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Back to An 86-minute guide to finding PMF | Rob Snyder (Author, The Power of Pull), with Rob Snyder.

Do Design Partners Ever Buy?

Rob Snyder has yet to see a design partner be helpful, and the partners he has watched never buy. He leaves open that design partners might help in some contexts. What he has seen, basically every single time somebody has a design partner, is that you recruit a design partner who quote unquote buys into your vision for the product, they give a bunch of feedback, and they never buy from you.

They never buy. The feedback was the partner playing Steve Jobs: the partner is there to help a startup, versus having something they are actually trying to get done. People who already have something really important they are trying to get done do not want to be a design partner. They just want that thing done.

Grokipedia·Steve Jobs

Transcript

An 86-minute guide to finding PMF | Rob Snyder (Author, The Power of Pull) ·

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

More from this episode

  1. What Is the Pull Framework?Rob Snyder says the pull framework describes a person who will pull a product out of a founder's hands, someone who would be weird not to buy.
  2. What Is Pull as a Buying Test?Rob Snyder treats pull as the test for whether someone will buy. The project is a job already on the to-do list, such as hiring more employees.
  3. How Does Rob Snyder Treat the Pull Framework?Rob Snyder treats the pull framework as upstream of a product idea.
  4. How Do Two Slides Test If Customers Will Buy?Rob Snyder recommends two slides for testing whether a customer will buy.
  5. What Should You Ask First on a Sales Call?Rob Snyder says the first question on a sales call should be why the other person took the call.
  6. How Do You Pitch After the Buyer Explains the Job?Rob Snyder says that once a buyer has explained the job they are stuck on, the pitch stays small and simple.
  7. Does a Product Have to Be 10 Times Better?Rob Snyder says he does not know about the idea that a product has to be 10 times better than the existing solution for anyone to care, and that idea does not…
  8. Why Do Design Partnerships Repel Serious Buyers?Rob Snyder says a free design partnership is a negative signal to people who actually have pull and a positive signal to people who do not.
  9. What Is Goblin Mode for Founders?Rob Snyder calls goblin mode a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency move for founders.
  10. What Is a Startup Case Study Factory?Rob Snyder defines a startup case study factory as the system for repeating one customer story an infinite number of times.
  11. Why Won't a Much Better Printer Get Bought?Rob Snyder will not buy a printer that is a hundred X better for his house, because he is not blocked.

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