This one is for all the analytical founders in our audience.
"Me-search" (the act of analyzing your own experience and projecting onto a group, like in marketing) is a villain in business schools, but Rob argues that it does hold an important insight within your reach:
Understanding how humans are not robots and more deeply grasping what PULL is and "feels like" - which is the driving force behind your startup.

We discuss when an analytical approach vs. "feelings" is appropriate, and how to do the "me-search" exercise in your life to build the instinct of looking for PULL for customers, not rational arguments.

Read the full Substack post: https://thephysicsofstartups.substack.com

Links

• Rob's Substack: The Physics of Startups
• AI Rob waitlist: https://robsnyder.org/ai-rob
• Work with Rob 1:1: https://www.robsnyder.org
• Get The Power of PULL: Amazon (https://amzn.to/48KC1yv), Barnes & Noble: (https://bit.ly/4dyMTSv)
• Connect with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsnyder1/

There's a frequent question that Rob gets from founders who are developing new technologies - it takes forms like:

• What if I'm creating a new category?
• What if the customer doesn't know they need our product?

Today, we're digging into the concept of "Latent Demand" - what a customer prioritize right now if only there was a way.

The critical concept here is that a customer is leaning against something. In this episode, we'll try to understand what that looks like and implications for founders who suspect they are targeting a "latent demand" in customers.

Blog post: Latent Demand in Rob's substack, The Physics of Startups

Links

• Rob's Substack: The Physics of Startups
• AI Rob waitlist: https://robsnyder.org/ai-rob
• Work with Rob 1:1: https://www.robsnyder.org
• Get The Power of PULL: Amazon (https://amzn.to/48KC1yv), Barnes & Noble: (https://bit.ly/4dyMTSv)
• Connect with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsnyder1/

There's a bug in a founder's brain (or at least mine) that likes to fantasize about all the benefits for customer (alleviating pain points, delivering value, helping differentiate, ...), while ignoring the more important question:

"Could they *not* buy?"

Rob helps us understand a different standard from what founders have historically used, which is requisite for a startup to find PULL at scale and hit hypergrowth: Is buying mandatory, or is it just optional?

There are some very subtle things that founders do wrong related to this, including:

• Focusing on "happiest / most satisfied / most valuable" customers rather than the ones for whom buying is mandatory
• Thinking probabilistically about customers ("4 in 10 customers with XYZ buy") instead of deterministically ("This very specific customer cannot not buy my product")

Hope this one helps you reframe the way you think about your ICP - because really, it's the most important early decision we founders make.

Rob's ICP AI skill: https://github.com/RSSnyder13/icp

Links

• Rob's Substack: The Physics of Startups
• AI Rob waitlist: https://robsnyder.org/ai-rob
• Work with Rob 1:1: https://www.robsnyder.org
• Get The Power of PULL: Amazon (https://amzn.to/48KC1yv), Barnes & Noble: (https://bit.ly/4dyMTSv)
• Connect with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsnyder1/