Smash Notes
Startup advice from Justin Kan, Stephanie Hulburt, and Naval
Which is better: B2C or B2B? When should you walk away from a sale? How do you make difficult decisions?
People
Notes
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On Build Your SaaS, Justin Jackson tells Jon Buda that a bigger audience usually means tapping people who already have a bigger audience than you do. Their method that week was to pick three tweets and use them as the whole conversation, then see if the authors shared the episode. The first tweet was from Justin Kan, after he sold Twitch and started Atrium. Kan wrote that he had thought a lot about how B2B compares with B2C, and that he now preferred B2B. Jackson says Kan has done both, which is why the thread is worth using. Show notes were promised at saas.transistor.fm.
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Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are all B2C. Possibly, you don’t hear much about B2B success because they are purchased behind the scenes. Shopify is a popular B2B app.
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To reach success with a B2C you have to ride a massive way. This means that it requires more than building a company, but you also have to be lucky. B2B is in your control, and you can ask businesses what their problems are for you to target how to solve them.
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A B2B sets a more attainable rate of success because the problems are known and are easily controlled. You have a clear execution path when attracting other businesses. You can charge money for things without needing a massive wave of growth.
When it comes to B2C it's more difficult because you need a massive user base. Getting to that point requires huge amounts of funding, debt, and the need to find a way to crawl out of the hole.
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For one host, he remembers Netflix having a lack of quality shows to choose from. Also, there was a lack of quality in Netflix’s streaming at the time. What drew him in was actually Dora the Explorer, because it was cheaper on Netflix than purchasing individual episodes on iTunes.
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On Build Your SaaS, Justin Jackson reads a Twitter thread from Stephanie Hurlburt, @sehurlburt, and tells Jon Buda why he follows her. She is an entrepreneur, and she is the founder of Binomial, which makes image and texture compression for VR, games, and similar work. Jackson says she is not really in the SaaS business. She sells annual licenses. What he values is her writing on marketing, on sales, and on being a software person, including a thread on how programmers can improve a wardrobe with a few simple changes, for men and for women. He points listeners to her thread on hard selling.
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Just move on. This also applies in sales whenever someone is not convinced by what you have to offer. You shouldn't hang on and try to convince one person. It may be tempting for yourself, but not good for business.
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Justin Jackson says that when someone pitches him, especially a product he already has a version of, he asks what makes it better. A new Slack competitor gets that question. He uses the same test on Transistor.fm. One difference he wants on the homepage is unlimited shows for one monthly fee. A well-known person, forwarded to him because of a big audience, asked what made Transistor better than Libsyn. After about five rounds of answers, Jackson decided the sale was not worth the time and walked away. If you are hard-selling every lead, he says, that is a bad sign, often desperation. The useful skill is knowing when to stop and find someone else.
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He is the founder of AngelList.
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You should choose the path that is more painful in the short-term. Pain avoidance creates an illusion of quality. When making a decision and you can’t decide, the answer is no.
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On Build Your SaaS, Justin Jackson tells Jon Buda that leading a company comes down to two jobs: thinking, and making decisions. Execution is the work Jackson likes, but he says co-founders are not graded on it. The example in front of them is Spots, the product they were weighing alongside Transistor.fm. Chasing it would hurt in the short term, because he wanted to ship fast and Spots still had a lot to prove, including whether they even wanted to be in advertising. His instinct was to keep things easy and deal with it later. He says you almost always have to force yourself to do the opposite.
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Either hard conversations equal an easy life. Easy conversations equal a hard life. It’s only a short-term benefit because it’s easier to avoid those hard conversations and save them for the future to come across them again.
Related notes
- What Is the Best Way to Spread New Ideas
- Why Did Jon Buda Partner With Justin Jackson on Transistor.fm
- How Do You Sell to Customers in a B2B Marketplace
- Why Does Jason Calacanis Say Podcasts Are Booming?
- What Does Stewart Alsop Say Podcast Notes Is Really Good at?
- Why Did the CEO of Philz Coffee Go on a Podcast to Do Customer Support
Related episodes
- Interview with Justin Kan, co-founder of Twitch and a former partner at Y Combinator.
- June 17, 2019. Weekly summary of the best podcasts on the internet. Startups and life choices. Justin Kan, Sahil Lavingia, Bryce Roberts, and James Beshara.
- Justin Kan on Vulnerability, Happiness, and Suffering in Startups
- Startup Lessons from Serial Entrepreneur Justin Kan
- Kevin Rose — the Man Who’s Seen It All
- Not Your Typical Advice
- Twitter co-founder Ev Williams: “You’re selling attention”
- E8: Jon Buda, Transistor.fm