue, hit this number in, clients hit this number in month over month growth and that will excite VCs. But so many people out there just think that because they have a good idea that they should get $500,000 to go build their startup. 

Rob McIntosh (16:42): 

It’s probably a misconception of the founder too, to really push themselves to develop something. They think because they have a good idea that in a lot of circumstances, I mean they get this hopeful sense because you see, I forget whatever product that was like X Google employees raise $200 million, and they’re like, well, I can just raise my $500,000 round. And so they have this misconception of what it takes to get there. And I don’t think it pushes ’em hard enough to figure out intuitive ways to start building their product, how to build traction, how to validate their market. And so they jump to these things because it’s kind of what is taught in the ecosystem and the accelerators, I mean most accelerator programs, it’s like, well, we’ll help you build your product, but at the end you have this pitch day and you might get investment. 

(17:24): 

And so this is always to held as the highest achievement in these early stages. And for especially early stage founders, I don’t think it pushes ’em far enough to find creative ways to develop their product on their own because raising money and diluting yourself is great, but there’s plenty of companies that don’t do it. And then you have people on your team that they say the traditional VC anywhere from five to 10 years in your company, and that lasts longer than the traditional American marriage. So you have to look at it, I’m going to marry these people for the next 10 years, and you don’t want to get a divorce essentially. 

Joshua Ross (18:02): 

It’s a good point. And raising money, you’re also spending a lot of time focusing on raising money and not building your product. And you talk about the dilution, plus you’re bringing in other people into your company that can potentially essentially tell you what to do as well. So those are all things that are important. The one that I always find interesting, I talk to a lot of startups as well, is, Hey, before I meet with you, you have to sign this NDA. I’m like, classic. I’m like, no, I’m not signing the NDA and I’ll give you 18 reasons why. And then the second one is when they sit down with me and they say, I need to get a patent, I need to get a patent. And I’m like, no, you don’t. 

Jonny Boyarsky (18:40): 

I graduated from law school a few years back, didn’t take the bar. So none of this is legal advice. But that being said, I’m happy to weigh in, which is I’ve never seen an NDA litigated. I’ve probably signed a hundred myself. I collectively in my network probably know people that have signed millions and I’ve never seen one litigated. And the reason being is it’s so hard to prove that this was your idea and that you disclose the information. And the other thing too is when you see thousands of companies, good ideas become way less valuable because everybody has good ideas. And so you get to a point where it’s almost like this sad maturing of realizing Santa’s not real where you wake up and you’re like, hold on. A good idea isn’t all I need to build a company. And so once you hit that point, you realize that patents also aren’t as value or people want to trademark. 

(19:36): 

And I almost always say that unless this is research coming out of a university that you can show me five peer review journal articles on it, or you built this in a lab or you’re somewhere in deep tech, a patent won’t be valuable and it’s not going to protect you, and it’d be so much better for you to get a hundred thousand dollars in revenue than it ever would for you to go get a patent. And so it’s like most startups out there think that it’s some sort of shield against other companies that might try to take their idea, but everybody who’s been involved in the space will probably have had an idea that somebody went and built and executed better. And you’ll realize how sort of meaningless good ideas are. 

Rob McIntosh (20:18): 

And we kind of spoke to this earlier as I think it kind of dilutes the harder element of this. And that’s building a brand. If you have an effective product and effective brand, a patent’s really not unless you’re in tech or healthcare or something like that, but if you’re just building a standard product, people are going to buy your brand, not the patent from that side of things. And so I think that’s the harder element to achieve. It’s like, yeah, can go get that piece of paper, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to attract customers to buy your product. It might be patented, but who cares if nobody’s using it? And so I think a lot of maybe founders use this as a way to mitigate that process because they can say, and it could be potentially an investor thing too, it’s like an early traction thing to say, yeah, we have a patented piece of whatever, and that in their eyes is good. And I think that’s a good thing to have, but the founder shouldn’t negate like, well, how are we going to achieve customers once we have this patent? How are we going to build that brand that makes people stay consistent? 

Joshua Ross (21:21): 

Yeah, and Johnny said it too, it’s all about execution. There’s millions of ideas out there. Can you execute? And I believe a lot of times people look at that idea of a patent, it’s almost product validation. Well, the patent office approved it, so it’s validating it, but go look at the patent office and go do a patent search. I think there’s one or two patents in the patent office that never made it to market 

Rob McIntosh (21:44): 

Well. And we always kind of think that competition is not necessarily a bad thing. It sort of validates the market. So if you have a patent for something that’s never been patented, it’s like, well, why am I that big of a genius, which you’re probably not, or is it not useful? And so when a lot of founders get discouraged about those things, it’s like competition’s actually a good thing. So 

Jonny Boyarsky (22:05): 

From there, and I spoke recently about that idea, which is just like you need to know as a founder how common your idea is because if you are pitching a VC who’s heard this idea 10 times or maybe even 20 times or even 10 times in the last two months, you need to speak to why you’re different. And there’s that story about Dropbox where they showed up and they walked into the VC office when they were pitching, and the VCs were like, is this another file sharing site? And they were like, yep. And they were like, but why don’t you use the existing ones? And they were like, because bad they suck. And the Dropbox guys were like, we’re going to build it better. And they knew that this had been tried before. And I think that if you know that this has been tried before, that’s a good sign and you need to just be better. 

(22:49): 

And so I think that founders need to be the most educated on their space and have heard of all the startups that failed. And then if you’re sort of in that middle ground where maybe they’ve been pitched it once or one time or two times, you need to both speak to why you’re different but also why other people aren’t trying it. And then if you actually are novel, which does happen and is rare, you need to speak to why other people haven’t tried it or maybe what other people are missing. But you need to address that because otherwise you’re going to come off as naive. 

Joshua Ross (23:17): 

So that’s a very, very good point. And this is an area with startups that I meet with quite a bit and areas that I believe they struggle with is a defining their target market. And then the second is market validation. I don’t believe that they spend enough time and diligence around these two areas, and they’re very separate in concept, but they’re also requiring you to really dig deep and also put yourself out into the universe and make yourself uncomfortable. 

Rob McIntosh (23:49): 

Market validation’s an interesting thing too, because I think generally the traditional methodology and what’s taught is pretty much useless. I don’t know if that’ll be controversial or not, but the Tam Sam thing is just really useless for founders in the early stages. I don’t think it gets granular enough in them understanding their market like, okay, you’re Tam, you understand you have a big market, great, that’s pretty much what it’s useful for, but where are you meeting your potential client? I think there are, it’s like Tam, Sam, some EVG or something. It’s like Evangelicalist or I forget what the early stage name for it was, but you want to find where your potential customer is at the most painful point in that journey to sort of build early traction. And so a lot of founders aren’t necessarily taught that they start with their Tam Sam, and they’re like, we’re going to target these types of coffee shops or whatever, and they don’t really develop anything further than that. 

(24:50): 

And then when they start to not get any traction or their customer, it’s not panning out the way they want, then they start to look at other methodology, other reasons to engage people. So this is something that exists quite commonly and something we talk to a lot of founders about, especially building traction is how getting super niche, getting from that zero to a thousand users, looking at the market from a different perspective. What are you creatively bringing to the table? All these elements that help you get that market validation is kind of, and I think the Tam Sam thing is investor metric, and I don’t think it’s a founder metric. It’s like the investor wants to see the market of is big enough and it’s growing, how you executing at it a little bit and how you refine that. But for the founder, it’s almost meaningless because you’re not engaging in the process to engage the early customer, the early client, whatever it may be. 

Joshua Ross (25:54): 

So how do you help startups with the target market and understanding who their target market and potentially their target audience is? What are some of the tools, how do you walk them through that path? Because a lot of times it’s like, well, everyone’s going to use our product. 

Rob McIntosh (26:08): 

Yeah, that’s a common thing. As they think about the grandiose vision of their idea, and I was just speaking with a founder yesterday, he’s building some sort of ar, virtual reality questing thing where you could go to any location, you could go through a quest at any location and he’s thinking, we can change everything. We can do escape rooms, we can do all this stuff. And it’s like, well, nobody really wants to use that. And when you’re speaking to an investor or a common person, it doesn’t really appeal to them. So it’s like where can you meet a potential valid client? And so we got into tabletop games and d and d, and we sort of had this philosophy that your potential technology could remove, put tabletop games into the next iteration of technology so you can start interacting in the real world as opposed to the past when Dungeons and Dragons was created. 

(27:00): 

This is in the eighties, the seventies, I actually don’t know when it’s creative, I’m assuming the eighties, but it’s like you can approach it that way to a community that has a vast number of following. And so I think for us, we walk them through really getting to the science behind what they’re doing and realizing whether it’s a real problem. And we spoke to before, whether the idea is painful enough to change. Like Johnny mentioned, most people don’t download apps, so a lot of founders in early stage companies don’t account for that change of pain cost. Is it painful enough for somebody to want to actually go and use it? And generally it’s not. And I think you have to think about that from the app perspective, the SaaS perspective and just products like people are somewhat creatures of habit, so they’re going to continue to do the things unless you’re pushed out of it. And so that’s kind of how we help them in the early stages that we see the most often is just getting a little more focused microscopic with them. 

Jonny Boyarsky (28:05): 

I think that a huge part of the problem of the startup world is how we glamorize it and people read success stories. Atlassian just acquired Loom for 975 million. Somebody on Shark Tank in a four hour conversation gets a million dollars to go build their startup for 20%. And it’s negotiated all fun and sexy. And the reality is it’s never like that. And I think that if there’s anything that people should take away from Rob and i’s work is it’s going to be hard. Make sure that you have the team resources and knowledge to do it well. And if you aren’t the person who’s super diligent and creative either know that this might not be a good path for you or build a team around your weaknesses and talk to people who have done it. That’s the other thing, I can’t stress enough people who have done it, never say it was easy, and it always takes twice as long costs twice as much, and you have half the traction that you thought you were going to have, and so just make sure that you are aware of that going into it. Otherwise you’re just going to be disappointed and waste a lot of money and time. 

Joshua Ross (29:16): 

Yeah, I think Shark Tank has done a nice job of uplifting the whole startup community, but to Johnny’s point, I think it also is a misconception about a lot of times of how companies get funded and the struggles and the pain and the difficulty around building a product and finding product fit. And that’s an area I want to talk to you both about is first of all, Johnny, how do you define product market fit and why is this so important for startups? 

Jonny Boyarsky (29:51): 

Yeah, I think that there’s a few signals if you are in any B two B SaaS company, I would say that a good sort of heuristic for product market fit is when you start getting clients from your clients. So if somebody was like, oh my god, what they built made my life so much easier. So I called my friend who’s in the similar space at another company and they’re now using it and they love it and they want to meet with you. If you are in that sort of direct to consumer SaaS space, I think that the indication is when your organic users outnumber the ones that you maybe know personally or that sort of founder-led growth. But I mean really it’s so hard to tell what product market fit means for different companies. You might have a deep tech company that’s in bio or pharma or aerospace that won’t have product market fit until they get FDA approval or they get their first government contract, and it could be three years from now. And so if you’re in a space where people can buy it or use it pretty quickly, then you need to start seeing the signs that this is growing on its own because you’ve just built something amazing. 

Rob McIntosh (30:59): 

I think a good metric for that too is retention. When you start to retain your users, obviously there’s a popular term called cohort retention where you sort of take a batch of a certain amount of users. Let’s say you’re outside of the SaaS space or I guess SaaS is a good example, and you kind take how many people bought your product during this time and then you calculate from a month, a week how much they’re using it and what their retention is. And just from the founder’s perspective, from my perspective, when I think and maybe founders will resonate with this product, market fit happens when you feel like you’re not pushing the boulder uphill and it’s going downhill and you’re trying to catch it. And so you’re dealing with similar problems like how the hell do we do this? How do we manage these things? But those are good problems to have and so much of the entrepreneurial grind and the founder grind is like you just feel like you’re pushing something and it’s just hard and you’re trying to grind up hill. But then when things start to go downhill a little bit and you’re trying to figure out those problems, I think you’re starting to get that product market fit. 

Joshua Ross (32:02): 

And listener SaaS, by the way, is software as a service. Think of these cloud applications that you use that you access on your laptop or phone and it’s saved up into the cloud. So that’s an example of SaaS, and you’re right with product market, if it is pushing that boulder up or pushing this product into the market and saying, why doesn’t the customer understand this? Why don’t they realize how awesome we are? And then when you start to see that change, they’re starting to pull it from you and say, this is great. We’d love to see this. And as Johnny said, we’re telling our friends about this, they’re buying it, and all of a sudden it’s a huge change in the way in which your product’s viewed in the market. 

Rob McIntosh (32:45): 

Yeah, I agree. And it’s somewhat of a relief too. And so it’s not so much joy. It’s like we’ve been pushing this thing for, at least from my experience, it’s like we’ve been pushing this thing for years now and we’re finally getting some modicum of traction and it’s like a relief that finally we’re onto something. And then if you have the organic growth you’re talking about, Johnny was saying it, it’s kind of the cool part of the experience, I guess. So 

Joshua Ross (33:16): 

As the customer goes along this journey to find product market fit, and really they keep iterating on the product, they’ve identified their target market and they keep testing that out and they test out their messaging and all these things that they’re along that journey, they’re also collecting feedback from their customers and these early adopters. And you talked about evangelists of their products as they start to get this feedback, this primary research, how should they think about using this feedback? 

Rob McIntosh (33:44): 

It depends on the early stages. If you’re trying to value date your idea, I think you just skip sort of the friends and family. Your friends generally don’t know what they’re talking about. They have their best interest at mine and your family, my mom will always tell me, I have a great idea regardless of what it’s, she loves me. And she’s like, you’re doing great, honey. Keep it up. And it could just be the worst idea in the world. And so a lot of people say, go to friends and family, and I don’t necessarily agree. I mean maybe for early checks to develop your product and maybe I can get a check from my mom to develop something, but as far as her telling me the quality of my idea, it’s a completely different thing. And then as far as getting user feedback, it’s meeting the potential product or customer where they’re at, whether this is online, offline, engaging yourself in those ecosystems to know whether that feedback’s rational. 

(34:39): 

Johnny always brings up the quote of Henry Ford saying, if I ask my clients what to build, they would say faster horses. And Steve Jobs said, if you ask your clients what they want, by the time you build it, they’ll want something else. And so you kind of have to understand and saturate yourself in the environment, I think the most to understand what is relative, what can you do at your current capacity to execute on in the short term to gain traction. And so I think immersing yourself understanding where those opinions are coming from and whether it’s valid to your long-term roadmap and more importantly, can you execute on in the next six to 12 months without it changing. So you have to understand whether your potential customer is valid in their opinion too, which they probably are in most cases. 

Jonny Boyarsky (35:28): 

Yeah, I think Rob and I have maybe slightly different family upbringing. I think my family is a little bit more critical of the ideas that I have. 

Rob McIntosh (35:39): 

You’re not as loved as many supportive. 

Jonny Boyarsky (35:40): 

Supportive. 

Rob McIntosh (35:41): 

I’m the favorite child. You’re not the favorite child in your family. That’s the difference. Now I’m just joking. 

Jonny Boyarsky (35:46): 

Yeah, I think that the reality is most people who know an industry don’t understand tech and startups, and most people who understand tech and startups usually don’t know your industry. And so I think that it’s good to go to people who understand both. I think that that’s where Rob and I have forced ourselves to understand. One of the things I think is the coolest about my career so far is that I, there’s no idea that comes to us that we don’t want to understand as deeply as we can. And so whether that’s somebody trying to create a three D printed kneecap or a three D printed metal kneecap for prosthetics or for replacements, Rob and I will try to understand the best we can about what are the success rates, what are the problems, what are the sizing options right now, if you’ve got a company that’s a deep FinTech SaaS play, what does that include? What are the parts of it? Can I understand this? Do I need to call somebody that I know that works at a bank? So I think that when it comes to getting advice from people, most people don’t see things holistically and with the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing. I think that Rob and I have just worked with so many companies over the years and with so many industry experts that we’ve sort of picked up on an intuition and where we don’t know, we’re always willing to dive in more. But 

Rob McIntosh (37:06): 

I think what you bring up is too, is an important point is with the founder is it’s like you need to be really an expert in understanding your industry. So where those opinions, and I think it’s common for founders to be a jack of all trades and master of none. And I really think this is kind of a wrong mentality, really understand your strengths and start to be common expert in your area as opposed to doing everything. If you’re going to enter into a product like Johnny and I are saying, we try to understand everything about it, and you have to understand everything about your product. So when somebody does give you an opinion, you could say, well, that’s a valid idea, but for X, Y, Z reasons, we can’t do that right now or it’s not going to work. They haven’t thought through it. And that’s most of the process. And you have to have that knowledge or that experience to connect the dots or not connect the dots. It could lead you down a path you don’t want to go. So 

Joshua Ross (37:55): 

That’s very difficult though, and takes some maturity to actually listen to people give you feedback and your first inclination it’s like, these are people, these are my customers. They’re using it. They’re telling me how they would use it. And not to immediately start going down that path and making that change and make an iteration and keeping to your roadmap. 

Rob McIntosh (38:17): 

And I think a common example of that was Pinterest and he would send it to his friends and family. They’re like, I don’t get it. And if he stopped there, he would’ve just iterated the product differently. I think he said he hung out with a bunch of tech bro or something. And so they’re just like, we don’t get it. We don’t want to pin things. And so he felt that there was something there and he continued to iterate into that market and he found that it was a 30 year old women bloggers that it was as early stage traction users. And I’ve used this example before, but it’s like you have to understand where the gaps are in your product. And it’s a little bit hard, especially if you’re first time founder like, well, maybe it’s not that good and you’re going to have that your entire, even when you’re a series A, you’re going to think your product’s probably not that good. I think from my perspective, you see everything that’s wrong with your idea, especially if you understand it. You understand where the competition could destroy us, where it’s going to fail, how things are going to be perceived, so that you just have to get used to that feeling in my opinion. But understanding it, taking with a grain of salt and knowing where to make a stand, I think is critically important too. 

Joshua Ross (39:31): 

So I want to pull on that thread a little bit in terms of the idea around it doesn’t always work and you got to keep trying, but how do you help these entrepreneurs navigate failures or setbacks, which every entrepreneur is going to go through any entrepreneur that says that it was perfect, it was an easy road is lying. 

Rob McIntosh (39:54): 

You realize that it’s hard, but you don’t realize how hard in the sense that you are going to stress the relationships with loved ones and your friends. You are going to stress your bank and you are going to stress yourself. You’re going to fight with your co-founders, you’re going to kind of go through all this adversity. And so a lot of people think it’s hard, but it’s that hard though. It’s like you’re trying to manifest something new into the world, essentially build something and that hasn’t been built and put that into the world and hope people use that and that, I think that requires a lot of mental fortitude. And the most common thing that I kind of realized when I was starting my first thing and I was reading, I forget which book it was by an Adobe co-founder, and he was talking about all the adversity they were going through to build Adobe and all this other kind of stuff. And I was like, huh. So other people do experience this. So for founders, it’s like every other founder’s going through what you’re going through and understanding you’re not alone in that feeling was pretty uplifting for me. It’s like you just kind of push through this, but if you haven’t heard that or you haven’t seen that or read that, it’s kind of hard just to intuitively be like, well, am I supposed to be fighting with everybody and giving up my life for this? And oftentimes it’s a yes, but it comes with that caveat. 

Jonny Boyarsky (41:21): 

Yeah, I just want to say one thing on failure’s. Okay. I think that I’ve seen most people who have gone and tried to build a startup and failed up so they found a better job after they have more perspective. And I also just want to say this speaks to both the next point I’m about to make. It speaks both to the difficulty of building a startup, but also why failure is still kind of the default. And I think that it will always be the default because changing the status quo is really, really difficult. And most people out there that make anywhere from 50 to $150,000 and have a family and kids, they don’t want to go try something different. They don’t want to use new technology, they build a life and inertia is so difficult to change and people are so hard to change their habits. 

(42:13): 

But that being said, I think that when it comes to failure, two examples that I look to are Jack Dorsey with Blue Sky and Threads. You’re talking about organizations, you’re talking about Jack Dorsey who ran Twitter, who was the CEO, who built it from a small app that had some traction to a massive organization that gets sold for 50 billion, he quits and with billions of dollars at his disposal, goes and tries to build a social media site. And guess what? He fails threads who has already account creation built into Instagram and billions of dollars at their disposal and a marketing push and all of the timing and knowledge in the world about consumer behavior can’t get people to use their app failure. And so it’s like when we talk about failure, that is the default and it will always be the default. And I think that I’m really impressed by the people in the US and around the world that sort of adopt this sort of us mentality, which is like, I’m going to go spend a bunch of money on this idea and I’m going to go try to build something even though that they know failure is likely. 

(43:23): 

And so I think that you’re better for it on the other side. As long as you were being scrutinous and you were approaching things intelligently and you reached out and you were vulnerable and you were open to criticism and you were self-aware, if you do all those things, spend a lot of money, time, effort, and still fail, I am not going to view you as an idiot. And I think that a lot of people in the startup space just know that they’ll take the founder who has one failure under their belt over the founders who’s never tried almost every scenario. 

Rob McIntosh (43:51): 

And I think that’s an important thing to bring up is potentially a litmus test for being an entrepreneur is I think you have to find a deeper meaning outside of just your idea for why you’re doing what you’re doing. To navigate the failure to navigate the adversity of what you’re doing, you have to have a deeper sense of purpose. So it just can’t be like, I want to start a cookie company and I’m really passionate about cookies and they taste good. It’s like you have to find something that drives you, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be around the idea. There’s plenty of reasons why people are driven to do things, and it’s like you have to find that deeper sense of purpose to push through those moments. And so if don’t have that deeper sense of purpose or what you’re doing hasn’t inspired that, you kind of have to question what is the reasoning for you doing it? It’s going to get hard and it’s mostly going to be hard, and there’s always going to be adversity. So I think you always have to find that, that sort of deeper sense there. 

Jonny Boyarsky (44:48): 

And I want to just tack something onto that. So one of the tactics that I came up with for all founders out there is every time you bring somebody on, they’re almost always taking a pay cut, holding onto a lottery ticket, which is equity in your company. But one of the tactics that I came up with that it’s kind of like that marriage tactic where you get a bottle of wine, but the idea is this, when you bring on somebody new to the company, whether it’s an intern or a co-founder or even an investor, have them record a two to three minute video as to why they joined this company and why what problem you’re trying to solve or how you’re trying to change the world or what you’re trying to do with this startup. And then the idea is that when you feel like they’re at their lowest point and all of that initial excitement and energy that comes from starting something, it will fade. 

(45:37): 

But when they’re out, you think their lowest point or they’re in a lull, tell ’em to take Friday off, send a bottle of wine to their house and have them watch that video Sunday night. So they come in Monday morning refreshed and energized. And I think too that it’s so easy to get lost when you’re building because your hair’s on fire. Rob and I are trying to answer a thousand emails a day. We’re working with all kinds of different people, and it’s really, really easy to the second that you’re done working just to want to forget about it entirely. So I think that reflection becomes really difficult when you’re building, when your head’s down building, but if you can take those moments to appreciate and remember why you did this in the first place, it goes a long way. 

Joshua Ross (46:16): 

That’s awesome advice. And I’ll just throw one other thing out there. Entrepreneurship is lonely. So build a network of other entrepreneurs and founders that you can talk to, just talk 

Rob McIntosh (46:27): 

To. Yeah, I don’t think it should be a lonely process. That’s kind of why we started this. I think because it’s highly competitive too. I wouldn’t say that I played sports. Most of my, and I come from a family of six brothers and sisters, and it’s like we are very competitive. And I think this is somewhat the entrepreneurial space to some degree that you want to succeed and you want to potentially do better than the people in your market or whatever it is. And it’s usually the one founder that gets the funding and the one founder that doesn’t. And so it’s very much separated and I think it sort of bred this loneliness thing. And that’s kind of part of the reason we started this. And we said that you don’t have to do this alone because you can learn from each other too. You can learn from your failures, you can learn through that shared pain, like I said earlier, I think is vastly, vastly important. So 

Joshua Ross (47:29): 

We’re going to wrap up with just a couple more questions. What’s one piece of advice you give to founders that are struggling to find traction? 

Rob McIntosh (47:39): 

Persevere is the first one. Be willing to pivot when you need to pivot and be open. I think a lot of founders get too attached to their baby, and your baby might be ugly and you might need to figure something else out. And I guess the one thing too is don’t stay stagnant. Don’t stay stagnant in what you’re developing. Continue to iterate. Continue to just take one step forward, even if it’s a stupid idea, even if it’s whatever it is, continue to just keep moving forward because from that moving forward you develop different iterations, different ideas, different traction You might find like Pinterest, your target audience in the early stages is women in their thirties bloggers. And so don’t say stagnant in your idea and continue just to try to throw things at the wall that stick. And if you keep pushing it, eventually something will come from 

Jonny Boyarsky (48:43): 

It. I would say self-awareness is the number one thing that is a trait in founders, which is the right amount. You don’t want to be so self-aware that you’re insecure about it and you take the most recent advice and just run with that. Then you won’t be headstrong enough. And if you lack self-awareness, you can really feel that in founders. So make sure that you can recognize yourself in a mirror is the joke I always make. I think that the other one too is have backup plans because things aren’t going to go your way. So have other kind of features that you think might make a difference. But the biggest thing of all is go after problems that are wide and deep. If you build a mediocre solution to a really hard problem, you can get people to use it, but if you build a perfect solution to an only kind of a problem, you’re not going to get people to use it. 

(49:30): 

And so Rob’s heard me say this analogy a thousand times, but people are always like, good ideas are painkillers, not vitamins, but I take it a step further, which is your first thousand users, are they going to be the ones who have a stab wound and are bleeding out from what they’re struggling with? And if you can go ahead and do something to help, whether it’s your app or your product, whatever it might be, that is how you’re going to get adoption. And so I think that it’s just really important to make sure you’re finding those things. 

Joshua Ross (49:59): 

All right. Final question. This is a tough one. Where can our listeners find you to social media websites? 

Rob McIntosh (50:09): 

Is this like the podcast part where I’m supposed to hook everything and I’m not good at this? Literally helping startups.com? Johnny and I are both on LinkedIn, Johnny Bosky, Robert Macintosh. I don’t really use Instagram or I would post that. I mean, I have an Instagram, but I just don’t post any photos. What else can I 

Jonny Boyarsky (50:30): 

Hook? I’m going to tell people not to follow me on Instagram, although it is public, so if you want to see my unhinged content, there’s some great 

Joshua Ross (50:36): 

Stuff. Oh, I’m on it now. Right after this is over, 

Rob McIntosh (50:38): 

He, he should have a million followers because it’s pretty genius stuff that he posts. 

Jonny Boyarsky (50:45): 

It’s a lot of satire, which is a part of my personality that pretty much never comes through in my work. Occasionally with little chatting comments here. But yeah, follow me on LinkedIn. I post a lot. And one other piece of advice that I want to just give before, speaking of followings, build the audience before you need it. It’s one of the things that people who try to raise crowdfunding rounds or try to launch companies don’t always realize is you should be able to be the thought leader in your space and speak to your customer and build out a community and build out people that care about what you’re building before you need to use it. And so that’s kind of one thing that I’ve been trying to really do with LinkedIn and soon X, formerly known as Twitter as well. So be on the lookout. But yeah, follow us on LinkedIn and reach out. We really will meet with any founder. So anybody out there who’s a budding entrepreneur, don’t think that we’re those unattainable podcast guests. We are still at the point where we’re meeting with everyone. 

Joshua Ross (51:45): 

I will echo that these two are incredibly generous with their time and I always appreciate it. So Rob and Johnny, this was awesome. You two did not disappoint. I thank you for dropping some really interesting knowledge on our audience, and I’m a little smarter from the past hour or so. Thank you both very much. 

Speaker 4 (52:08): 

Awesome. Thanks, Josh. 

Joshua Ross (52:12): 

The entrepreneurship at DU podcast was recorded in Marjorie Reed Hall on the University of Denver campus. You can find us on Instagram at du Entrepreneur on Twitter, X at DU entrepreneur, and on Facebook at entrepreneurship at du. This episode was edited, engineered, and produced by Sophia Holt. Entrepreneurship at DU is part of the Daniels College of Business, which has its own podcasts. Check out Voices of experience wherever you get your podcasts.