welcome to the prime Venture Partners podcast this is your host Amit somani and I am delighted to have with me Jen Abel co-founder of jellyfish joining us all the way from the east coast in the United States uh thank you for being on the show Jen it's wonderful to be here thanks for having me uh Jen I love a lot of your tweets and and uh you know for those of you don't follow her we'll put her Twitter handle on uh and and Jen and her firm do a lot of work with early State Founders particularly in Fast and B2B on helping them find product Market fit and getting from zero to one and one to ten so I want to start right away by you know one of the I think tweets um that I saw which said you know most you know startups never find pmf because the founder delegates sales to a non-founder way too early uh so why don't we talk with some of the you know kind of myths and realities of early stage sales and finding pmf yeah um it's it's really interesting I think there's this gross misconception of what early stage sales is I think everyone thinks it's I have a product now go figure out how to sell it and bring in Revenue and while that's partially true there's a big missing piece which is a a product is the development of a Founder's Vision right and that Founder's Vision um is not necessarily completely and fully aligned to the market reality and what I mean by that is product Market or this concept of product Market fit is really about you know how do companies get to their first let's just build a mental model on it one million of AR right um first of all going from zero to one takes way more time than most people think right of course you have your outliers um that that are out there but I don't think most companies fall into that of finding it in the first three to six months right zero to one typically takes a Founder somewhere between 18 and 24 months um you know at a minimum and really what product Market fit is all about is how do you precisely align a Founder's Vision to the market reality right it has nothing to necessarily it doesn't start with the product it starts with the problem and most Founders think that a lot of the hard work is okay we've built this product we've spent all of this time we've figured out all the the Techno the the technical challenges it takes to bring this to the market they think the easy part is now just pushing it out into the market and really where risk lives now is in the go to market right building a product is not what it was 20 25 years ago right we have a lot of low code Solutions um there's a lot of you know apis people can take and leverage um just look at the the size of the solo entrepreneur market like that's just the signal and how easy it is to get it to build a product but the market is getting more and more and more crowded and unless you can be specific with who you serve and why you're serving them you will never get there right and that starts with the founders vision so founder has a vision they bring it to Market it never stands a chance day one right product Market fit is iteration after iteration to leverage the rejection or the validation and continue to sharpen it right the market is extremely fickle and unless you are solving a very specific problem it is really hard to build trust um so when we say that Founders never find product Market could they delegate it is there is this illusion of product Market fit that Founders have which is oh I've sold two to three customers we have product Market fit first and foremost product Market fit is defined truly by an investor right is it it is an underwriting tactic for a specific Milestone a company's hit I don't think a Founder can raise their hand and declare a product Market fit I think that's more from the market and an investor right um but this delegation of sales so quickly is a it's just a big misstep Founders make because they don't want to do sales um they don't know how to do sales right they don't really have sales experience or commercial experience and they race to delegate it as quickly as possible and that delegation fails because there's only one person that has the vision and the right to iterate on that vision and that's a founder um so do not delegate sales until you have at a minimum around a million dollars of AR wonderful let me let me double click a little bit on that Jen so let's take two different paths right one which is something that we advise you know wannabe entrepreneurs and early stage entrepreneurs which is you know before you even written a line of code like go figure out and do customer Discovery real well so let's park this for a moment we'll come back to this in a second and the second one where you said look I've already built a product maybe there was a problem maybe there wasn't maybe this is my vision of what the market needs maybe it isn't you know whatever let's say I've already done that and I've got these three customers like you pointed out how do I now go and rejig my way into establishing this in a more seamless way right let's start with the latter like I've already built the product I should have been more spend more time on collaboration yeah but that's okay let's say I'm there right because that would be a lot of our listeners here yeah that's typically when you look at a first-time founder most first-time Founders are I've built the product now I'm going to go in search of a problem right um which means that your pivots or your shifts all you can really pivot is your Market at this point right you've spent so much time energy and money in the product you now need to show proof that the market is willing to pay for it so where you go from there is okay what are the four or five things your product initially solve for let's just start there right um those four or five things one of them needs to be proven true in order this to work right if you can't nail if you can't identify one or align to one specific problem I don't know where you go from there right because you typically don't have the time or the resources to go and rebuild a product right because at the end of the day the product is the most flexible part of the equation so to start there you're putting the odds against you but it's been done like you know there's definitely startups out there that have started with the product and found the the market opportunity but you aren't stacking the odds in your favor you're almost going against the grain a little bit but if you can be maniacal on interviewing not selling interviewing the market on what the heck they're prioritizing and the problems that they are putting money towards how do you define prioritization everyone's like well how do I know if it's a priority Problem well there's three leading indicators of that there are historics for how they've tried to solve for it meaning there have been previous attempts right leading indicator one leading indicator two is the problem is currently being measured meaning there is a clear implication if it's not solved right there there is a monthly review of what that pain is costing them from a time or monetary perspective and then problem three is there's a clear problem owner meaning it's big enough where they put an individual delegated to manage the problem if you're not identifying a problem that falls into one of those three buckets right it's not a priority right and if they're saying it's a priority then really dig into why is there a budget line item creative for it right um because those are the things you want to look for otherwise the market in the U.S um people don't want to people it's very hard for people to be direct maybe the US market is the most direct at the end of the day but you know a stranger it's hard for not a stranger but it's hard for most people to say hey I would never use this that's a really hard thing to say to a Founder's face right so they'll just say oh this is cool right or like oh wow those are horrible things to hear like if you hear that you should be digging into why is this cool why did you say that like really address the elephant in the room because when you when you go for the why behind the Y instead of just racing a demo something and you spend the time on the why you will get more insight faster and give your chance an opportunity to get to get to that problem statement that you can align to and I think a lot of Founders make the mistake of once they've built the product now they just want to go demo it look at what we've built I've spent all my time here let me show you my baby and they just go into this spinning of the wheels of uh demo fatigue and then you ask them well what did you learn from that call what new insight do you have how do we iterate from there there's nothing to be said because they spent their entire time talking right so the biggest problem that Founders have when they build a product first is they over index there because that's where all of their time went and that's where all their their um excitement and interests live but in reality Market does not care about what you've built they care about the problem they are facing and how you are specifically built to solve for it great so so let's find out how do you calibrate on the customer stack rank right like is this a real viable problem yeah obviously if an early State founder building some snash product let's say it's a few you know thousand or even a few ten thousands of thousands low ten thousand dollars kind of uh aov just goes and says hey Jen what are your top problems in jellyfish you'll be like just get out of here right like who are you yeah am I talking to you so are there any tools or Frameworks or tricks to to sort of uh you know break the ice and really get to the the five wires here yep never ask a Founder what keeps you up at night or sorry never ask your customer what keeps you up at night you are going to get wild answers all over the place and it's dependent on the day like what keeps me up at night yesterday is probably something slightly different than what keeps me up today so avoid what I call Lazy questions like that what keeps you up at night if you had a magic wand what are you prioritizing okay you're never going to get consistent answers they're just going to be all over the place therefore a lot of noise you as the founder have a vision what is your vision write them into problem statements I.E um you believe X is faced with Y what is that why what are they faced what challenges are they faced with what unmet needs do they have you now need to go test them those are your guard rails or your constraints to these interviews if you wouldn't go and if you go interview people expecting the market to hand you vision you'll never get there right no great product has ever been built on Market consensus you as the founder have a vision you need to test your vision and if you don't have a vision right or you're expecting your investors to hand you a vision or the market to hand in vision it is a long lonely road ahead um so please make sure that before you go out and speak to the customers you know exactly the constraints you want to keep them in and who you want to talk to otherwise you're having these random walks with lots of noise and I've been doing this long enough to know I couldn't even parse out Insight from random walks and bunch of noise like it's so hard to find a repeatable theme with you know four or five constraints let alone 10 to 15 to 20. um so be extremely deliberate extremely focused and know if you are rejected right if there is a rejection that is simply just redirecting you closer to the pulse be okay with rejection because it is a process of elimination to get to product Market fit it is a game of subtraction no one buys your full product on day one you don't have that trust right so be specific find a use case but be very clear with what you want to test otherwise you're just going to get a bunch of noise and it's going to be more wasted time and effort I agree unraveling a little bit back to the customer Discovery process let's say I'm just starting up and haven't really spent 18 months and you know several full-time Engineers worth of like building this feature and that item and that workflow and whatever in that scenario as well how do you go about maybe in a more effective or an efficient manner doing customer Discovery and building maybe co-creating your vision I mean you have some yeah you have some dream which is why you started up so we get that yeah um some of my favorite engagements we've ever run at jellyfish there is no product built there's nothing bill it is a it is a second or now granted the only person that can really raise around a funding with no product bill is probably a second or third time founder so we will all agree that that is um you know reserved for a very specific set of Founders but um the beauty of not having a product fully built or not over investing in a product is you're not biased right you don't have this sense of Duty to back into something right so as a Founder all you need is a vision all you need is a hypothesis to go out and test to do customer Discovery you don't have to have a product built that is like the big learning and insight for so many of these Founders once they go through this process is the product doesn't drive customer Discovery it is the vision around the problem the founders want to solve and who they're passionate about solving it for um so all you need is that The Who and the why and then you can go out to the market the beauty with specifically at least the us because that's really what I know I don't want to speak to the other markets is when you are looking to sell to us customers the beauty with the U.S market is people are willing to take a call cold with someone they do not know if they are able to articulate a problem in an email that that person is facing they want to learn they want to know what Competitive Edge you have they want to know how a Founder thinks differently about so such a such problem the only person that has that right or that ability to get in the room with these Executives and these customers is the founder right it is a competitive advantage that Founders seem to give away so soon in the market they want to learn from you you're the most passionate Visionary person on the team they don't want to go learn from a salesperson they want to learn from a Founder so Founders need to be the ones driving customer Discovery do not delegate it that's a 10x value and opportunity to business um but most importantly you do not need to have a product Bill I know many Founders that do have an existing product and are now running customer Discovery and net new markets to figure out how can they iterate on that existing product to serve and that new opportunity so the beauty in the most efficient way to be resourceful if you're a second and third time Founders you don't even need a product built to get to Market so how about uh you know I saw this uh I think tweet a quote from you right saying your demo sucks because it's focused on the product so let's say we did some customer Discovery yeah you know we have a vision that we articulated to the customer we stack rank their problems their priorities you know tacitly or implicitly now I do genuinely want to not just pitch my vision but also my product and the benefit it provides for customer X in scenario why you have a script or a recommendation for how to run a great demo yeah your demo should never look the same for every customer let's just start there if you are running the same demo for every single customer you are doing it wrong it is high touch in the early days this is a high touch process so how do you run a good demo I want you to refer back to your better I've taken good notes from your first call what are the three things this specific founder is facing before you even open the demo regurgitate it did you hear it properly has anything changed people want to know they feel heard okay so start there what are the three things you know they're looking to solve for then ask them hey before I go in and guide this this demo is there anything specifically you want me to start out with or you want to see understand how educated they are right if they are if they have high intent and they are an inbound lead they're most likely have looked at other Alternatives let them guide you through the demo right you will learn so much about what they care about in the use cases they're prioritizing and ensuring it aligns with everything they said you will get so much Intel by letting them start it hey and it's a simple question and 20 to 30 of the time they will know they will show you what they want to say then if they don't know what you want to see which is probably a vast majority of the time say listen I'm not here to show you everything I'm going to show you the one or two things I know you care about that's it okay so start there spend all your time there because that's where their passion and interests live you won't lose them on the demo then spend some time and ask listen why do you want to do this today what have you seen that makes you want to implement this today get a real answer around what their timeline is and what it looks like okay and then say listen I can always show you more but is there anything specifically you want to see and if they say yes let them guide you a little bit more maybe there's something that's specific they want to get out of this a more demo or they want to make sure it integrates with x and x you know uh solution they have but do not show them everything why I've never met a customer in the how many times I've done this that they want to buy everything never and as soon as you put a price on it they now will say well I'm only going to use 50 of this and they're charging me fifty thousand dollars wow I'm I'm paying 50 I'm paying 25 I'm sure they're charging me 50K and I'm only going to get 25k a value that's how they think they can't help themselves but that's how they're gonna think therefore now they're like this really wasn't built for me it's a little over baked maybe there's something a little bit more lightweight out there and then you lose it okay customers want to feel like the product was specifically built for them and that they're not paying for any extra stuff so the more contained you are and what you show them the higher the likelihood they'll feel that and you'll increase your odds of success on the conversion rates so you'll probably maybe only show them 20 to 30 percent of the product that's okay because when you expand you're gonna look like a hero be like we just built this out let me show you what more we can do and all of a sudden you are this like magic that they've been looking for don't take away that Magic by showing them everything because I I can tell you day one they're not going to use everything and they're going to hold it against you it's very fascinating you say this because even you know we run a venture capital firm right time Venture when people are pitching us or when we are recommending our Founders which other investors we don't we ask them don't dump the kitchen sink go figure out their mental model go figure out what are the two to three key things you want to articulate and start there and get some common ground get some common trust built over there because just because you presented 86 slides if you got that far because they'll be distracted on slide number three is not really going to get the next meeting let alone a term sheet or a check uh wired to you right so I think picking the few things that can grab customer interest or in this case investor interest or whatever for depending on what the scenario is uh could be could be very fascinating I had a follow-up question on that which is around sure you know you said you know push the customer on why now is this really a problem what are you doing do you have any tips and suggestions for doing uh pricing Discovery right yeah um you know which is so like the customer has a problem they seem to appreciate what you're doing all that is fine but now it's like you know what this is great but I'll pay you five grand a year for this right but your aov is 50 Grand and you're not going to randomly change it just because of this customer so what are some good techniques to do price Discovery yep so I'm gonna there's there's two parts to this answer if you're in the zero to one stage stop over indexing on making pricing pricing is a science let's just put that out there pricing is absolutely a science in the one to ten million dollar stage you absolutely should bring in an expert to support you there because you're going to leave money on the table right post product Market fit bring in a pricing expert to make sure that you are taking and and receiving as much value as you can out of the customer the value you're giving you should be receiving in in addition in the zero to one stage you don't have the time resources or um right to to um what's the right word to spend too much time there right because you need feedback on the product you need to show proof people are willing to pay for it you need to prove that people are willing to stay on from the churn perspective and people are willing to continue on to continue on for many years after otherwise you don't have product Market fit so there's so many other more important pieces to the puzzle that need to happen in the zero to one stage there is a mental model and I'll tell you what it is you can use for pricing in the U.S market if you are targeting um small and mid-market businesses okay you're probably going to fall somewhere between 10 and 20K right um if it's less than that that's okay if it's found or let sales but then is it really a sales lead motion unless you have really high velocity so just be aware you don't want to be charging two thousand dollars and have a sales head and high touch sales um you should somewhere fall between let's say seven and a half to twenty cash seven and a half 7520k if you're targeting the mid Market how do we Define mid-market mid-market is probably you know 250 to a billion dollars in Revenue right mid Market seems to be something different to everybody um you probably could charge somewhere between 25k and 75k right again if they're going to pay you 25k and they're going to come on board you're probably going to accept it right you can ask for a case study you can ask for a customer reference there's so much more value you're going to extract for them Beyond just the revenue okay if you're targeting Enterprise my God please be very careful about how much you're charging I've seen people come out of the gate at 250 to 500k targeting Fortune 100. they will laugh at you they have purchased from startups before they know the game that's going on when you have limited references limited case studies limited social cred you do not get to charge your full rate okay you'll probably fall somewhere between 75 and 125k again they're going to pay you 50. get the logo get the reference get the case study that's worth 500k down the line right so do not over index on pricing because they might March you back just because you're super early and they're taking on a risk that is okay because their logo their reference their peer credibility and more importantly the product feedback you're going to get from them is far more important than an extra 25k uh and and at the very beginning of that Spectrum Jen is the willingness to pay anything at all right zero or one binary how do you figure that account that's one of the things I advise already said Founders are thinking of starting up or just an idea yeah you say hey everybody might say like you said this is cool this is interesting I do have that problem X comma y but nah I don't know if I would pay for it or I would pay almost anything for it or very little for it do you have any thoughts on that yeah there's there's two ways to think about it this is a hard thing to hear as a Founder but sometimes I have to ask them that for it to like penetrate in their mind if you gave it away for free would they use it don't even let's let's get out even just willingness to pay absolutely keep it away for free would they use it or would they put the time in to integrate because sometimes things require some level of integration if they won't even put the time willing to integrate and it's free you have a much bigger problem on your hands you have people that have been nice to you for the past couple months willingness to pay is absolutely critical especially for for investors to see in this type of Market but before even that are people willing to use it if you gave it away for free absolutely um yeah and I I encourage them to think One Step Beyond even if they're willing to pay for it that's just a litmus test right to get started is do some level of price Discovery after that and I agree with you that you don't want to push your way into any kind of pricing uh but you know saying there's this nice framework I think from this book called monetizing Innovation I think at what point would this be so expensive that you would never talk to us again at what point would it be so cheap yeah right that you think this is like can is even possible at what point would be expensive but worth it there's like this framework which we link to in the notes uh yeah and I think uh I I think figuring out at least some binary option of not just they're willing to use it or spend that money with integrating with you or sending some resource allocation on it but at least some willingness to pay because once you get stuck onto something that people perceive it to be for free it's very hard to change the perception later absolutely one of uh someone I was talking to we were talking about pricing Discovery and they said true pricing Discovery actually comes from existing customers like when they're ready to renew in year two um or you know you can have a conversation say listen when they when they see the value they're getting out of it their mindset shifts a little bit too um for the positive and the negative for the negative they might say you know we didn't really use this as much as we like um we'd be willing to stay on but it seems a little too high or in the positive if you say listen we you know we're you're you know we're going through uh uh pricing Workshop we know the we know the value you got out of it make sure you can collect that as well as the founder um you know we are going to be increasing our pricing to X see what they do um but it's sometimes hard to do pricing when when you don't know their true value you're getting out of it especially if it's you know a new a new um way of working for some of these some of these customers but yes I completely agree with you pricing Discovery is very important I just usually and Founders have so much on their plate fundraising you know getting early traction customer success all of these things are so critical to show proof of product Market fit I usually say when you have a little bit of Mind capacity pricing Discovery is critical that's usually probably in the one one to ten million dollar run got it uh let's switch gears a little bit and talk about uh marketing part of GTM right there's the pure sales net motion yes product LED growth there's inbound but what if you and I saw this quote from you which said startups should be iterating far more on that pitch yeah than their product yeah but but you can elaborate not just on that but in general like what role does you know marketing web presence you know review sites blah blah blah right in your mind have to accelerate sales from zero to one one to ten I think marketing is the most critical at two junctures in the zero to one stage right your product-led growth meaning people have to find you right therefore marketing is critical um or um you are uh like you are a truism that everyone is looking for right um you know I think in the zero to one stage it's very rare most people probably have not heard of you you don't have the brand Equity or their brand recognition out in Market yet so I think marketing and a lot of people will disagree with me on this um marketing is something that happens post sales post-proving the market is willing to pay for it why marketing as a whole is one to many right is it it's a message that you know will resonate with many folks it is not one-to-one or it's very hard to do one-to-one although most people could say well marketing can be one-to-one sure but I'm talking true one-to-one where you're in a conversation you can ask the why behind the why you can go really deep it is very hard in the zero to one stage to get real raw feedback from marketing you're not going to get it right they either just don't respond to you or they do in sales they will say nah I'm not sure if this really is a good fit for us great ask dig into the why or ask what would need to change in order for this to be a yes you don't get that you don't get to do that you know by just doing straight marketing right so uh Jessica Livingston wrote this unbelievable post I think it was back in 2014 or 2016 called um why startups need to focus on sales not marketing and it's this whole premise of you need to go narrow and deep right you need to earn the right to sell you also have to earn the right to Market right so what is that specific problem you know people are prioritizing today and willing to pay for you can't unearth that unless you go through the sales motion first right so um we are maniacal at least that jellyfish I'm a I call myself a true blue salesperson um I have much less exposure on like the true blue marketing side but I think in the zero to one stage over index you have to do sales before you can do marketing yeah no for sure for sure like you said you can't delegate sales at the early stage and you're going to learn a lot in those early sales conversations if you're intently listening and not too emotionally attached to what you've built already absolutely absolutely and um you know you have you know High touch and zero to one is high touch everything it's high touch sales it's high touch onboarding you need that unique insight to fuel and sharpen everything else so don't overspend on running a marketing campaign or spraying your Market without having that Precision nailed otherwise you're going to erode your trust real fast um let's talk about you know companies that both you work with and in general Founders you advise right in terms of fundraising yeah what makes for an effective you know fundraising pitch in your mind particularly as it pertains to getting GTM and you know product Market fit in that way like in terms of a sales motion yeah um I'm gonna caveat I'm like I'm you know I can give some guidance there from what I've seen work but I think you probably would answer this question better than I would just because this is kind of more of your expertise but from what I have seen in the zero to one journey and please correct me if I'm wrong too on it um every investor knows that no Founders initial Vision will stand true day one right it's never I've no one's ever I've never seen it right there's always some level of iteration that needs to happen therefore when they're betting on the team and they're betting on the individual because that's all you have at that point in time it is so critical for Founders to show investors where they started where they have process of elimination removed items where they've subtracted their thinking because it is going from seed into series a is all about precision and focus you don't have the resources to serve everybody and serve everything therefore what are you becoming the expert and the specialist at and so many Founders I speak to are targeting multiple different Target markets or icps multiple different use cases it is so hard to land one ICP and serve them properly let alone two or three so if you are not being extremely specific on The Who and the why with your investors I think and especially going through the fundraising process I think you'll get a lot of eyebrow raises because this early journey is so incredibly hard and if you're not Inc you know double Downing in a very specific way you can't head your way to a 10 million dollar business it's built on being Niche and specific and narrow and deep and being an expert at it knowing the problem better than the market does and so many Founders I speak to that want to do customer Discovery in the U.S rightfully so have two or three markets they want to go after and I'll tell them you get to pick one with high confidence which one do you want to test knowing that it might be invalidated and you might need to move to Market too but this is the only way you get there otherwise you're going to collect a lot of noise because everyone has different reasonings and buying and priority priorities and if you're not critically focused it just it won't work I've never seen it work yeah if I may add just a couple of things and and fully agree fully agree with you right I think being more Niche and more focused on an ICP and the problem and the use case and so forth right is is far more important uh two other things that might help you if you're pitching a VC one is you know share deep customer insights uh right so because even if you don't have the sale you don't have the ARR you're you know haven't got the crisp you know GTM motion that's fine if you have deep customer insights ironically and sadly I would say that you know eight out of 10 Founders don't uh you know that already sets you apart saying they've really gone and understood the customer and the pain Point even if they don't have the have to prove it that is one the second is um like you beautifully articulated in the journey that they have gotten to so far what have been the learning loops and often we can even see even in a short time and admittedly the time to decide to invest in companies have shrunk quite a bit but in the earlier days I need to take four to six eat you can see the con you know the learning Loop or the learning quotient I trade because we've we've seen a larger landscape perhaps you've seen a larger landscape because of the number of clients you work with and so just just make sure that every subsequent conversation let's say you're speaking to Jen as a VC and she said well 7500 to 20 000 aov that's kind of about what it is but your price at three thousand dollars in the next conversation you should be able to validate will your Market support a seven thousand dollar price point or no way Jose right that's not happening yeah or the velocity is insane right the conversation basically the customer insights and the learning Loop so the learning velocity uh is is very very important at early stage right yeah and navigating that ambiguity because all and I think people like just forget a startup is an experiment no it is unproven there's no proof that this business model will get to where you know at least VC backed uh needs to see it go right so it's all about de-risking it day after day and learning and taking that learning and iterating from that learning and letting it redirect you and navigating that ambiguity is so critical so if a Founder can show the investor here's how I navigate ambiguity like especially if you don't have traction yet I think that's probably the fastest way to build trust with investors right absolutely absolutely yeah because like you said in the initial base is really a bet on the team and the macro larger market right it's not really I think the product even some early revenues would be a false positive we don't know really at that stage totally totally yeah um so so Jen as as we get closer to the kind of wrapping up you know you I know you work with Founders globally uh including a lot of Founders from India now uh so what are some specific tips that you would give you know based on your learnings and your experience for Indian founders of for a couple of things beyond beyond perhaps what we've covered or maybe even double clicking on one or that they could do better uh and and maybe one or two things that you think that they do well yeah um I am I mean we are extremely bullish on the Indian market I think I'm not the first one to say this but I think McKinsey even called it uh this is the decade of Indian just the rising power coming out of India is just it's it's amazing right the century he said actually the Century Century sorry Century good correction India probably makes up 70 percent of our customers to date so like we are really ingrained in and bullish and super excited to be supporting this Market um the three big things that I wish every Indian founder to know is one the longer you wait to come into the U.S market the harder it is to find product Market fit that is true for any International startup right because your biases your learnings your insights and the product you build are start to become hardened to the local market needs you are serving so the longer you wait the harder it is to flex your product to meet the needs of the US market so that's one two your Traction in your local market will translate nothing into the US market it is radically different even if you have a logo and you you're working with I'm just making this up um Walmart I'm sorry uh Unilever India or Proctor and Gamble India be very careful about how you position that and I've seen this 2A U.S customer on the Procter and Gamble side here because if they say oh who are you working with using the park during game of logo and you say oh we're working with such and such division in India those they're entirely different entirely different processes buying processes objectives like sure it carries a little weight but don't say that just be careful of how you word yourself because that will that's also a quick way to a road Trust [Music] um the the third piece that's really important about the US is it always takes longer than every founder thinks to generate your first million here expect 24 months 18 to 24 months for a couple reasons one is there is some nuances about the US that you have to learn in the beginning anyway two is you will be up against multiple Alternatives from U.S headquartered companies serving similar value so the more specific you can get and the more learning you do before you go out and sell you will win if you can be super specific precise and like I said show them just what they want to say police have zero to one be led by a Founder do not delegate it to anyone else on the team um because it directly impacts directly impacts the opportunity here in fact we have started we've created a role jellyfish we won't work with anyone else but the founder because it doesn't work the Founder's Vision needs to be iterated on super quickly because it will need to adjust for the US and the U.S in order to build the fastest trust here there's two things founder-led they can go direct to you if there's any issue they can learn from you you have the highest likelihood of increasing the odds of success in the US so it's got to be founder-led and two get as specific as possible no U.S customer is going to use everything day one um they're going to want to test it out and prove the value first and then lastly the the macroeconomic headwinds have hit the US now granted it's been hit for now nine months we're past six months so we're slowly coming out of it right the impact has been endued or endured so um just know that the buying Cycles are probably a little bit longer here um because of everything that kind of has happened so um I think the three things just to reiterate founder-led do not delegate until you get your first million of ARR here in the US I've never seen it work otherwise two get as specific as possible and three do not wait the longer you wait the harder it is to find product Market fit in the US well fantastic Jen uh we could we could talk for ours uh we will definitely link to both jellyfish and your Twitter handle thank you so much for being on the prime Venture Partners podcast I had so much fun thank you so much for having me foreign listeners thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast subscribe now on your favorite podcast app for free and you'll be the first one to know when new episodes are available just search for Prime Venture Partners podcast in apple podcast Spotify castbox or however you get your podcasts then hit subscribe and if you have enjoyed the show we would be really grateful if you leave us a review on Apple podcast to read the full transcript find the link in the show notes