Lassie: From Flying to 100 Dental Offices to $100M ARR Through Extreme Product Obsession with Steijn Pelle

Speaker A: Foreign. Hey everyone, uh, thanks for joining us. For another founder led sales stories where founders who have successfully navigated their founder led selling journey share with those who are still in the middle of it. I'm Pete Kazanji, author of Founding Sales the Startup Sales Handbook and your host. Today we have Stein Pell, CEO of Lassie, makers of AI automation software for healthcare practices. Lassi is transforming how doctors run their businesses, saving dental practices hundreds of hours and administrative work monthly. I'm really excited to have Stein here today as I have a soft spot for SMB sales motion and at Lassi's approach is fascinating. My biggest takeaway from our discussion includes their intense product obsession that drives organic word of mouth growth, their ruthless ICP discipline saying no to most prospects, and their unique work in the practice approach where they literally flew to a hundred plus offices to implement their solution. Stein also shares great insights of how they waited until hundreds of customers before making their first sales higher. And so with that, here's Stein. Hey everyone, uh, thanks for joining us. For another founder led sales stories where founders who have successfully navigated their founder led selling journey share with those who are still in the middle of it. We're here with Stein Pell, CEO of Lossy, makers of AI automation software for dental offices, specifically around accounts receivable administration, at least for now, often saving dental practices hundreds of hours a month and reducing accounts receivables by 75% or. Or more. I'm really excited to have Stein here today as I have a soft spot for SMB sales motions. They can be fast and high volume, which means a lot of data and a lot of instrumentation for the sales organization, which is my favorite thing. But it can also mean a non technical buyer, which can be a little tricky. Uh, and historically it can also mean low average selling prices, which is maybe not the case in A.I. uh, the times of A.I. uh. I know that Stein and his team have lots to share about this with everyone. So Stein, I'm super glad to have you here. Thank you.

Speaker B: Excited to be on the show, Pete. Uh, and indeed a lot to talk about.

Speaker A: Yeah, totally. So I mean, first things first, maybe you can kind of share with. I gave a little preview of it, but hopefully I didn't butcher it. You know what, what's the problem that you guys solve? Who's the Persona? Sorry, who's the organizational Persona? Who cares about it? Who's the uh. And then who are the humans who care about it in those organizations?

Speaker B: Yeah, totally. So, um, there are about like a million doctors, uh, in this country that run their own, uh, health practice. Um, so think about the dentist that you visit, uh, the primary care doctor. Like, uh, I think both of us visit like a small doctor office a couple of times a year. Right?

Speaker A: A million of them.

Speaker B: Yeah, a million. And it shocked me too, um, like when I started doing research. And we will get into like, how the heck, uh, the guy that like worked at Robinhood in Coinbase ended up in Dr. Land.

Speaker A: But, uh, it's very relatable.

Speaker B: People are like, you know, crazy. This is your American dream. Um, and I can tell you it is a fascinating like problem to work on. Um, because uh, when I did the research, like, we realized it was the second largest SMB vertical in the country. So yes, you have the coffee shops and like the uh, the retail, uh, like uh, rest restaurants, uh, et cetera. They're well served with technology, right? Like the toast and square and like shopify for the small merchants. But then we realized, wait, there's like a million like health practices. Um, and. And they're completely underserved because. Yeah, might not come as a surprise to you because many, many of us have visited, um, a doctor office, but these people, like, like it really sucks for them to run like, uh, their practice because they deal with a lot

Speaker A: of paperwork and they probably run way more GMV through the organizations than a restaurant does. Maybe not. I don't know. Is it similar or is it more. I would feels more commercially intensive than a restaurant. I mean, I have a lot of buddies who work at uh, in like toast sales leadership or square sales leadership. But like, it feels that this is a much more commercially like, intensive part of the economy.

Speaker B: Yeah, your intuition is correct. So like the average, I don't know the average, like uh, revenue like in a, In a coffee shop. But it's in. In the hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? Like a year. Um, with. With health practices. On average, you talk about millions of dollars a year because you are correct, like the doctor sees, uh, a hundred, 200 patients, like a week. Uh, your dentist, um, and um. Um, like, yeah, everybody likes, uh, spends money like at that. At that health practice. So you're correct that like the GMV of a practice, uh, is a lot higher than like the. The coffee shop. Like, uh, in San Francisco. Like that we frequently. Um. So yeah, um, um, it really sucks for these people to run their business because they don't have toast. Um, in fact, like what they do and uh, we will get into how I ended up like in this world. But like they spend 200 hours a month like running their practice like basically with paper and liquid people. So like you should imagine that like um, my dentist, like when, when I walk out, like he spends like 200 hours a month because like uh, tens of hours go into submitting claims by hand by people in the back office. Like then they get payments back but then they have to manually like update all these systems and literally they get paid for 80% of paper, uh, beats. So like they have to go cash the check and then the itemized invoice need to be manually inserted like into the, into the erp. Uh, they build a patience by hand. Like that's why you get all these weird statements at home with these billing codes on it. And then you have to, you can use uh, a link or an app. You just need to call up the doctor and give you a credit card. And then manually there's like a Karen or Jim Carrey and that would then also enter that payment like by hand. So um, this world fascinated me quite a bit, um, because this was completely underserved and like a really like big market. Um, and not as a surprise, I guess. Like what we're doing uh, is we're building like the AI, um, healthcare admin worker for these people. So like they don't have to spend 200 hours on running like the paperwork and the business anymore a month. But they, the doctor, him, uh, or herself can run the practice um, in an hour, maybe a month. Because the AI platform submits the claims for the practice, it uh, reconciles the insurance payments and does the ar. It helps to build the patients, it runs payroll, it provides working capital on top of it. So like all the jobs that now happen with people in the back office, like we're building a platform uh, that does it for them and then get uh, something similar down to Shopify, where as a small merchant, right, like if my mom wants to start a surf shop, uh, she can kind of like tonight spin up an uh, E commerce operation and doesn't need to go to Stanford to do an MBA and be as uh, a gritty of an entrepreneur as like a unicorn founder needs to be. Um, and so the goal here is to make it fun and easy, uh, for any doctor in the country, uh, in a couple of years from now like to like run on Lassie and then run that practice in an hour a month, um, so that we hopefully get a lot more independent doctors that run their own shop with which is ultimately good for the patients obviously because your local doctor should take care of you and not be part of this big private equity backed, um, like chain, um, um. And should just serve you as a patient like really well. So like that's in a nutshell, kind of like what we're, what we're after.

Speaker A: And, and so then the, the people who care about this at uh, the doctor's office or sorry the dentist, like clearly the dentist does. But I'm, I'm thinking back to the most recent time that I, I got a cleaning. There's um, there's the dentist, there's the dental hygienists.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: There's some people at the front desk, uh, etc. And so um, so I would imagine the decision maker in question is probably the dentist or the set of dentists that are like partners within the, within the uh, the practice. And then maybe there's like another person who's involved in the sale which is like the, you know, the office admin who's maybe like half office admin, half receptionist or what have you. Are those like the Personas that you guys are interacting with?

Speaker B: Mm, mhm. Yeah. Like, like I think very similar to Square and Shopify. Like we're really going off to those independent health practices and then it typically like the doctor owner that like runs that practice. Right. Um, for the most part. So like it's very much following that script of um, uh, arming the rebels, uh, if you will. Um, and so that's kind of like the organizational type that we're after. And then I think an average office like you mentioned, gmv, that's processed by an office. Right. Which is in the millions. And then because there's so much paperwork like, like my mom worked in a hospital in the 70s and like it felt very much based on the stories that she told me what I found in these small practices in 2020 in the states. Um, so they spent as a result of that like hundreds 200k like a year in OPEX to uh, run kind of like the administration. So like that's, that's roughly the opportunity, um, that were. That were that we're after.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so, and I guess because, because this is not, this is the power of AI and I think this is. I was talking with a buddy about this the other day that um, you know we're seeing these organizations that have like pretty substantial revenue ramps. Either A, because it's self serve, like a cursor.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Replit or whatever, more in the kind of like dev tools space or B it's not self serve, it's sales led. Right. Um, but it is so Commercially intensive because it's not a seat for someone to work in. It's literally the worker in question or it's like a digital worker in question. So it's labor replacement. And so what that you know, historically the problem with SMB go to markets, um, or just the reality is not necessarily a problem per se is that the average selling prices end up kind of of being small. Like when, when Zenefits was first selling or, or Rippling was first selling, the average transaction size would be. Would be fairly small. And then this is why you know, in the case of Rippling or Zenifits or whatever you like compound it out and like add more, more jobs done, et cetera, et cetera in order to. Whereas in you guys case I think like the a. The current like average selling price is like it's not small for um, uh, the, the sort of SMB motion that it's like you know, probably not one call closes, but like one or two call closes. What, what is the, the ACV right now for you guys? Roughly?

Speaker B: Yeah, you are correct. Like I think that um, it's in the five figure like acv like range. Um, and we're growing exponentially indeed. Like I think we have a shot of hitting about 100 million or are like in, in a year from now. Um and um, that is, that is possible like uh, with just serving them with a wedge product. Um and um, because we took actually pretty similar approach to like Robinhood where I worked before this. Um, because what really inspired me in Beijing Flat like they, they stayed laser focused on. Yes. The end goal here is the AI admin worker for all these help practices. Right. Uh, so that any of us in a couple of years from now can like spin up a practice and kind of like take, take care of the patients. Uh but like what I really loved about Robinhood is they started like very small uh, wedge right, like iPhone app. So the rest was on the waitlist Android like web. Ah. And you could only trade 5,000 shares on the platform if you might recall from those early days. Um, so like no options like no crypto, like no retirement, like no credit card. Like the whole finance app obviously wasn't built. Uh, because with a C team you can obviously only kind of like do so much. And we did, we did same so like uh, even kind of like by. By solving a uh, small kind of like part like off like their uh, their problem or take one job to be done. Uh, like that you already mentioned, like we take care of the insurance like AR, right. So like out of the 200 hours, like 80, 100 hours a month, uh, is spent on uh, processing these insurance payments. So what I just talked about, they get a lot of invoices coming in from insurances and payments and then they have to literally open envelopes and update the ERP by hand, like patient by patient ledger, cash, uh, the checks and make sure that all these like, numbers like, add up. That is a. I did this myself for my dentist, like 80, 100 hour a month, like job. Uh, and we just obsessed over getting Dex, like to the same quality as like Robinhood launched, like with the first version of the iPhone app. Uh, and because we kept it, the wedge, fairly small, um, like we could build that product like really well. Um, and that ACV on its own is five figures. And then, uh, this goes all the way up to the 100, 200k in opex that like they now spent on this. If we roll out the full feature set, like, uh, after this, start kind of like working on the other jobs to be done, like, if you will.

Speaker A: But, and, and I, and I think like, I mean that's a, There's a good entrepreneurial, like, product strategy there. Like one, start with a wedge. Don't like, be all singing, start with a wedge. Not all singing, all dancing. And then also connect that to demand. That is like highly, highly, highly, like, aligned with that. And then the second thing is like, start with a problem that's like very, very intensely problematic. Turns out that small businesses like money and they don't have big, they don't have big balance sheets necessarily. So if you can pull, you know, pull Accounts Receivable forward as an example, that can be like, you're in essentially in the business of selling money in that case, which is, you know, who doesn't like money? Right? I, I love it. And I, I think we're going to talk more about kind of your validation, how you guys went about validating and how you. And kind of like your, your narrowness of icp. But you mentioned the Robinhood, the Robinhood thing and kind of you made a joke about Coinbase. Maybe you can kind of share with folks a little bit about, um, you know, your background before starting Lossy.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I've been doing startups for I think about 15 years. Um, so, like, this is not kind of like Stang woke up and then all of a sudden, together with my co founder Frederick, uh, like built this thing. Uh, I think we're going to talk more about this journey in particular as well. This was also not that we didn't start this like last month. Uh, but, yeah, I've been doing startups for 15 years, man. Grew up, as you might hear in my accent, near Amsterdam. Um, and, um, founded startups back home. Um, and then, uh, I think mid-20s, Pete kept, uh, on reading about Silicon Valley, uh, and started reaching out to people like yourself that I was working on a startup. Uh, the last startups were not direct sales like loops or B2B oriented. So reached more out to growth folks and consumer or to other entrepreneurs. And then I think mid-20s, I was like, I keep on emailing or flying back and forth, like to this place. Um, and all my friends also back home were like, what are you going to do there? You don't know anyone in America. Um, and I always thought, yeah, the only way to change that is just come out here and start meeting people. Um, and, uh, very American of me, like, in hindsight. Uh, but, uh, yeah, then mid-20s, I thought I should just move here. Um, this feels like where, like I'm home. Uh, the way that people build companies here and solve problems is very aligned with how I like to solve, like, big problems and like to transform, like, industries. Um, so then what I did, uh, because I didn't go to school here, I didn't. I thought I should work for a breakout company first. Um, and then, uh, spent a, uh, couple of years in Fintech. Uh, so like worked at Coinbase and after that at Robinhood when both of these companies were like, small. So, like, there were a few million users. Like, not many people heard of those companies. Maybe 150 people were in the team. So I really got to see from the inside, like, what does it take to scale a business that has insane product market fit? Uh, which is what I wanted to see, right, with exceptional people, uh, to kind of like, yeah, the juggernauts that they are right now, like, it's crazy to think that Coinbase has 100 million users, um, right now and Robinhood is the market leader, uh, in their space with tens of millions of active users. So, yeah, my role was there to work on growth. Worked on the referral program, I worked on the onboarding app, so learned a lot of lessons about how do you methodologically grow a business? Um, and learned that that's not luck, but that's also science to a certain extent, in the same way as you. I really like how you deconstruct it, like sales, basically. And that was a very good primer in hindsight. Not only because, yeah, I think it's Fairly unique as a founder that you like, know how to scale something from a million to 10 million or 100 million, like users or. You've seen that at least partly before. Uh, but also fintech was quite helpful because we're basically building the platform for doctors to run their business on. So like, I learned a lot about fintech infrastructure, um, and how to build products people like love to use like every day. So like that, that's, that's, that, that's my background before I, um, embarked on this journey, like helping all the doctors in America.

Speaker A: Love it. Yeah. And I, and I think that the one kind of thing that pops out to me in our discussion head of this conversation is the intense focus on product market fit and making sure that um, you know, customers that are getting wild value out of the thing because the thing really, really, really hits the pain point that they have and like resolves it effectively and with delight. Um, is, is the best way to make sure that you have high NRR and, and high word of mouth. And so maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about how, uh, you validated this hypothesis early on, um, in order to under. And then, you know, how, how like how you were able to see that, that these folks actually had this problem and then moreover, um, that you were able to like, get to that initial intense fit before you guys started kind of started scaling there.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, maybe one more little nugget because I know we have a lot of like founders and early stage folks, like listening. Ah, absolutely. Like, one takeaway from working on growth, Pete, was that a lot of founders, as a result of me working on that at these companies came to me over time and asked me, hey, we want to scale our growth efforts, like, what do we need to do? Um, and in 99% of the cases, my honest advice, maybe too Dutch with me, was like, uh, I think, wait, like, work on the product market fit first. Um, because like what was really drilled into me, um, and the folks at Reforge or my friend Brian Belfors did a really good job. Right? Or Andrew Chen in describing like the methodology behind like, uh, product market fit. But like, you need, you want to see that trifecta, right? Um, of like really good engagement retention and then like product market fail. Like surveys are qualitative like results and like benchmarked against what you're working on. Obviously retention in consumer looks different than in B2B and SMB. B2B looks different than enterprise like B2B. But, uh, it was really deeply ingrained to me because I talked to so many founders that weren't ready for it. So like that's why like we very much obsessed over that like in first like leg of the journey if you will and look for the trifecta of product market fit. I think there's a good article that Brian wrote if people Google trifecta of product market fit, uh, that describes kind of like how to assess if you actually do have product market fit. Uh, and then we went one step further and then I think Brian uh, a couple of years ago wrote a follow up article where like uh, that's not enough to build $100 million business finding product market fit because you need product market ah, channel business model like fit. Um, and all three, all four, sorry like you really want to validate before you start aggressively like ramping, which is the phase that we're in right now. But yeah, we took a pretty deliberate approach. Um, and so back to your question on how did we.

Speaker A: Because the first, because the first step is the only way you're going to get to like wild, you know, product market fit is to have a, have a problem that is, that is real.

Speaker B: Correct?

Speaker A: That's like that, that is like recurrent, ideally daily. Right. Um, and can be you know, and is wildly unsolved. And so maybe you can kind of share with how, how you knew that that was the case.

Speaker B: Yeah, that was um, uh because like the, the main hypothesis we started with was like why does it suck so much to run a doctor office? Right. Um, and then uh, what we did, like we, we took inspiration from like Nat and Zach, the founders of Flatiron, like a company that uh, people might know from a couple of years ago, um, also serial founders. They spent 18 months talking to oncologists figuring out like okay, what um, uh what, what problems do we need to solve? So Frederick and I took inspiration from that and uh, uh about a year we took uh, without writing any line of code uh to like figure out like why does it suck so much and why hasn't been solved and is there a small chance of a very large like transformational like business. So um, uh what we did is like uh, this coincided with a pandemic. So like the first three months we actually talked to tens uh, of like doctors like ah, small practice owners across multiple verticals. So the dentists, the uh, psychiatrists, the primary care doctors, the gastroenterologists, um, where we also talk to mid size and hospital uh like people, how do they run their finances. So like we took a pretty methodological approach, uh, talking to like small, big. Uh, and um, maybe because people said at home or. I also in hindsight think it was because we hit a nerve. We had a real pain point, uh, uh, like there when we asked him, hey, do you want to talk about your problems Running kind of like this organization. So people spend about an hour yapping on the phone.

Speaker A: It's usually a good, a good indicator and also a good, you know, it, it gives you a hint as to what your future discovery calls will look like as well. People love to complain. They love complain to a willing ear. Right?

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah. And, and um, I learned this the hard way because I also did startups where people didn't want to talk to me. Right. And, and I learned that's not a problem. No, but like the, it is a, it was a strong early indicator Pete for us that we like something because wait, why do 15 dentists want to talk about like you know, their voice? Yeah, exactly. I'm like wait, that's, that's wild. So that was the first three months and then um, we concluded the small businesses are underserved. Like the hospitals they do have. Uh, it's not perfect but maybe at best you can build a 2x better solution. And uh, these systems are more or less stitched together by some custom like IT projects built by Accenture or McKinsey with a partner. But like the interesting vertical is kind of like the small businesses that are underserved and for 80% on paper. Um, and then we went kind of like bottoms up. Um, so like we, we uh, um, went uh, like to work nine, uh to five for a few like doctors. So I spent like a couple of months in Dr. Kwan's practice like my dentist in Mellow park. Um, because he knew that I worked in fintech. Um, and he said do you want to see how I run my finances? And I'm like absolutely. Walk me to the back.

Speaker A: Totally.

Speaker B: And then uh, yeah. And my jaw dropped because like uh, he's uh, a very forward thinking doctor. Like actually uh, read the LE up. He um, has customers that like that's awesome.

Speaker A: We'll send him a copy of founding sales.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I actually asked him uh, because he's still a very close like early customer. Of course. Like did you actually read uh, Pete's book? And he said no. Should I? And I said yes you should. Uh, but uh, yeah. So how often. Uh, and I will get to that in a second. That makes it also a, a um, very good early customer. Right. Like uh, if you like uh, red crossing the Chasm. Like, if you haven't, I recommend it. Like, you look for that, like, early adopter, innovator that kind of, like, buys into the promise, uh, that this problem is going to be solved and, like, is proud to be, like, number one. And, uh, that's exactly what he was. So, like, he didn't only walk me to the back, but when, When Frederick and I, like, uh, concluded indeed firsthand by visiting a few practices. Gosh, this is actually happening, right? It's not only stats and kind of like, uh, things that come out of customer development, uh, but like, these doctors actually sit there with their teams and having stacks of paper around them processed by people. Um, we basically asked him, hey, we really want to come work for you because we think we can solve this problem, but the only way to figure that out is actually come join you. And he said, yes. Uh, which was another sign because if we had a vitamin rather than a painkiller here, like, in my opinion, you would have said, yeah, no, you guys

Speaker A: will be in the way. I only have three chairs.

Speaker B: I mean, like, you don't know anything about billing, right? Like, how, how, how do you want to take over this job? But, like, um, he just lost his, like, staffer was sitting in front of these stacks of paper himself, and we're talking about a practice. Um, he's rated number one in Palo Alto as a dentist on Yelp. He tripled his revenue partly after implementing our solution over the years. So, like, he's a very gifted, talented entrepreneur. And, um, and imagine someone like him sitting in front of, like, his AR for, like, tens of hours a month.

Speaker A: Like, waste of time.

Speaker B: You felt bad. It's awful. Um, he was like, anything Stein, like, swipe the credit card almost, if you can make this problem, like, go away. So I think that's how we initially, uh, started exploring this problem. And then we obviously had to build conviction. Um, like, can we come up with earned secrets and a 10x better solution? Right? Like, is there a willingness to pay? Like, who's going to pay for a solution like this? Um, et cetera, et cetera. But, like, that initial exploration, if you will, came from, like, first, uh, kind of like talking to small, big offices, like, different specialties or verticals, and then just like, um, bottoms up. Working in his practice. I also work for a gastronologist in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which we can talk about another time. Otherwise, this podcast long.

Speaker A: Um, but we want pictures, actually of your work at the gastroenterologist. No, just kidding. Um, I, I, I, and I think this is actually A more recurring kind of theme that we're hearing of like, founders going. I forget what Paul Graham was calling. Calling it recently, like embedded or like, you know, obviously there's like forward deployed, which is, you know, that, that Palantir, uh, kind of popularized. But essentially what we're talking about is like really doing kind of like ethnographic research where you're like, doing the work, um, or like being on the factory floor, because there's really no difference. Sorry. There's a dramatic difference in being able to see what the day to day looks like and the actual kind of like hands on keyboard or, you know, in the physical world, like actually like what the workbench or what the work looks like there. Um, and then that's. It makes it way easier to earn the secrets versus, like, you know, customer interviews are fine. But actually shadowing or doing desk sides or doing it yourself can lead to, you know, can lead to these sort of, uh, these, these realizations which is, which is really powerful. Um, okay, so. So it sounds like this was your first customer and he. And he was like, yeah, I'm. I'm happy to have you go and do this. Um, seems like you then charged him for that. And then, um, and then built after you had. So this was very much a case of like, sell and then, and then build, and then moreover, validate that you could build the thing to fully replace the doing behavior. Is that, Is that right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And again, back to Paul Graham. Like, what was deeply ingrained in me is that, um, if we can figure out how to make one doctor really happy with our software, and we're talking fan level happy because, uh, I came off a rocket ship where we had fans of our product making YouTube videos and raving about a product called WallStreetBets and organically inviting a lot of people. Um, I did not see a reason to kind of like change that playbook for what we were after. So, of course, like, that's why it took nine to 12 months. You don't want to stop there because, like, I'm very. Frederick is German, I'm Dutch. We're pretty methodological in our approach. And the only downside of coming off a rocket ship like that is that it becomes your floor for outcome. Right? Because both of us, like, if we then kind of dedicate a decade plus of our lives towards problem, like, it better be a problem that actually transforms an industry that's like, large. So, um, we definitely, in parallel also then research, okay, how many Dr. Kwans are there? Uh, is this a Problem that is the same in gastronology, hence why we worked in the gastroenterology clinic in primary care. Like at a high level, if we can figure out how to turn a few hundred dentists into true fans, does that then scale to those million health uh, practices? Yeah, um, so that, that we did top down as well and then when we validated that, that like yes, this at an abstract level is the same in any industry. Are there good inflection points that makes it possible to build a technics better solution? Uh, we take that off. Um, and then like is there an interesting growth loop that we can use to scale this quick? Uh, is. Is there a really good solid business model like under, under business like this? Do Fredrik and I enjoy working on this like together? Can we pull our smart trends to work on this? Um, uh and when we ticked of all those boxes, uh, like yeah, we went back to Dr. Kwong uh, and we said uh, hey, remember that problem that we talked about and that I took over minimally for you and now uh, you trust me to do this job and we gonna replace me with software that's taking this over. Um, like we started building that product and then it was uh, not like 100% me doing all the accounts receivables with Frederick, but it became like 10 and then all the way down until we had a full like software, software solution. Um, so that, that's how this like came to be. And like I said, I think the he um, was a really good customer one um because like, like I referred to crossing the chasm. So I would recommend people like uh, selling to like businesses to like, like, like read that because like he, he, he really uh, embodies that like innovator type where yeah he didn't own any

Speaker A: in front of the early adopters like way out ahead. Super geek like literally looking for technology doesn't actually care if it has like sharp edges or whatever. The person who bought the like $900 iPhone when it came out in 2008, even though iPhones are now a thousand dollars. But like anyway, you get the point. Yes, the, the, the person who joys and delights in, in adopting new technology almost for its own purposes.

Speaker B: You got it. Yeah, I always like funny uh, you bring up the iPhone, I always like share uh, with people that like. It reminds me a lot of like Frederick. Frederick, my co founder is an early adopter of technology. So you will find him with the first version of the Apple Watch because he buys into the promise like of that like device and Dr. Kwan was very much like this. Maybe because he read the Lean Startup and he had people in his practice that like worked and all these tech companies, um, I don't know, like the fun. In fact, we will talk about that later. We found a lot of these early adopters like across like the country. But like when I met him, uh, in a different context than sitting in his chair obviously. Right. Because of course I went twice a year to go see him. Um, like I observed pretty quickly that um, he fits that uh, criteria that Jeffrey Moore set for an innovator. Um, and then he went on stage with us like he wanted to share how his practice tripled, like his revenue due to automating part of the finances. He started referring like his wife Grace, his study friends. So like, like we, we uh, after we won his trust and actually obviously solved that problem for him. But like that's, that's kind of like uh, a classic story in my opinion of like why he was such a good first. First customer and like how we closed him as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that you know, that's a fairly common thing where um, you know, especially when you have a new solution that's being, being deployed actually. I mean even if it's a, A ah, new rendition of an existing, uh, an existing category of software or a new, new category, you know, like finding those early adopters is going to be something that like will for, for the most part make um, for tailwinds in, in a sales motion versus headwinds. And then the question can be okay, well how can we identify that? Ideally, can we identify that externally from outside the organization? Because like, it's funny that you, you mentioned this. I'm thinking you might end us in um, uh, in Alamo Square. And you know, you're like there's TVs everywhere. You watch, you know, you're watching some like drone video as you're getting your teeth clean, et cetera, et cetera. It's very different experience than like you know, when I was a kid or, or, or what have you. So I, I would imagine that you know, looking for external signifiers, obviously that's inside the organization, uh, like inside the organization. So you could potentially you know, validate this in discovery. But then eventually when you end up scaling like a good example of this might be okay, you know, do they have ebooking on their website for instance? Right. Because if uh, you know, if a dentist has the ability to make reservations like through their website and I'm making this up, but like, like whatever, some sort of Complementary solution that would indicate that they, or even it might be like um, ethnographic about them where when you're looking at them and how long have they been in practice, you um, notice. Oh, okay, well this, this guy is like 38 years old or, or what have you versus some, you know, 70 year old dentist who's on the way out of their um, out of the way out of their practice. Wonderful. I mean you are a very valuable guy. Uh, one. What were the best resources that, that kind of helped you in your founder led journey? And then also how did you um, you know, how did you get over your, your fear of sales? I mean at this point it doesn't seem like there was one. Cause I think you've been doing entrepreneurship, you know, since you were a teenager and that probably involved like selling things to, to people. Probably like you know, selling Heineken on the side of the uh, on the side of the canals and, and what have you. Um, but you know, how did like what, what made it such that you were able to surmount uh, those hesitations and then moreover, what were the resources that were most helpful for you in uh, you know, in, in your learning process?

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah, I think that's a, a good observation. We know each other a bit, but uh, I, I, I fall in the category of people that I guess got lucky or were, uh, I would, I wasn't say I was born like with it, right. But like um, uh, I just visited my parents in the Netherlands and like they told me the story about like the eight year old boy, me that sold not Heineken's but carrots out of the garden of my parents right on the street. And then in high school I was a wedding dj so I learned how to deal with all kind of people from all walks of life and turned it into a business. Like ran um, a fashion company in college. So I learned kind of like how to sell to department stores, which I haven't done before. Celebrities were wearing our products. Um, um. So like I think I gained experience, but I think it was just like my willingness, if you will like to take no for an answer. Um, which is not Dutch. Right. And uh, in America I see a lot that like you just need to overcome uh, like, like rejection and like no. And persist and kind of like become really, really, really, really good at like that. So I think uh, that uh, like I did like over the over, over all these like companies and then realized, oh, I actually really enjoy this. Um, and it's also quite frankly why I wanted to come to like America because uh, I was really impressed by like a lot of the technical people here. Right? Like there's a lot of gifted like engineering talent uh, in Silicon Valley. And I thought it would be quite a contrarian bet that like uh, uh, I bring my unique skills of like having the ability to like sell like uh, products but also like people investors. Like I sold a couple different companies. I like to bring that skill set to Silicon Valley as a really good like addition to like the extremely like gifted like engineering talent like that is here. Um, and that I think what draw me in. Like I um, uh, liked kind of like there was a Facebook early Facebook exec. Like I think her name is like Fiji. Um, like she helped scale Facebook, then went to Instagram as the CEO, took it public. Um, and then I think now she said OpenAI running like applications. Um, she also came from like a fishing, fishing village I believe in like France. Um, I did not write. I came from the Netherlands but like similar kind of like move. Um, and I read an interview with her. Like she like I think brings like user obsession where other brings kind of like technical credentials if you will. Or uh, she never learned how to code. Uh, so she became the best at understanding what users want. And I think that, that I spent a lot of time on over like the last 15 years didn't uh, take no for an answer. Like really kind of like figured things out. Uh, moving to America was also not like that easy, right? Like I came from the Netherlands and

Speaker A: you the filter, the immigration filter, Uh,

Speaker B: I am the classic immigrant that came from another country and kind of like uh, want to build something big in America. So uh, I think that that's more like my story where it wasn't really that I uh, had to learn it but more overcome the fear and then kind of thought hey, but I have something that I can bring here that is a really good compliment to all the world class like engineering talent that surround and that combination I think super powerful. So that's um, more what I worked on a lot is just honing the craft and playing the violin for 10, 20,000 hours and kind of learn along the way. Um, some stuff that was helpful for me. Um, well, we came to your workshop. Uh, that was quite helpful. Um, uh, but I think more serious like founder sales kind of book was helpful. Um, because when you're doing it like unstructured in yourself, right? Like you learn a lot. But um, uh, reading kind of like uh, you have beautiful like uh, workshops uh, as well. Like it's Very codified on kind of like how you approach like a sales motion. So I think that stuff is helpful. Um, we talked about crossing the chasm. I uh, think that really ingrained in us. Like okay, how do you think about who you want to sell to? And we will talk more about it who you don't want to sell to which is equally important in like really like great businesses in the making. I um, would say more on customer development because we have people doing ah, uh, are in the earlier stages like uh, the classics, like four Steps to Epiphany from Steve Blank. Um, how to talk to humans. Uh obviously the YC content from Paul. Um, I think understanding uh, humans, how they are wired, like psychology, like power of habits, uh, hooked, uh, Lenny Substack is quite helpful like for benchmarks on like what's good retention, uh, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there are some resources over the years that like I use um, I think mainly to like also share with others beats uh, to be honest because I, I, I've been doing this like for a while. So like I'm, I'm still super curious but most of that stuff like I know for SMB B2B like what roughly good and great and epic retention is right. Uh, or ACVs. But like it's also super helpful to share with your team. That's typically very new on this journey. And it's like hey look, we're actually at uh, y retention, 12 month retention. This is world class people look at kind of like the benchmarks like here. Um, that's kind of like not just

Speaker A: about educating yourself, it's also about educating your team as well. Yeah, um, I like it. So let's talk about um, kind of like pricing and ideal customer profile and kind of how that evolved over uh, over time. Because you, you, you've been kind of hinting at this notion of being very, very narrowly focused on folks that could be, you know, uh, right down the strike zone. Ideal customer profile for you. So how did uh, you know, how did ICP evolve over time? How did pricing evolve over time? Um, and yeah, like, and, and why was that so important?

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah. Uh, we could tackle pricing first. Uh, it went up right. I think again, nothing new here when I do that.

Speaker A: Yeah, better than going down I suppose.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, yeah, depending on the market you're in of course. But uh, I think like nothing super counterintuitive but initially like underpriced it slightly. Uh, and then it goes up over time when the product matured and the roi Became super obvious for like a larger group of people. Um, we do and you mentioned this already. Like we did really want customer number one to like actually pay for the service from the get go. Um because we wanted to test willingness to pay. Right. Um, and in healthcare quite often the question is who's gonna pay for it? Um, in this case it's quite obvious because like the problem's enough in healthcare. Right? Uh, and also solutions. Uh, well the solution we built that you could only do because a law um, went into effect that forced this industry to go from paper payments to digital payments. So it wasn't simply possible to do something like this. But there uh, are enough other problems you can find in health care uh, that you can solve. But the question is how do you build a profitable business like out of it? Um so we did want to validate that the doctor in exchange for basically uh, getting rid of 100, 200k of their opex or unlocking a lot of potential like revenue was willing to pay us from the get go uh for the solution that we gave them. Um so like we, we got by the way to that initial pricing to like the Westendor pricing survey to validate kind of like is usage based pricing kind of like the right uh version. What take rate should we kind of like take that is uh, is, is appropriate. Um, so that's kind of like how uh, like we approach like pricing. Um, we, we spent a fair amount of time again that's why we took nine to 12 months like on it. Because both Frederik and I like, we love businesses that obviously build products with exceptional value and delight but also are just really epic business models because we love companies like Stripe or Apple or because you can use that money to kind of like reinvest in R and D in the best talent. Um and also becomes a very interesting public business like down the line that like uh, is good for I think the sustainability because we're building the, the health care worker for all the doctors. Right. And 100 to a million patients will also start using lessee to pay their doctor office. So uh, we wanted to build a business that is, is still around in 50, 60 years because there is a lot of responsibility in my opinion in building a business like this. Um, because yeah touches so much sensitive information. And I think you want this business to be like a uh, high trust business that has is very boring revenues in this kind of like can remain independent for a very very very long time.

Speaker A: Well so I think ICP iteration then kind of um, maybe is, is Relevant to that because one, on the one hand you want to be narrowly, narrowly focused. So maybe what you can do is you can kind of talk about how you guys focused in on exactly the white hot center of who ICP was.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: But then maybe also what would be kind of cool is to talk about because you know, one of the things you want to do is expand your Tamra after, you know, not too far because then you like waste your time and your product doesn't fit them and like, you know, they, they chew up a bunch of stuff. But, but maybe you can kind of talk. It's almost like starting broad, getting narrow, getting. Being like really narrow, like ridiculously narrow for maybe it's in you guys case it's you know, hundreds of customers etc. But then also looking for kind of, you know, tangential areas where you can expand a little bit. Can you kind of talk about, about how that process went?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think we already talked about like the, the 1,000,000 L practices. Right. That we validated. Okay. If all things go well, that's kind of like uh, like the um, mission, uh, complete if you will. Like um, that by the way the updated version of that beat, because that was our thinking back then is that um, I think we can get the tech so um, good. Uh, or build such a great platform that like we can actually create 5 million doctors if you will. Uh, similar to what happened with actually Shopify. Right? Yeah, you create like what happens if, if any doctor can like run his or her own shop without like needing the, the knowledge about billing patients and submitting claims. Um, so I think that's the updated like version of like this. But um, yeah, we wanted to go like Robin Hood style. Like what is the narrowest kind of like which we can find. And then we landed on dentistry, um, and we landed on like an insurance ar. Kind of like like job to be done. Right. Like the eighty hundred hours that goes into processing the insurance payments.

Speaker A: Why was, why were, why were dentists so attractive in that regard?

Speaker B: Um, it is the largest like group of like health practices in the country. Um, they're for the most part independently owned. Um, and like the, the things you need to do to get the tech to work. Like is the, is the, is the easiest like out of, out of all of it. The uh, least insurance companies the least like er so you can hit escape velocity the quickest. Um, and built the early innings of this like hyper growth, like breakout, like business. Um, and also completely on paper. Um, so like that's why we started There and then with it. Then we even went to the independent practices, uh, and then like uh, yeah, we looked at the narrowest ICP that we could find and in hindsight I wish we would even stricter like with it because you're still tempted to kind of like help someone that like, uh, is hard to me.

Speaker A: Oh, let's take the demo.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, yeah. And by the way, like why I think that's so important and then I can talk about like how we enforce that ICP because we learned a lot of valuable lessons, uh, like there. Um, but like we talked earlier about, the goal here is to get to one fan, 10 fans, 100 fans of your product, thousand fans. Because uh, the mantris then you will figure out how to make 10,000 like people happy. Um, so we really wanted to like only help people and we made it ICP of people that we know we could turn into like fans and see their attention and engagement that like we want to see, um, in um, these people. Um, so that's like why we started like super narrow.

Speaker A: Uh, what was the mechanism by which you identified like what were the characteristics that, that indicated like that this is, this specific dentist is, is going, is going to be the highest probability to be a Lassie super fan once they deploy.

Speaker B: Uh, I mean like there are obviously some technical constraints right, where like you're not going to spend a lot of implementation time on systems you don't integrate

Speaker A: like with so specific ERPs or, or whatever it is like electronic medical records software for, for dentists. But like so you guys started out with you know, integrating with a subset of them and then just you know, focus on those. Is that okay? Cool.

Speaker B: And then there's certain kind of like business goals that like we, we identified as good and buying Personas is good or not. Um, and then the way we did it, it. We basically um, uh, created a wait list like again Robinhood style, uh, where we basically like everybody like signed up first for the wait list and then if they came out of that as icp, um, we would like take a call with them. And then when we started scaling it, we also put like an ICP approval process in place. So like post demo, the deal before it can be signed needs to be approved, uh, by like one of the founders. Um, and then when that deal gets approved, like contract can get generated and can get like signed. Um, and uh, I learned that lesson actually from um, uh, I think a mutual friend like Max Freeman at like remember.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, Max.

Speaker B: I went to see him and we started like Scaling beyond me is the founder that uh, uh, started uh, selling. Um, and I asked Max, um, like, hey, like, if you were to do this again, because ramp obviously, right, like zero to a billion in ARR in a couple of years. If you were to do this all again, Max, and Max was an early seller at like ramp, like what would you do different? Um, and he said we wish we were even stricter in kind of like enforcing ICP when we started scaling. Uh, why it obviously creates like a lot of downstream pressure on the people that need to implement. You start wasting a lot of your time to customers that you can never make happy and turn into fence. Um, we did that from the get go and it served us really well that we did not lose an ICP and put a pre qualification step in place. So we don't even take demos with people that are not icp. It's not that we don't want to help these people, but you're looking for the first hundred fans, thousand fans that can then help you invest more in R and D and expand ICP like from there. And then also like when we started bringing on other sellers, put like, um, a good uh, process in place where we have an ICP like approval approval step. Um, so that I think worked really well, like for us. Um, and again, like I learned this from Max. Uh, I also really admired Beijing and Vlad. At Robinhood, the founders like doing this. Right. You might remember from Robinhood that up until today they have wait lists, um, and it is that they like, they want to make sure that they can help people, uh, or serve them with a product that actually when you use it, it's like a really freaking good experience. Uh, and we just copied that, um, and thought we should do exactly the same. But you can imagine that it's quite crazy because we have a lot of people that want to do a demo with us and we currently say we would love to help you, um, but we're not going to. Um, and then there are a lot of people that want to sign a contract to us and then like that happens. Not anymore. Right. Um, um. Because if it gets all the way to the ICP approval step post demo, then I think something went wrong in the whole process before. But like, um, uh, you want to make sure you have a check in place or like a revenue accounting step in place to make sure. Yeah, this is actually green light and this customer kind of like is truly icp.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that there's so one having kind of crisp indications of what that might Be like, maybe it's a technical, you know, indication or maybe it's, you know, something about the organization. And then what you can do with that is you can go all the way upstream to like your demo request form. Like you were saying, like, hey, do you integrate, like, do you, do you run on this, this type of software? Do you run on that type of software? How many dentists are at your office? Whatever the thing is that is unique to the people, the business of the folks that are, are listening right now. But then moreover, what you can do is you can even go upstream from that where when you're looking at outbound or if you're looking at like marketing spend or what have you then kind of narrowing in to the extent possible on those folks when you're doing your marketing targeting, when you're doing your outbound, when you're, you know, prospecting, et cetera, such that again you're like, we're as efficient as possible. We're not spending prospecting time. Like we're certainly not spending customer success time and potential churn on these folks. Ideally we're not having our account executives talking to people who like will never get successful. And then moreover, ideally we're never spending uh, marketing dollars or um, you know, or SDR time or cold calling time against people who are never going to be, never going to be happy either. Um, what, what was something that were, because you talked about your kind of initial sales motion, um, seems like it was like you did it with Dr. Kwan. Uh, because you know, the, the product works so well. He referred you to a bunch of folks. This seems to be like a recurring theme of you know, high quality product levered over um, you know, an efficient sales motion, but is more very kind of product centric. That seems like something that worked really well for you guys. Were there other things that worked particularly well that were good unlocks for you?

Speaker B: Um, no. I think it should be obsessed, uh, to figure out like um, what is the first version of a product that's just freaking good. And like once you actually plug it in, it starts like working and turns that customer into a fan and then learn what actually ICP customers are that you can turn into fans. Right? That takes some iteration speed of taking on customers realizing, oops, like we should add that to the ICP criteria and then uh, depending on the industry. But in our case, all these doctors know each other, right? They went to school together, um, uh, like they're friends with each other. And then like if you solve a really big pain point that like they talk about at the barbecue, if you will, or like, um, at the conference, then, uh, people will tell each other, uh, and then, um, yeah, you have their trust that you did something great for them. And then like if you arm the rebels, like the rebels will share with each other that like there's this really great tool that they can use to kind of like start the revolution. Um, uh, so like, I think that organic growth, uh, is what got us pretty far. Um, also I wanted to see that myself. Um, Frederick and I. Why? Because I think very great businesses in the early days, like all have this very strong pool from people that love it and that want to share their friends. Right? And especially in this super dense network like industry or market, if people didn't organically started talking with each other and we got calls and emails and kind of like referrals from people without incentivizing those like folks. Something I think was also like, um, wrong in my opinion, in kind of like, okay, we can't go to the next step, uh, of the plan, um, because yes, we have a great product. We have like the monetization figured out, but clearly the organic growth is kind of like not at the levels where like uh, uh, it should be for like a product that in theory is like 10, 10 times better. So like when we saw that, um, like, uh, we also wanted to see that, like, if you will. I think amplifying that with conferences, um, that we got invited to. Right. Like so these doctors say, hey, come speak, like here. That accelerated like the flywheel, uh, for sure. Uh, but like those things got us like, like pretty far. And then like the next step here is back to my old job. Like working on growth is obviously that on top of that word of mouth, um, which like can get you very far. Right. There are businesses like uh, like at Robinhood, if you read the S1 filing, when we went public, like 70% of. Of all new funded accounts came through like organic growth and referral. Like, like other channels did play a role, but like the, the whole business basically like grew to tens of millions of users because people told other people that. Told other people that they should use the software that can carry you actually to a large extent. So in our case, I think maybe this organic growth plus maybe one growth loop will get us or carry us to convert mill like in ARR. Um, and um, in my opinion that's not uncommon. Many really great businesses operate that way.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so uh, sounds like the customer acquisition channel that is, um, is. Is word of mouth.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, what did you guys. I mean, aside from just like, really focusing on the product, were there mechanisms by which you were able to, like, you know, facilitate that word? Obviously you said you weren't incent, like, incenting it. Like, hey, you know, if you want a Starbucks gift card or whatever, refer us or. Or what have you, but you can reduce friction in, um, in referrals. Did you guys do anything, uh, in order to kind of, like, facilitate that in the beginning?

Speaker B: Not really. That was. That was the beautiful part. Like, we did not even kind of like, uh, start, like, incentivizing or, like, enabling people to, um, do this.

Speaker A: Got it. Just. It's funny, I forget there was somebody, like, tweeting about this the other day about, like, you could spend, uh, you know, a hundred dollars on, um, you know, marketing or what have you, or you spend $50 on the product and $50 marketing the fact that you made the product that much. That much better. Um, got it. And so, like, that channel just keeps. Keeps jamming. So this sounds to me like this is. As a result, this probably drives a lot of inbound for you guys, which probably then moreover, because the. That high, you know, nps and pass along, they're also. They're not just referring lastly, like, hey, you should go check out this lastie thing. It's more along the lines of, hey, here's this doing some lightweight selling where. Hey, here's this thing that I am doing. Like, I'm sure you're really frustrated about your AR situation, like, as you were saying at the barbecue, right? Oh, what are you doing later? Oh, I gotta do a bunch of, like, you know, uh, explanation of benefits, coding or whatever, and it's like, oh, that's awful. Well. Oh, I don't. I actually don't have to do that anymore. Oh, you don't? No. I got Lassie. Oh, what? Yeah, you should check it out here. I'll text you right now. So I would imagine that folks are probably coming inbound to your sales reps at this point, um, with, uh, you know, being problem aware and maybe even, like, somewhat aware of what the. Of what the solution is, which, of course, you know, accelerates the sales motion there, such that you can, you know, instead of it being, you know, the first call, convincing them they have the problem or elucidating to them why they should prioritize the problem. They show up and they know exactly that they have the problem, why it's a pain in their ass, and they already kind of have an inclination that you guys can solve it. Um, that probably makes for some pretty. Pretty snappy deal cycles, huh? Huh?

Speaker B: It does. Um, and uh, it's a flywheel effect, right? Like, because then these people, um, uh, do an intake call with us. Um, and we only move forward with the people that we know and be now we know really well who we can turn into fen that we can help and uh, who should wait a little longer. Um, and uh, then those people get the Lassie treatment, if you will. Um, and get the software like installed and get trained on it. Um, and then they see the impact on their business. Uh, that is like a ten times different. Uh, that's why we just took, uh, again, also I think very similar to how uh, Parker Conrad, the founder of uh, Rippling build Rippling, right At Rippling, he took actually a couple of years to build like that product and build it actually in an automated like way. Like uh, at centerfits was the early iteration of that, um, where there were a lot more people and ops teams, right. Like doing like, things behind the scenes. And Frederick and I kind of like wanted to start a software company because that scale. So like, we took two and a half years to kind of like actually build a product that like, once you implement with us and we do your training, uh, it actually just like plugs in and that works, right? And then like, you're like, wow, that's cool. Um, this is actually like having a big impact on my growth. And it feels like stripe, where, okay, gosh, I don't need an, uh. I have an AR solution rather than an AR team I need right now. And then all of a sudden my revenue starts growing. And uh, we just talked about it earlier. Like, these practices are so unoptimized and there's so much like uncategorized and like, um, um, lost revenue, if you will. Right. Uh, because it's all processed by people. Uh, so there's a lot of like, uncaptured ah, like revenue that like comes in but might. Might get stuck on in a drawer or like people don't have time to make an appeal when a claim gets denied or the patient never gets the bill, um, et cetera. So like, if you automate part of it, there's all of a sudden so much time and as a result of that, the revenue grows so quick that people will feel that when you plug in that software solution and that becomes a conversation topic like with other people. And then obviously the next, uh, playbook is kind of like accelerate and amplify like that growth, which happened to be my old gig. So like that's, that's really fun to kind of like work on right now. Um, and when we know more about that in those lessons, like I will, I'll let you know. But we're in the middle of kind of like that process.

Speaker A: Yeah. Figuring out the next loop. Um, well, so that it's funny, it almost is like we talk about product LED growth and this isn't product led growth because it's not, you know, it's not self serve, but it's highly like, you know, product obsessive sales or like really, really like there's um, there's an article that Sequoia had published a while back called the Templeton Compression. And it's not about a, you know, product LED growth, it's about the. They call it the sales ready product. And M in you guys case, it's almost like the installation of it is transformative because all of a sudden more money starts showing up. Um, it's actually multi, multifold more money starts showing up and actually if the doctor is doing the work, then all of a sudden that, that time disappears from their calendar in which case they can see another patient during that time.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Um, et cetera. So this probably puts a lot of pressure on your customer success motion to make sure that you guys like, they show up, they know the problem that they have because their buddy told them at the, at the birthday party right. At the barbecue about it. They show up, they're. They're convinced. Right. They're already in a receptive mind mindset. So then the most important thing is, you know, sprinting out of the starting blocks to get them jamming such that then they, that they can start that loop again where they talk to their, the next buddy. Ah. At the barbecue the next weekend or the weekend after that. So, so what, what are the things that you guys do when it comes to customer success in order to facilitate that sort of thing? Right. Cause it sounds like that's really important.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think that like um, um, get. Getting the customer that signed to like fully activated state. Right. Such that they are ready to kind of like refer and more importantly that they tell us Stein, like this is actually like it lives up to the expectation and what you promised me, um, uh, in the webinar or what I heard from my friend actually is now true or I see this myself kind of like now it's being implemented. Um, so like. Well, I will maybe tell you like because I know we have a lot of early stage people listen like how we started kind of like getting customers activated and figuring out like what activation kind of like means or when I fully activated customer, like what it like looks like and then how he kind of like scaled it like over time. But um, yeah, in the beginning it's just like um, do the things that don't scale again, like Pete. So my co founder Frederick, very ah, gifted software engineer, uh, ubered intern, like and then became the first product hire at Superhuman. So he worked under Rahul, the CEO there. And like Superhuman, uh, uh, had a really good philosophy on onboarding customers. If you might recall, or some of the people might recall, they literally glove

Speaker A: the Superhuman white glove onboard.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Everybody for a prosumer product, people are like, what? This is insane. This is obviously not economical. No.

Speaker B: And they did scale it. Um, and the reason why they did it is because they really, they had two realizations. Like one is like they know that if they help the customer to get activated, like the retention of that customer is going to be significantly different as a result of that, the monetization of that customer is going to be different as a result of that. You can spend a lot more money to acquire that customer and then to also activate that customer. Um, and then uh, like uh, they created a lot more fence at a more like rapid rate because they knew that if they helped to quickly configure the email client correctly and then teach them some pro tips, they would actually achieve their goals. So uh, we looked at our ACVs and we were like, yeah, no brainer, like we're not going to sign.

Speaker A: We can do that.

Speaker B: And then yolo, good luck. Um, also because these businesses are very, very busy, right? Like uh, for those of you listening that have family members that run their own practice, I have a net amount of respect. Which is also why I like building for these people. Because uh, we're literally arming the troopers, right? Like these people, they uh, now I always joke like these doctors and I kid you not because I worked in a few of these practices, but like you need a Stanford MBA and like the grit of a unicorn founder to be a successful small uh, healthcare practice like owner. Um, so like I don't know how they do it, uh, but like they're super busy. Um, and like, like therefore we realized, okay, we will help them get completely like activated. So that was initially our philosophy and then how we applied it, um, was that like, yeah, Frederick and I, uh, and early engineers, we literally flew uh, across uh, like hundred practices um, in the country.

Speaker A: Des side, yes, actually Deathside, like sitting at their desk.

Speaker B: And we showed up in Kansas City and like in Dallas, uh, and in a suburb of like, uh, somewhere in Kentucky. Um, because we really wanted to learn like, like, what does the Superhuman install, like, look like? And like, what does it look like to actually get a customer fully kind of like set up? And what does activated actually, like, mean? Um, so, um, um, yeah, it was a little crazy. Like, uh, Frederick and I read an article at the time, like, about like the Stripe founders, um, also doing that, I think Paul Graham calls it the Stripe install, um, where like in the early days, like, they would meet with engineers and then like help uh, implement the SDK. Uh, yeah, the only problem for us was, was like, our customers were not all, uh, we could not meet them in coffee shops in San Francisco or Palo Alto.

Speaker A: Gotta go there. Yeah. Gotta hop on a plane.

Speaker B: Yeah, we, because we got referrals all across the country. So then like, we found ourselves like in somewhere in Lake Dallas, which was for a Dutch guy, pretty interesting to like beat all these people across the country. Ah, for the business, tremendously helpful because we really understood how to activate customers. Um, what's going on behind the scenes and all these practices, like, they obviously were intensely kind of like impressed by us. Kind of like from Silicon Valley coming to their practice, helping them out. So that also created really good kind of like a lot of goodwill and viable growth. Um, so that, that's how it started. It taught us, okay, this is kind of like how we need to do a successful activation process. And then now like we're zooming with all these offices. Uh, kickoff call down.

Speaker A: You just down sampled it down, Sampled it a little bit.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And, but, but did it initially in like full resolution? Yes, you know, full, you know, and, and then, you know, took it down bit by bit in order to kind of like value optimize, you know, Value engineer.

Speaker B: Yeah. And very unusual. So like, uh, like Frederick and I always take the outlook. Um, uh, we build a decade plus business, right? This company needs to be around in 20, like 30 years. So like, and, and if that's your outlook, um, that the business is still there, like in, in, in, in, in that time frame, like, like what is a couple of months traveling across the country installing software. But that is apparently very unusual for people. Um, and we think it was very pivotal in kind of like, things because what it allows us to do now is because, uh, we're product people, right? Frederick, Product hire. I was a product manager. Um, uh, besides sales, that is my other law firm building stuff that people love to use. Uh, um, and now we're Productizing a lot of that experience and that accelerates the growth and gets us um, into like territory where we can grow even faster kind of like than most like other businesses. Uh, we would not have been able to do that if we don't understand kind of like exactly like what we need to do to get practices set up across multiple permutations. Um, so yeah, a mistake would be to get it uh, to the other extreme. Right. So get completely self serve and get the human out of the loop completely. But if I see what we're working on right now, like this is going to be like um, a very scalable exercise. Um, and again very similar to how superhuman eventually productize like their. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Well so oftentimes what organizations will do is the, the key to of course scaling is being able to abstract out the sales motion and have multiple people doing it. If indeed that it requires a sale. In your case probably requires a sale because, and you know, synchronous communication because you have a non technical person. Um, but so that what that means is you're constrained by the hours in the day, sorry, hours in the week. And so there's only so many zoom calls that Stein and Frederick can do in order to sell. That means account executives. And so usually what ends up happening is people want to abstract out. My recommendation is abstract out. Once you hit the kind of the top of the S curve where it's like okay, we're not learning incremental things, right? We can package this sales motion. And so depending on the size of the like the average selling price or what have you, that can be like dozens, right? Like not, not a dozen because it should be like dozens. If it's a high average selling price, it's obviously harder because usually it's longer, longer sales, longer uh, sales cycle or what have you. But I think you guys went even further beyond that because it turns out that you actually weren't hitting the asymptote. Mhm Yet. Because you were, you kept learning incremental things. You were learning things about ICP from a, from a closing standpoint. And then moreover what you were doing is you were adding on more customers to then implement and get to success. So it was less about um, tuning the sales motion and more about tuning this success motion in order to drive that loop, that growth loop faster and faster. So how many customers did you guys end up closing and successing before you hired your first incremental sellers?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, for us that was in the hundreds. Um, so I remember us talking about this speed where indeed like, um, uh, because I really liked your framework. I only learned this after the fact, of course. Like, hey, that's actually a really good way to say this. Uh, which I, as a founder quite often find myself in that position, right? That you intuitively do it and then you meet people like yourself that, like, are actually doing this.

Speaker A: It validated it. All right, good.

Speaker B: It was actually a really good way to. Yeah, I jumped the gun. But again, this actually does help for the founders listening to explain to other people kind of like the concept, right? Because, um, um, uh, so, like, uh, your materials here are helping because, like, you could actually put in words what you intuitively kind of like, like did here. But, uh, yeah, we did see the same. Um, so we were. But we were in the hundreds. Um, and it took us to that point that we realized, okay, this is rinse and repeat. Kind of like, uh, this is clear how you need to run disco or discovery. This is how you need to run, like the solutions, like call or, uh, the solutions processor pitch. Uh, this is how you run kind of like next steps. Objection. Handling like, uh, pricing discussion. Um, so that took us, um, in the hundreds of customers, and then we realized, okay, now we're doing the same stuff all over again and this is a really good time. Or let's say we're hitting the S curve, right? Like, not completely. We still learned, um, a few things.

Speaker A: Well, there's always like. I mean, that's what startups are. Is like, you're just. It's funny because you, You. You uh, clearly have a reforge, like vocabulary because, um, as you're talking about things, I'm thinking about, like, different, like Kevin Kwok essays. Um, and, uh, and like, you know, startups are just like a series of S curves and you jump from one S curve to the next and the next and the next. And then usually what ends up happening is like, when you have already solved one, that's when you want to package it and like, put it into. Ideally put it in a code because it turns out, like, that's very easy to run. Or you put it into a human who can do those. Those while loops. Um, and I think in your case it just kept being obvious that there was more stuff that you guys wanted to keep learning and learning and learning and learning. Whereas for folks that are listening, if you find yourself at the point where like, hey, you know what? Now is the time to kind of scale this out. It feels like, um, we're having diminishing returns. I, as a founder can do is as an example, move on to installing the sales motion into a seller. Because as quickly as I can install the sales motion, this like develop sales motion software or recipe that I've developed, then I can create the uh, meta motion which is the hiring of sellers, bringing them into the organization, installing the sales motion into their, into their brain and scaling, scaling that which of course is, is the next step. And so uh, so how, I forgot to ask this earlier, how many sellers do you guys have right now?

Speaker B: We currently have like a handful.

Speaker A: Yeah, a handful. Okay. And then, and so um, you're at that point where like we've added a bunch of folks and we've you know, uh, you know uh, pulled the, pulled the, pulled the code into their brain and what have you. What was your first um, what was the profile of your first, first sales hire?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, he worked at another startup so it was familiar like with startups. His mom actually was a dentist so he was very familiar with the problem and uh, could very quickly tell the story similar to like even better what I was able to do. Like I worked in practice. Yeah like I grew up in my mom's like practice.

Speaker A: My mom used to make me do this.

Speaker B: Uh, and he remembered his mom coming home uh, late or taking these payments home. Uh, so that um, was a great, nice to have. And then he had a product background as well. So he was very helpful in funneling insights into engineering Deloitte, um, background. So was strategic enough to help refine icp. Um, I think that what we really wanted was the customer in the transition from uh, me selling to the first sellers. Like we didn't want a coin operator if you will. We wanted people that still were able to help refine parts of YCP because the heavy lifting I agree was done right like, but far, far from complete. So like we, we again learned this also from Max and Sam Buck at like Ramp and talked to some other sellers that other SMB motions. Like there are some early square people. And I think what became pretty clear to me Peter, these early sellers of these like transformational generational businesses which we aspire to build. Right. Um, they were not just litecoin operators but they were also long term thinkers in it with the early team similar to the early engineers and all obviously grew their careers and now are your friends that run organizations. So we wanted someone with some strategic thinking enough to kind of help refine icp. And then uh, uh lastly he was eager to build something big like he did not have his home run yet. Um, so like, like that combination really Appealed, um, did not have like a lot of relevant account executive experience but like given uh, the information to figure

Speaker A: it out, just gave him founding sales and he was good to go.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yes. Off the depth after the races.

Speaker A: Soft to the races. Yeah, I mean, I think so. Thank you for unpacking that. Because the profile of the seller really needs to align with both the market but also like the business strategy. So in you guys case, it's one of the things I've been really enjoying about this conversation is just learning about how like product obsessive the organization is, which is not super surprising given your background because you were saying you come from these two consumer apps, Coinbase and Robinhood. And of course, you know, SMB software is like consumer plus plus or prosumer or like baby, you know, baby B2B or whatever and have these ramifications. And so if you, you know, if you're selling that and you have a hypothesis and also early indications that product leverage can really help with the, like your distribution efforts, then your seller should look like that, right? Then your seller like if that turns out to be um, and it can't just be like a wild hypothesis. Obviously you guys had some early indications that that was the case as you guys kept seeing that like the more you put into the product the faster it would drive the loops, the activation, the, you know, the pass along, et cetera, et cetera. And of course that could be very different than you know, I, my friend Shannon Goggin from Noyo was, was on the show recently and she was talking about like they make this middleware for doing benefits admin for M that connects these uh, you know, large software systems like workday or rippling or heavy to these, in these benefits providers like these, these insurance companies. The, this, their early seller needed to be somebody who like there wasn't gonna be a lot of product feedback there because like the product is middleware and it doesn't have to be delightful. And moreover that that seller needed to have extraordinarily deep relationships with these people at these insurance companies because otherwise those people were like never going to take the call ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And so I think that that's, it's important for folks to be mindful of how the profile of a seller, that first seller. Another thing that you noted about this, like this hunger and this cleverness and a thoughtfulness. One of the phrases that I like to use is this notion of like a, it's almost like a weaponized product manager or like a weaponized product marketer. Stephanie Schatz, Um, Friedman. So, uh, um, Nat Freeman's wife, um, was the first head of sales at Xamarin. Um, she's you know, really bright lady and she used. We spoke at this conference where she talked about a, a pioneer seller. Right. It was a conference that David Scott put on and where it's a Geo founder led selling and then that first person sometimes needs to look like a pioneer seller. Not always. Right. Because like in the case of like if you're selling workday or you're selling neue or what have you probably you know, prioritize more the things that you need there. But I think that you've really described a great pioneer seller for um, for like an SMB software. Did you. So that was a great profile. What did you do really well when hiring and. Sorry. When hiring and onboarding uh, your, your first sellers?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, yeah, I think we can conclude it because like we got him ramped um, and, and, and, and he kind of like um, uh, uh, is really instrumental in getting the business to like like the, the 100 million that like we, we talked about like earlier in the conversations. I think like as a growth guy we can safely uh, assume that kind of like that we did something on early sellers. Um, um. So on the, on the good side, um, there's something I learned from Brian, the co founder of, of uh, Coinbase, um because I saw him do that in the, in the early days. Like I, I was uh, not there myself but like I heard like about like this. So he um, introduced uh, a work trial like for the first like tens of people that joined that company. Um, and uh, we copied that because we thought like we're building this like transformational business. Uh, this very intentional like build with like a group that um. I want to be similar in caliber, um, as like the early people I worked with at Robin Newton, Coinbase and Square. Like you've been long enough, uh, in the Valley that you know that like there are these special teams for kind of like uh, uh and every.

Speaker A: High talent density.

Speaker B: Yeah, high talent density. And um. So like there was a very easy filter for us because the people that were kind of like looking for a garage that like uh, where the early square is built or the early stripe is built or people do an attempt to do that, they would love this because they're going to take a bet on a few founders, a few engineers, a few happy customers in a room and a big bold mission. Right? So like you definitely want to spend before you like take that career jump, um, like 50, 60 hours in the garage, like, if you will, like with, with us. Um, so that worked really well.

Speaker A: And I think one thing that. One, One thing that. So Karun from Delve was on recently, and I don't think he talked about this on the show, but I was talking with him subsequently where we were talking about work trials and like, how would you do a work trial with a salesperson? And he had an interesting point where he's like, well, you know, we could just do like a couple days or maybe do it over a weekend or do like a Friday and then a Monday. And then he had a really excellent point, which was it actually doesn't take that long to figure out, like, it might just be like a, uh, day. And you just see that the person like, operates at a tempo that it isn't where it needs to be, even though they behaved a certain way during the interview process. Now I'm a big fan of job simulation in the interview process. So you can like do kickouts there, like whether that's written screens or kind of like mock demos and mock discos. But sometimes, you know, that person can present really well and then it just turns out that like, you know, they're, they're less directed, um, when it comes to like sitting down and grinding. They're. They, they don't have the, you know, they don't have the capacity. They don't have exactly what it is they. That you need. So it doesn't take long. I think that's. That was his point. And I think you're another person who's, who's kind of, who's documenting this.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, so that's one part I think that like the, uh. Yes, there's some behavioral interviews as a quick like, case study, but the work trial is indeed, to your point, very predictive. Um, if someone is a culture fit. Um, and B, if someone actually like, um, is, is. Is. Is. Is a freaking good like at this job and has the, has the slope because like in the early days of startup, you higher slope over intercept for the most part. Um, I think we figured out it takes 40, 50 hours, um, like together. But, um, I actually have that at hand. Right now we're in work trial with multiple. Because we're scaling right right now, like with multiple, uh, new sellers. Uh, we're still doing this. Uh, people still the top talent, love this because they take a big bet in their career. Um, and then, uh, there's one, uh, seller, like, he's top at his company, um, and you just work that out. Like in the early morning, in the afternoon he does his day job and then like 3 o' clock he walks in, uh, shadows, kind of like one of our sellers. Like, and then like works the evening with us to iterate on that and then works towards his, to your point, simulation, which is this like mock demo that we ask that person to do. And why you want 40 to 50 hours. Like um, there's no context that these people have on like this business, right? So you give them 40, 50 hours, they can obsess over calls, shadowing, iterating with the team as much as they want, being in the office with them and all. We want to see within 40, 50 hours how steep is your slope. And we have a really good cohort of people we can compare right now in addition to that, uh, culture fit, uh, like if you spend multiple dinners and lunches together with each other, you really see the true colors of someone. Right? Like especially in sales you can still, if you're decently good bullshit pretty well in one lunch or two lunches. But like if we actually spend a lot of time together, I can fairly quickly tell if this person actually has a really good time with us. Um, and then if they're, if they're actually like real. Um, so like that, that's one thing that like very uh, contrarian or more and more accepted but like works extremely well for us.

Speaker A: Like it's, it's an emerging, it's an, it's a, an early adopter technology for startup hiring.

Speaker B: Um, and uh, so far great success with it and especially all the talent tells us, um, like exactly, if I were to build a company, how I would do it. And then secondly, nobody, even the people that didn't get a job like tell us this is a fantastic experience because I've seen on what a company looks like that has real product market fit and kind of like approaches things very differently.

Speaker A: Um, well, so, so that's good. What, like, what was less good? Like what kind of mistakes have you guys made when it comes to sales, hiring?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's one more thing because I love talking about shit that went wrong. But like, um, and I think you emphasized this as well when we started talking like about this. Um, one thing I also like want to mention is like uh, drilling, drilling, drilling. Um, and I think what worked really well with the early sellers is like the shadow and reverse shadow process. So uh, again, not a surprise after we talked for a while again, but like very methodological we approach that. So where other people stop, it's like, hey, good Luck. We did a work trial. Uh, we basically like sent you to maybe a doctor office to go figure out what the job manually looks like. You watch a lot more recordings and then maybe I shadow a few calls. You shadow me first and Hugh and then you're done. We went to a very elaborate shadow, reverse shadow process where uh step one is kind of like they shadow me, they're off camera and we iterate, iterate, iterate after the call on all the gaps these people like have. Right. Then like they uh. Um. Active like shadow. So they sit in the call like with me they're the co pilot. Like I'm the pilot. Then like we do the reverse active shadow where like they, we together sit in the call. But Stein uh, is co pilot and then this person is like pilot and then I'm off screen and like it's pilot seller basically that, that runs the meeting.

Speaker A: You're the comfort blanket. Right? But you're not supposed to be there.

Speaker B: Correct. So like that process like took a lot longer or we take, we do, we take a lot of time for that because uh the results I see like from that is are like spectacular. Like the, the. That is definitely the other thing that like when you think you install this phrase in me when you think you're done like then like dial it up a notch or two. Um and then kind of like you get where you want to be. So I think that that that uh uh stuck ah with me. Um, and, and I see work really well and the people appreciate it because uh. I think one thing that I noticed by working in all these companies, they grow so quick. Um, and I've seen headcounts growth 7800 people in one year. Right. It's quite wild. Um, and one thing that I always like took with me when I said when it's my time to start my journey which I'm doing right now, I'm like I'm going to put a fairly unreasonable amount of effort into kind of like not only hiring and therefore also the bet is a lot safer but also like uh onboarding like people and then institutionalize that. Well because I think the best organizations like actually spend quite a lot of time on like ramping and then of course fire fast when people uh do not perform. Uh but I think that people forget to do kind of like that middle part which is like uh, if the person fails it's typically I think high upput management and the growth like the fault of the M manager that that person didn't get to work. Right.

Speaker A: So like um, you either, you either selected them wrong or you, you onboard wrong. Regardless, you should, you should, you should figure it, you should figure it out. But like you know, put in the effort in order to make sure that they're on again. This kind of goes back to the ICP thing, right? But it's, it's uh, it's seller icp, right. Just being very, very, very narrow. Right. So we don't waste their time. We don't waste, don't waste your time. And we get, you know, we're very efficient. Um. What, um, what, what, what didn't work well?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, because of course this is also iteration required. Yeah, let me think. The, the main thing that comes to mind is that like we uh, moved forward or proceeded like with people that like at the get go are not really aligned in terms of like values. Like I think if one thing we talked about in this call, Frederik want to play long term games with long term people and like build this unique uh, roster of people that becomes like the next group, um, that says oh that's the Lassie sales team and go to market team. Right. Like that's the gold standard of this era. Like people come out of that place, start running functions, start their own companies, uh, etc. So uh, then we took a very similar approach like uh, as um, we did with other functions like engineering or in fact what Ramp did as well in the early days that like we want these people that come in to be actual owners of the business and not renters, like if you will. So that means that we were looking for people that wanted to play the long game and build this business if things go well over the coming years and then also give them a significant upside that uh, normally only would be available for engineers, uh, or for other types of teams. Right. Because it's quite unusual to give people significant like equity upside. Um, and I think we moved forward too long with people kind of like that we're not aligned with that ah, like uh, like philosophy. Um, because we were looking off these like early people that we talked about at Ramp or Square, um, uh, that, that are more than coin operators. And I think like when we stopped doing it, um, and we kind of like moved forward with the people that were just like in that category of like hey, I want to really help build a very large business and like want to be an early seller in like a future ramp, uh, and also have ownership and upside like in it. And I want to be the one that sets like helps to set the philosophy and like build out the teams and be the sales manager of these people, um, help build the tools and refine the product. Um, like these people are wired like differently. Uh, and then when we shift kind of like towards like only talking and interviewing like those folks like that had a really big impact uh, on like hiring.

Speaker A: Yeah. The funny thing about that is that to the ICP point earlier is not only were you really focused on it, you didn't start there.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Right. You didn't start with um, it sounds like you started with you know, maybe ah, a broader kind of scope of what an early seller might look like. But then you realize that and this is probably related to the product thing and like product intensity or kind of product focus as well. Sorry. Of the pioneer seller in question that you also wanted them to be kind of like compensated a little bit like a product manager as well. Where like it's more, more equity upside, um, than just kind of like hey man, like I'm just here to, to close some deals and make uh, you know, and make, make good commissions. Right. I m love it. I mean Stein, this is super fantastic. So many things that we covered. But if you could think about yourself 24 months ago, 36 months ago, kind of starting this, this sales journey would kind of like your. Be. Be your parting shot to someone who's 24 months behind, who's targeting, you know, the SMB, maybe targeting a less technical buyer audience. What would kind of be your takeaways for them?

Speaker B: Yes, I think I'm um. One very clear thing in mind and that is that I think everybody listening to this call will in theory agree with all the stuff we discussed. Right. It's like narrowly define your icp, stick your guns, hire people that kind of like are aligned on kind of like building this business with you for the first few. I think there are a lot of these things that people will say after listening to this call. Yep. Uh, that's what I'm going to do. And then the real world kind of like happens and my.

Speaker A: Everyone's got a plan till they've been punched in the face.

Speaker B: Read your book. Right. And says like this is kind of like the playbook you need to follow. And then like quite often because business is murky, it's. It's dirty. I am operating a company myself. So that's why I love this conversation as well. Because it's not that often that I'm not heads down doing the actual thing, which I love. I love building companies and building these teams. Um, so like it's not that often that I sit in opine and kind of like you know, give a lecture at Stanford like about this. Which maybe eventually I'm glad that you

Speaker A: took the time to do that for us.

Speaker B: But like the stick your guns, that's kind of like my main advice. So like if you believe, which I'm not going to tell people, do it the way we did it because sample size is 1. This is our journey. Right. Like, like um, I'm that type of founder that will say this is the only way to do it. But if you believe like you've heard things that like this is how you should, you want to approach it. The cool thing is you're the founder or an early team member because not only the founders, but the early team as you know, has a lot of like agency. Especially with right. Founders like us, like you uh, own a very big part of the outcome and the problem that we're after like next stick to you once. If you believe that this is the way to do it then like don't uh, let anyone else tell you uh, to do this like differently. No investors, no advisors, no team members, not uh, your co founders. Um, like that's kind of like what I would do. And in our case it led to pretty like great results so far. And like I'm convinced that this is the foundation of uh, like a really large like company. Um, and you never know right, like what happens. But I think this, that's, that's my parting like thoughts that uh, I told myself ah, and Frederic and I told ourselves 24 months ago and like we repeat to each other ah every like once in a while. Um, and uh, I hope that people will take in uh, when they're like a little behind us in this journey.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think that oftentimes founders need to be reminded that they should have you know, confidence in the decisions that they're making. Because so much of the time you have vendors who are telling you to do a certain way and they potentially have, you know, usually vendors have a uh, you know, monetary incentive to, for you to do it a certain way. And so I mean this is kind of the crux behind founder led sales is uh, doing things from first principles because you were, you as the founder are the closest to the metal when it comes to the problem area, the potential, the technology that can solve. And so I think what your observation is like yes, you can, you can do that in front of the sales, but also just generalize that across the rest of the um, you know, all the other fun things that you have to do, aside from sales, uh, as a. As a founder. Well, Stein, this is absolutely fantastic. I appreciate you taking the time to spend time and share this with, uh, share all of your experience with all of the folks who are, again, 24, 36 months behind you. Um, good luck, and we'll see you soon.

Speaker B: Okay, thanks, Pete. Was. Enjoy.

Speaker A: Okay, bye.