July 24, 2023
What insane focus looks like and why you need it to survive
Everyone pays lip service to focus, but few understand what it really means.
Those who are truly focused often do things that look insane. That's why we say that before product-market fit, "Only the Insanely Focused Survive".
01:23 - Only the Insanely Focused Survive
08:00 - When You're Going from 0 to 1, Everything is 0s and 1s
WEBVTT
00:00:00.650 --> 00:02:59.069
So again, doing these series now about , uh, you know, kinda like lessons learned, I guess you call it from, from the episodes we're recording. And the idea is the whole point of this show is to help you, the early stage founder, find product market fit. And, you know , thinking through it, I think interviewing other founders and pulling out stories and threads is a good start . I do think learning from case studies, learning from narratives is helpful, but I also figured, you know, if I can kind of take the story, take that narrative and pull from it, you know, 1, 2, 3 key ideas that that resonate with me at least , uh, that , that would just add another vantage point that would other, that would also kind of help get some of these ideas to, to click right, to really stick . I think important things are worth repeating and repeating and repeating again because subs are hard and this stuff is hard and that's why most startups fail and that's why few founders end up being, you know, as rich as Mark Zuckerberg. Like this is, this is a tough journey and every little edge I think matters. So with that said, you know, I spoke with uh, uh, former ai, the co form ai, which is deal , he has an incredible, incredible story. I , you know, I'm not gonna summarize it here. You can listen to the episode, but let me share a few stories or , or ideas that that really resonated. The first one's this, the first one's when, you know, when you start a startup, one of the things you're gonna hear over and over and over again is this idea of focus, right? And everybody from an investors, advisors, you know, startup books, whatever, everything's gonna tell you, you have to be focused. Focused really matters. I think everybody accepts it, right? Because like, why wouldn't you focus? Obviously if you unfocus, I mean, unfocusing is just, you know, it's not good , it's clearly bad. So that's something nobody's gonna do . And I remember when I was a founder, like I understood, okay, focus matters. The problem is there's a huge difference between focus and insane focus. And the only way you really realize what that difference is, is through examples. And Nabil is the perfect one. So let me give you a few examples of things that Nabil touched on that just show what maniacal, what insane focus looks like. And it's truly insane. Like some of the stuff, I'm not saying you should do it. Like I'm not even saying they're good ideas themselves. What I am saying is they showed Nabeel's insane focus and only the insane focus, only the insanely focused survive when it comes to zero to one. So for example, right, like Nabil told , he tells me that when he started, he devoted his entire house to his startup . He said he had 20 piano , no office, right? So his, his house was his office. He had 20 people working outta his office. Basically the only part of his house that was his was his bedroom. Again, I'm not saying like, oh, that's what you need to do, but his point was he was so committed to making form AI work, it became everything. And so he didn't even care whether he had like space in his own house. The only thing he cared about was making former AI work. And because he was bootstrapping
00:02:59.319 --> 00:14:54.309
And he didn't have money for an office, if that meant people working outta his house, then so be it. So I was, that's the first story . The other one is, he told me that when he was, and this is pretty crazy, right? So like when he was a week away from shipping to, to his first enterprise customer and he gets in a car accident where this like, actually it's 18 wheeler hits his car. Unfortunately nobody was hurt , nothing like seriously bad happened. I mean, imagine that, right? Like if somebody hits your car, creates like serious damage, you'd probably need to deal with it, right? Like you probably need to call the insurance company. You need to figure out, get the other person's information, make sure that the repairs are paid for, et cetera , et cetera . But not Nabil like Nabil just ignored it. He fully ignored it and his thinking at the time was solving this insurance thing, getting like whatever 5K or 10 K is not going to help me deliver to customers on time. And that was this thing like he that was insanely focused on delivering to customers on time. So he just ignored it. And he told me even to this day, he doesn't regret it because the only thing that mattered was delivering to customers on time. I mean, it's pretty insane, but that's my point. It's insanely focused. When you're a startup , right? When you're a startup , you have very few resources. That's like by definition just every single startup's under resource, under capitalize . So if you're not truly focused, you basically, you're already dead. Like you're just, you're just on your way to dying cuz there's no way you can compete with everybody else that's inevitably in the marketplace when you're so under-resourced unless you focus. Now the flip side is if you actually become insanely focused, then you can unlock a superpower and you can literally walk through walls. And we talk about this a lot, right? Like founders that can walk through walls. What does that really mean? Like what does that really look like? Here's the story. So when Nabeel finally has a chance, he's selling enterprise, enterprise is all about land and expand, right? He finally has his first expansion opportunity. So he sets up an in-person meeting with this customer who's out of Ohio, Nabeel's based at Toronto. He goes to the airport with his co-founder to find out he's , it's in February. So he finds out that actually his flight was canceled cause of the weather. So whatever he books a separate flight, pretty terrible flight for whatever it's worth. I mean he is going from like Toronto to like LA and then taking the red eye back to Ohio. So it was gonna be terrible, but whatever. He books it, he thinks it's important to like be there in person and just show the customer how determined he is. But anyways, he gets on the plane and the plane like, you know, CLO closes, the gate leaves, it's on the runway and it doesn't take off. And he keeps getting delayed and delayed and Nabil just realizes this plane is not gonna make it's connecting flight. He's gonna miss it and then he's gonna miss the meeting and he can't have it. But here's the thing, right? And just think about this, and even myself, I thought about this, right? You're in a plane, you're in the runway, the doors are closed and there's a snow storm . What are you gonna do ? Like what are you actually gonna do? Nothing. I mean, too bad. You call the customer, you email the customer, you're like, sorry, I did everything I could. I tried so hard, I couldn't make it happen. You know, let's postpone, let's do it virtually, whatever, but not nabeel . And that's my thing is like Nabeel was so insanely focused, and this is what I mean by insanely focused, is that he then took insane actions and he pleaded with a flight attendant to let him off the plane. He was so determined that she brings him to the cockpit of the plane, he plead the pilot. And the pilot is like, I've never let anybody off a plane like this. And even though it's not even for an emergency, right? It would be one thing if he had an emergency yet is no emergency. He's literally just like, I'm late for a business meeting and the pilot lets him off the plane. And so the next day he books a flight at like 6:00 AM of course he makes the meeting and of course he closed that deal . Like of course it was gonna happen because he was so insanely focused . And that's my point. There's such a big difference between focus, which everybody, every founder you ever talk to is going to pay lip service to , and everybody you talk to is gonna tell you focus matters, I'm focused, blah, blah blah. But are they insanely focused? Are you insanely focused? Are you ignoring everything that is noise and clearly insanely focused on whatever you think matters? Well, right? For Nabi it was delivering to customers on time, shipping product. I met another founder who's insanely focused on hiring a plus talent. And everything you did was optimized for that. Are you taking your high resources and benefiting from the fact that you are a small team and that you can get fully and 100% aligned on one thing and kind of using that edge in order to walk through walls? Remember, when it comes to zero to one, only the insanely focused survive . So the other thing, and it's totally related, right? But I was thinking back again like, and I , and I go back and I always pull back like from my days as a founder to , of these stories I'm hearing to now, you know, kind of being on , on the investor side. But what I, one of the things you realize really quickly , uh, and I'm sure everybody listening here is already facing this, right? Like , cause you're a first time founder or early stage founder, whether you're Pete or not, doesn't matter. You, your list of things that you need to get done is way longer than the capacity you have of getting things done again, because you're under resourced. And by the way, if you don't feel that way, something wrong. Cuz if to any extent you're, you're growing or you're, you're kind of truly moving forward, you're gonna have so many things to do and you will not have the number of resources needed to do them all. And what happens inevitably, and what I did and what I see founders doing all the time is you have this list, you know, one way or another, whether it's written out or prioritized, what's in your head doesn't really matter, but one way or another is kind of somewhat prioritize. And inevitably you start crossing things off. The problem is you don't necessarily start at the top, you start with what's easiest. Like, okay, well we need a website, get a website done. Okay, well we need a logo, get a logo done. Okay, we need a name. Get a name done. Like anything where you can feel like, okay, if I just put in the work, I'll get the output, right? You do those things. Those are actually generally speaking the easy things. And if you really think through your list of things that you need to do, right, there's going to be a subset of them . The , the top one, two or three things that if you don't do those, you will die. You can do things four and on like four to 50, you can crush all those. If you didn't get one to three done, you're dead. Flip side is you can do one to three, ignore the rest and you'll make it to the next stage. It's very important to figure that out. And the way I think about this is, the way it clicked for me, like back then was, you know, at first I thought it was kind of shades of gray. Like you go from one to 50, from most important to least important, but it's not, when you're going from zero to one, everything is either a zero or a one. It's either an absolute must do or it's noise, it doesn't matter at all. And that's the simplest framework I can come up with to think through the things you gotta do. Is it a zero or is it a one? Don't be scared to ignore the things that are now truly gonna move you forward so that you can devote all your time and energy to the things that must be done. Here's an example from this episode. Nabil told me that he, he was well into working and developing the product with his first customer before he took the time to name his company. And the way that he named his company was because, not because he, one day he thought like, okay, I should really come up with a name. Like, let's cross that off the list. It was literally cuz his co-founder said, Hey, I'm like having trouble hiring developers because we don't even have a name , like developers store really wanna come work for a company whose name is like 0, 0 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 or whatever, like incorporation number was. So then he's like , okay, fine. And then they came up with a number, it's all tied in, right? Like he was insanely focused, that's why he didn't come up with a name. But at the same time, viewing things as just zeros and ones helps you dramatically prioritize. And so, you know, at the end of the day, things are coming up with a name for most companies, unless maybe you're like some consumer brand sort of thing, you know, often fall in the zero category. I mean, you decide what falls into zero, what falls into one. But just remember when you're going from zero to one, everything is either a zero or a one. The last thing, and and I'll touch on this quick , we , we talk about this a lot, you know, through the show, one way or another it's like you go out, you do some research, you find problems we're solving, you figure out how to solve them , you get really focused, you go in, you attack a niche market and whatever, you go into the market with something and, and the whole point is like delivering value, right? Delivering value of value proposition, delivering roi . But, and this is especially a case, so Nabil , you know, he was selling into enterprise customers, big customers. One of the things that's really hard to grasp in early days to understand is like ROI is a necessary condition. I mean, if you're not pitching clear roi , just realistically no one's converting, but it's not enough. And one of the things that I think Nabil just understood innately, right? Like he just, for whatever reason, this just clicked for him pretty early on, whereas didn't for me, and it , I know it doesn't for many other uh , people listening is when you're especially like a first time founder, you have no credibility. I mean, generally speaking, startups have no credibility. But especially when you're a younger first time founder who hasn't, you know, had some massive exit or some massive success that you can point to anything like that, you have no credibility. And when you're selling , especially to enterprise, you're asking somebody on the other side to take a massive risk on you, you really have to ask yourself why are they gonna do that ? Right? Because it , it's not that clear. Like the way you could look at it is, well , I have this ROI and this is the traditional way of looking and this is how I would've looked at it, right? It's like I have this roi , this cus company's gonna benefit. They'd be fools not to buy it . But the way it really works is there's some individual in that company who's gotta decide, okay, I'm gonna , I'm gonna take on this startup , I'm gonna champion this startup in here and I'm gonna make or break my name on the success of the startup. And from that vantage point, ROI is just not enough because when you have no credibility, you are just a massive risk. And that's why most enterprise type customers are just gonna shut the door on you . It's just not worth it for them on just like raw calculus. And so you have to do everything you can do, not just to prove and have case studies and all this good stuff that you know, there's gonna be roi . You have to do that to also have to go in with the idea that you have no credibility and you need to build credibility really quickly and you need to be proactive about it, right? So the Nabeel's story was , uh, he's pitching a solution to some enterprise customer and enterprise customer was like, ah , I don't really know you guys are a startup . I don't wanna take a risk. So nabeel's like, let me prove it right? Show me, send me your data and I will show you that we can, you know, and it kind of doesn't matter, you can listen to the episode to , to understand the , the context of what exactly he was selling and all that stuff. So the point, the point is, is like , gimme your data and we will show you what we can do. And so the customer gives him his date on like a Friday and I don't know , like might have been testing him or something. And by Monday, 48 hours later, you know , bill turns it around, has this like super, you know, dense and he still looks at the deck today. He , he's like still proud of the work that he did back then, right? And just showed back to the customer, look , here's what I can do and that it's everything about it, right? It was the, the drive to be like, let me prove it to you, right? It was also the speed of execution and of course it was also the results themselves. All three of those things came together so that the buyer, the champion, the potential champion in this case can be like, okay, I have a reason to believe. And so the, the kind of concept here is just realize if you're a early stage startup, especially if you're a first time founder in the eyes of your customer, you have no credibility. So do everything you can to get it.
00:00:00.650 --> 00:02:59.069
00:02:59.319 --> 00:14:54.309