Lenny's Newsletter · Product & Work
TIER 4 2022-07-19
 Welcome to part three of our six-part series “Kickstarting and scaling your consumer business.” If you’re just joining us, here are links to previous posts, and a sense of what’s ahead: - **[Step 1: INSIGHT: Come up with your idea](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kickstarting-and-scaling-a-consumer)** - **[Step 2: AUDIENCE: Identify your super-specific who](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-super-specific-who)** - **Step 3: HOOK: Craft your pitch** ← This post - **[Step 4: REACH: Find your early adopters by doing things that don’t scale](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-find-first-users)** - **[Step 5: RETAIN: Iterate until enough people stick around](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-kickstart-and-scale-a-consumer-9c8)** - **[Step 6: SCALE: Build your growth engine](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/growth-engines)** **The main question we’ll be answering in today’s post:** How do you get your super-specific who’s attention? Again, a disclaimer: following these steps will not guarantee success. But it will increase your odds.  People are busy. They’re bombarded with ads and life responsibilities, and have absolutely no reason to pay attention to your product. As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen put it, “Their time is already allocated.” To have any hope of grabbing someone’s attention, your pitch can’t be just good. It needs to be remarkable. Something worth remarking about. Watch this 30-second clip: [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBIVlM435Zg) > #### “Competition is so fierce that you have to create something remarkable in order to succeed. Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. The opposite of remarkable is very good.” > > #### —Seth Godin, author of *[Purple Cow](https://www.amazon.com/Purple-Cow-New-Transform-Remarkable/dp/1591843170)* When Tony Xe launched DoorDash in 2013, he spent weeks going door to door trying to convince restaurants to sign up. It was a slog. He pitched them on the value of food delivery and mobile technology and on the promise of new customers. Growth was slow and restaurant owners were unimpressed. One day, he finally found a value prop that worked: > #### “What I realized was that we were selling *revenue*. Unless you hated money, you should sign up with us, because you didn’t pay us anything until you got a sale. It took me a while to realize this. I hadn’t sold anything before, so I had to learn it.” The product stayed the same, but the new pitch changed DoorDash’s trajectory. Similarly, when Scott Belsky first tried to convince designers to put their portfolio on [Behance](https://www.behance.net/), he had a really hard time. > #### “Inviting top designers to showcase their portfolio on a website they could barely pronounce and had never heard of was a fruitless endeavor. Nobody cared or had the time.” Eventually he adjusted what he was pitching designers, and his luck immediately turned around: > #### “We contacted the 100 designers and artists we admired most and instead asked if we could interview them for a blog on productivity in the creative world. Nearly all of them said yes. After asking a series of questions over email, we offered to construct a portfolio on their behalf on Behance, alongside the blog post. Nobody declined. > > #### This initiative yielded a v1 of Behance that was jam-packed with projects, each from 100 top creatives, built the way *we* wanted. This manual labor was the most important thing we ever did. It solved our chicken-or-egg problem.” Netflix iterated on its product offering for 18 months and eventually found a hook that worked, as Marc Randolph (former CEO and co-founder) shared: > #### “Hundreds of failed experiments later, and after many a sleepless night of worrying, we finally tested the unlikely combination of ‘no due dates, no late fees’ and ‘subscription’ that ultimately was the thing that ended up working. And boy, did it work. Within days of testing it, we knew we had a winner.” The question you need to be asking yourself: **What is your remarkable hook?** Here are some examples of great hooks that helped launch massive consumer businesses:  Nail your hook and you’ll notice an immediate shift in interest, growth, and engagement. Miss the mark and you’ll continue to struggle. ## How to craft your hook There are many approaches to coming up with your hook. I’ll share four. My advice is to try them all. Feel out which path leads you to something that excites *you*, grabs your *potential users’* attention, and tells your story in as few words as possible. As you start to see what’s working and what isn’t, keep tweaking. Almost no one got this right the first time. Before you start, make sure you’ve come up with your [super-specific who](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-super-specific-who). Also don’t overthink the difference between a hook, a pitch, a value prop, a tagline, and positioning. They’re all important, but in the end, you need to figure out a way to describe what you’ve got, in a compelling way, and get someone to care. Here’s four ways to do this: - Strategy #1: What’s unique about your product? - Strategy #2: How do your users describe your product? - Strategy #3: What job is your product doing for people? - Strategy #4: What about your product is likely to grab people’s attention? You can use this [simple B2C GTM template](https://docs.google.com/document/d/19k7oXAYb9qkra6FTUMPljW75YZfUfWEr0eTITZvDe6s/edit?mode=html) that I introduced in the previous post to capture your ideas. #### **Strategy #1: What’s** ***unique*** **about your product?** Start by making a list of products that your users currently use to solve the same problem your product does. For example, Uber solves the same problem as taxis, DoorDash solves the same problem as old-school delivery services, and Robinhood solves the same problem as regular brokerages. Now compare this alternative with your product. **What’s** ***unique*** **to your solution?** Not only better, but what’s different? For DoorDash, it’s variety, convenience, and a slick mobile app. For Uber, it was lower cost, convenience, and reliability. Use these unique attributes to craft a pitch. For Netflix, it was **no late fees**:  For Robinhood, it’s **$0 commission**:  For Amazon, it was access to **millions of books at a low cost**:  For WhatsApp, it was a fast, clean experience:  [Arielle Jackson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariellerjackson) shares a bunch of great examples of finding a “foil” in [this excellent First Round Review piece](https://review.firstround.com/great-startups-deserve-great-brands-build-a-strong-foundation-by-avoiding-these-mistakes#mistake-3-not-carefully-considering-your-category#mistake-5-emphasizing-emotional-instead-of-functional-benefits-in-your-early-messaging#mistake-4-focusing-on-the-wrong-foil#mistake-5-emphasizing-emotional-instead-of-functional-benefits-in-your-early-messaging#mistake-4-focusing-on-the-wrong-foil):  Here are a bunch more examples courtesy of [Julian Shapiro](https://www.demandcurve.com/playbooks/above-the-fold#2b792zvigbgm724x4udiri), comparing a bad alternative and good alternative, to isolate the differentiating element:  **What’s your** ***differentiated*** **value?** #### **Strategy #2: How do your users describe your product?** Pick your 10 most obsessed users and ask them how they describe your product. What words do they use? What functionality do they focus on? Mold those words into a pitch. For example, when Drew Houston saw his early users describing Dropbox as a USB drive replacement, he ran with it: “Throw away your USB drive.”  For Behance, the word Scott found most used was “exposure,” and for DoorDash they were “Revenue for your restaurant, risk-free.” **What words and features do your** ***most obsessed*** **users mention most?** #### Strategy #3: What *job* is your product doing for people? If you’re not familiar with the [Jobs-to-Be-Done framework](https://uxdesign.cc/8-things-to-use-in-jobs-to-be-done-framework-for-product-development-4ae7c6f3c30b), the basic premise is that your users are “hiring” your product to do a job for them. We “hire” Google to find things on the internet, we hire Verizon to be able to call people, and we hire Domino’s to satiate our hunger. So here’s the question: **What are users hiring your product for?** Apple nailed this when it launched the iPod, recognizing that people didn’t care about a better music player—they cared about listening to their favorite songs on the go.  Uber got right down to the job you need done—getting a car on demand:  Simply match the needs and wants of your users with how you pitch your product: I need X + we have Y = magic.  [Here’s a guide](https://uxdesign.cc/8-things-to-use-in-jobs-to-be-done-framework-for-product-development-4ae7c6f3c30b) to help you think through the jobs to be done for your product. **What job are users hiring your product to do?** #### Strategy #4: What about your product is likely to grab people’s attention? A final strategy is simply to think of a way to capture people’s attention. Look for something bold and very specific. Zillow got attention early on by launching its Zestimate tool, with the pitch “How much is my home worth?” Who could resist wanting to know?  Duolingo [pitched](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ht4qiDRZE8) “Learn a new language [for free!] while simultaneously translating the web.” Bold!  [Everydae](https://www.everydae.com/) pitched acing the SAT with just 10 minutes of studying a day. How could a student not pay attention to that?  And Domino’s is famous for its 30-minutes-or-free pitch:  **What the boldest way you can pitch your product?** #### For more advice, check out these in-depth guides: 1. [A quick-start guide to positioning](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/positioning) by April Dunford 2. [Positioning Your Startup Is Vital—Here’s How to Nail It](https://review.firstround.com/Positioning-Your-Startup-is-Vital-Heres-How-to-Do-It-Right) by Arielle Jackson 3. [How to Write a Value Proposition in 5 Simple Steps](https://jacobmcmillen.com/how-to-write-a-value-proposition/) by Jacob McMillen 4. [Above the fold](https://www.demandcurve.com/playbooks/above-the-fold#2b792zvigbgm724x4udiri) by Julian Shapiro 5. [My step-by-step guide to landing pages that convert](https://marketingexamples.com/conversion/landing-page-guide) by Marketing Examples 6. [For the love of God, please tell me what your company does](https://hackernoon.com/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell-me-what-your-company-does-c2f0b835ab92) by Kasper Kubica 7. [Emphasizing Emotional Instead Of Functional Benefits In Your Early Messaging](https://review.firstround.com/great-startups-deserve-great-brands-build-a-strong-foundation-by-avoiding-these-mistakes#mistake-3-not-carefully-considering-your-category#mistake-5-emphasizing-emotional-instead-of-functional-benefits-in-your-early-messaging) by Arielle Jackson 8. [Shopify’s Slogan Maker](https://www.shopify.com/tools/slogan-maker) ## My pitch isn’t working. What do I do? If you’ve been pitching your product and no one seems to care, one of three things could be happening: 1. Your pitch is bad. 2. You’re pitching the wrong people. 3. Your product is not something people want. Let’s go through each scenario: ### 1. Your pitch is bad This happens all the time, and only looking back is it obvious what will work. As you saw above, it took Netflix 18 months to find the right combination of pieces that worked. And then it immediately took off. For DoorDash, it was a handful of conversations with restaurants. If you’re finding that your pitch isn’t resonating, try something else! Go back to the top of this post and try a different strategy to come up with a new hook. ### 2. You’re pitching the wrong people As we saw in [last week’s post](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-super-specific-who), Ben at Pinterest spent a lot of time pitching the wrong people. People who didn’t care or need the product. But once he found the right audience, it took off. It’s very possible that your product is awesome and valuable to people but that you haven’t figured out who these people are yet. [Go back to the previous post](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/consumer-business-super-specific-who) and revisit your assumptions. ### 3. Your product is not something people want This will be the toughest pill to swallow. If you feel like this may be what’s happening, part five of this series will explore the topic in depth, but in the meantime, here is some advice from the smart folks at Y Combinator: [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhNnkPsdohY)[Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C27RVio2rOs)[Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hHMwLxN6EM) Finally: With your startup idea, a sense of who wants this most, and a first crack at a hook, the next step is to bring all of these together and to go and pitch people. But how do you find them? That just happens to be the topic of next week’s post, and one that I’m particularly excited to share. ### Next week: REACH—Find your early adopters where they are 🥁 Subscribe to get the next issue in your inbox *Have a fulfilling and productive week 🙏* ### 📣 Join Lenny’s Talent Collective [Join Lenny’s Talent Collective](https://www.lennysjobs.com/talent/welcome) to start getting bi-monthly drops of world-class hand-curated product and growth people who are open to new opportunities.  If you’re looking for a new gig, join the collective to get personalized opportunities from hand-selected companies. You can join publicly or anonymously, and leave anytime. [Apply to join](https://www.lennysjobs.com/talent) ### **🔥 [Featured job openings](https://www.lennysjobs.com/jobs)** 1. **Fountain:** [Senior Product Manager](https://www.lennysjobs.com/jobs/d1cac1a4-674a-4342-82b9-43373ea1c283) (Remote-US) 2. **Render:** [Product Manager](https://www.lennysjobs.com/jobs/e948aaae-136d-4de6-954b-58985e9643e0) (Remote) **If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already.** Sincerely, Lenny 👋