Tough week - messed up our first webinar. I wanted to use Riverside which everyone recommended. Then when the time came, everyone got stuck on the entry page. I was in there going live yet noone was able to join.

Lost the audience at the end of the day as noone would wait 15 minutes to figure it out and rightly so.

Well, this just means we will do it again some time.

Went for a furious walk to clear my head around here:

Who lives in these buildings - damn

Listened to a podcast by decagon CEO Jesse Zhang today - AI for customer support.
Pretty competitive space. Ex gaming founder.
He was saying 2 things:

1. Don’t overthink stuff

2. Go sell and get paid. Otherwise pivot or don’t build it.

Reading Posthog blogposts says the same thing in a way. You get paid - or you pivot or you don’t build it.

They did not really mention anything about getting paid before you build it.

Met with a great fintech founder on friday in London as well.

He said we got a contract from a bank and built the product for the next 2 years.

I thought they got paid - turns out they did not. The payment was more in form of time and verbal commitment.

In my case, I can't shake this feeling that I am overthinking things.

There are hundreds of companies now who are making ridiculous money of the top of simple chat interfaces or automations that involve LLMs only barely.

My reaction could be to go build one of those things.

Then I remember one of the lessons I learned on this.

It does not matter if you build a copy. You can sell it. However, selling is damn harder if you receive the following question:

"So what is the difference to X product?"

This is not even a question.

It is the declaration that after all you said, they made up their mind that this is the same product this other X product solves for.

You can still get them as a customer. However it will require a herculean effort or a BFF-level relationship building.

When possible, you want to avoid this.
Try to set it up in a way that you don't even receive this question.

This is what we are trying to achieve with Associates

Here is the question:

"You wake up on Monday. How do you know what customer/marketing effort to go after?"

Stand still - and think about it for a second. Then respond to yourself.

If you are not satisfied with your answer (no cheating), come talk to us. We will give you early access.

Just respond to this email.

So - what did you learn this week?

Best,

Mert