YouSaid · the spoken record

Rebecca Lynn

lines on the record: 43
first: 2022-12-27
most recent: 2022-12-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The kindest thing that anyone has ever done for me was when I was in high school, my parents moved middle of my junior year to this little teeny tiny town where they had come from. I was at a fairly large high school with a very good academic program. And my friend's mom let me live with them for the year. And for me, that was really life-changing because I was a first generation college kid. My parents hadn't gone to college. They were doctors. So they basically kind of took me under their wing and I had, you know, straight A's and was taught in my class and all that, or not like the top top, but very close to the top. And they basically looked at me and they're like, what are you doing? And really sort of refactored, I think, my trajectory in terms of what I thought was possible. So yeah, very kind.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When people are kind of focused internally and when you can hire, I mean, you look at how many companies are laying people off and that tide is turning in terms of being able to hire just amazing talent and bring them to your company.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every 10 years, you know, venture capital is dead. And those are the best times to be in it. And here's why, and here are the companies I did. And they're all like legends, right? But it was really interesting. I remember one of them asked, I think Reed Dennis asked people in the audience to hold up their hand if any of them had ever seen a carry check. Nobody raised their hand. Nobody. So there have been large swaths of time where there were no carry checks. where adventure capital effectively was, I wouldn't say dead, but hibernating, right? But those were also the times when these awesome companies were getting built. I think it's just normal. I think if you look back at the cycles of this industry, it is cyclical. And abnormality is that we were so up into the right for so long. We should have had a reset a few years before it happened. And so I think for me, I'm excited now in my mind is the time when you can build a great company.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And crime that you can lend to very safely. There was a big dislocation and opportunity created that Lendy Club was physician for. So I actually think it's really interesting. When I came into Venture 2, there were headlines, I'd say I should go back and pull them, that venture capital is dead, venture capital is the college industry, venture capital shouldn't exist. Those were the headlines in late 2008 and 09. And I don't even know what my title was at that time, but it wasn't partner. I reached out to Dick Cramlich, who founded NEA and Reed Dennis, who founded IVP and David Morgan Thaler, who founded Morgan Thaler Ventures. And I said, can you please come and talk to people in my generation and just maybe talk us off the cliff? And it was hilarious. Like they came and it was pre-partner only. And they went back through their war stories and essentially like, oh, yeah.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not worried now. I was more worried when everything was just crazily up and to the right for forever, right? So when I entered Venture, I'd been an operator at PNG and a startup that went public, and I had my own company for a while. And I'd seen a lot of cycles. I'd seen a couple, you know, NextCard went public, phenomenal party, and then got delisted, right? I've seen it. And I've seen a bunch of those things happen. And so I came an adventure, Lena crashed in October 2008. So I came in right when that was happening. I took the bar and then came into venture. I had other things I was looking at, but I was so excited to come into Venture because I saw the opportunity that market had just been decimated. Everything was frozen. And it was a great opportunity because in these times you actually can build companies. Some of the noise kind of goes away. And we did lending club in Q1 about 09, right? I think banks were frozen. Nobody was lending to anybody. But it was an opportunity because they were lending to these super prime prime borrowers and in any market, in any economy, there is a pocket of super prime.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And so a little bit of government money, and you know, that's changed. Again, where the incentives are are what people do. You incentivize the behavior. And if you're ever asking why people did something, look at the incentive they were offered. I think on the macro level, we could talk about inflation and the economy and the GDP in China and the Ukraine and all those things that I can't control or predict at all. But what you can kind of look at is, okay, well, there's an infrastructure bill and people are changing spending habits and what's going to happen with that essentially.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In what was happening with all I look at that and I'm like, well, where can we invest there? What is something that kind of lines up with us? It reminds me a lot of like the high tech act and the Affordable Care Act and when we did the first health tech investments. And so we did practice fusion, which was the first cloud-based EMR, and it sold all scripts. And it was with the understanding that back in 09, 6% of medical records were digital, believe it or not.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, her advice. She's like the real cost in healthcare is not this quantified self thing. It's really the 10% of people who aren't literate. You look at how many people in this country can't read or write English. And then we develop all these whiz bang things to help them out. Well, voice just breaks that barrier because you can have voice technology in any language. And it really is sort of a democratizing agent, I think, for so many things and really opens up the market to everyone. So I think this AI, specifically with the voice enablement, is fascinating and all of a sudden things that we had said, hey, that's not possible. It's not going to serve particular parts of our population well. Well, now it does. And then macro. When we did lending club, it was right after Lehman crashed, right? We did Doximity really early because of our belief.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we've seen the whole thing. And I remember going down the road yelling at Siri, trying to find something. And I'm like, no, I said whatever, you know. This is before I sold Apple when I was just Siri, right? In those days, it was frustrating, but it has come so far. My kids don't know life without Google. They walk in the kitchen in the morning. Hey, Google, you know, play me some music. Hey, Google, what is this? And if it doesn't have the voice interface, they're kind of shocked, right? I look at that and I'm like, the assumption at this point is there's a voice interface. And I look at that and it wasn't that long ago that we had invested in Siri and it was pretty rough. And then also touch. But, you know, it's really this voice thing that has just has changed the playing field. And I look at that too. And I think about when I do health tech investments and I have a friend at UCSF, sort of the general population care and what was really interesting.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It came to pressure really from a couple of different directions the leap forward of GPT-4, for example, like AI is really at a point that we can really think of it very pragmatically. We were in Siri, we were a series A investor in Siri.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there's a lot of VCs out there. If we go after a deal, we typically win it because we're like, we're the perfect VC for you. We have expertise in this area. We've built this kind of team before. We believe in you and we want to help you win. And my biggest barometer is if I wasn't doing this job of venture investing and coaching is kind of how I see it, would I join or start this company? That's my goal. If I look at a company and say, damn, I wish I would have thought of that. And oftentimes there are companies, the ones I like the most are where I'm like, isn't somebody already doing that that just seems so crazy that it should just happen? And then they're not. And you think, wow, okay, well, this should be and jump in.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't make him think. It has to be a big enough market, and the product has to be designed in such a way that people can pick it up and use it. And the ethos of the CEO has to be that they understand that about the consumer and they're trying to make things much easier for them. In Case Text is a prime example. Case Tex is a company that I love having been a lawyer. Actually, I never practice. I don't tell many people I was actually even a lawyer, but I went back after working for about 10 years and got a JD MBA and took a quote sabbatical as I started a family. But case text is an interesting company that essentially creates briefs for you, probably the most hardcore artificial intelligence platform in my portfolio. Amazing company. That product market fit, the ease of use, market size, and then it has to be an area where I feel like myself or one of our teams actually can be helpful. So it has to be an area of interest.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I really look for that. The other thing, of course, is it has to be a big enough market. And so you talked about quantified self. It has to be something that the average person can adopt readily and understand. And it can't be something that makes people make like 15 different decisions along the way.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First and foremost, it's the CEO. The CEO has to be somebody that I love working with and vice versa for the next five to ten years. There's a chemistry that's really important. And I always want to know their story. And oftentimes it seems kind of random, but we ask all kinds of questions and I really want to know what is driving them. And then what kind of adversity did they have in their life? Because being a CEO of a startup is not an easy job. And I want to know that there's something fundamentally driving them to succeed and to do this company because it's going to be tough from time to time. They're going to have to make some really hard decisions. There has to be something where they can give me an example of how at some point in their life, their life kind of went to hell and they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and kept going and had sort of a good attitude about it.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sleep issues. I think the main issue that we look at in terms of cost in this country, though, is healthcare costs are continuing to rise is obesity. And it's really that. You know, if you're 50 plus pounds overweight, you then have issues. You have hypertension. You have diabetes. You have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea, you know, the number one cure for sleep apnea is lose 10 pounds. That's the big one. And then a lot of the other stuff is at the margin. I'm a personal huge advocate of corn.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love that one. So, you know, if you're sick, it's you, and you better figure it out because, you know, your doctor's home at night trying to sort you out. They're trying to have dinner with their kids or family or whatever. That is just the reality. So, you know, I was really drawn to quantified self with all the data out there. It is really, really fascinating. And, you know, the continuous glucose monitors we really like and all those things. I think with quantified self, though, you really are sort of serving this end consumer. You're serving the same pocket of people that balance their bank account every month, which is not a lot. You're sort of serving what they called almost like the worried well often. I love it personally. I have probably read every book on like diet and nutrition and toxicity. I love the microbiome. I think that's really what's going to be the big unlock for neuroscience going forward. And sleep issues. I've been all over sleep issues. My kids have.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find it personally interesting. I'm not sure if it's investibly interesting. So I've been tracking quantified self since 0809, right? I mean, I myself have dealt with some health concerns. I have a lot of people that have and really sort of delved into the quantified self-piece of it because you have to. I think my favorite quote is Warren Buffett. The only service provider in it with you is the airline pilot, not your doctor, not your lawyer, not your accountant.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This go to market platform that serves our companies and not get to distracted, not try to say, oh, we do all stages and we do everything and we do all verticals. We know what we're good at and we're really good at fintech and healthcare and marketplaces. And we're really good at helping companies figure out their marketing motion and their sales motion and scale. And that's where we continue to focus.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feel incredibly fortunate to be just in the kind of role I'm in because I never thought I would find a job that serves my sort of massive ADD so well. And so it's been really interesting. We get to see so many different things in the go-to-market. And we've built Canvas around that. We were doing it intuitively. We were helping people, you know, solve their go-to-market issues with this network that we had, but we hadn't formalized it. So we decided then to formalize the network and really focus on it and double down on it. It's what we were kind of doing anyway. And as we build Canvas, that will continue to be a big focus because we love to do series A and B. We have stayed focused on that. We tell all of our companies to focus. And so we have tried to sort of drink our own Kool-Aid. We try to continue to do what we're really good at and serve our companies in that way and continue to build out.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you say, hey, we can solve all your data science needs that's meaningless. But if you say something like companies who look just like you, same size, same problems, same vertical, we help them and we can help you too, that's really meaningful. And trying to get that positioning where, yes, you have like your umbrella positioning, which is, okay, where this whiz bang AI data science platform or we're this great fintech company, or we're going to get all your healthcare data in one spot, that's kind of your umbrella in a way. And then what you have to do is you have to then take that and verticalize it when you hit the market and tell your customer exactly how you're going to help solve their problem. And the reason to believe is we have served people just like you and just your space who had just your problem. And here's what we did for them.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Than anything else, great positioning makes the company focus. It makes the executives decide what they are not. And it's critical. When I look at companies across the board, there are very few companies, even if they're a platform player, even if they could serve everybody. There are very few companies that can go out with a super horizontal. We do it all, right? Because it's not meaningful. So what that positioning exercise often does is it tells you what you're not and who you serve. And oftentimes it can shift over time. That's one of the things we try to really tell our CEOs is you have to have a vision of not only who you are today, but who you're going to be later, because that helps them understand that you can be that everything to everyone in five or six years. But today, the people you're serving may be in a vertical. And to get the customer to come in, you really have to verticalize that marketing message.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I am super impressed if they're like this one, this one, this one, and this one. And this is why. And oftentimes it's because they weren't ready yet. The customer wasn't ready yet. They weren't their ideal customer. And it's really hard. It's hard to talk to early stage CEO who has a massive company like Walmart or Apple or TikTok that wants to come work with them and tell them that that's a really bad idea right now. And it's just the timelines don't meet. And a lot of things don't meet. And it's like, that's super flattering, but that's kind of for a day later when we're a little bit further along.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's normal. People kind of beat themselves up over this, but they shouldn't because everyone gets it wrong initially because you're starting a new company. You have a new product. You might not know who your ideal customer is at first. And the really, really, really hard but critical thing for everyone to do is say no to some people. That's really the second question I ask is how many customers have you said no to?”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so just what I was going to say, people do what they're incentivized to do. And so you really have to be clear about your incentive program. So the salespeople have to do so many deals, so much revenue. They sign those contracts and they're done. And then the success people oftentimes they're maybe not incentive-based comp or maybe more of like an anti-churn kind of thing. And in reality, ownership can't stop from the sales group until I think they're stood up, that customer is stood up. And then also, you know, on the other end, bringing that customer success person forward into the sales process to do a sanity check on is this a customer that's going to be good for us or not?”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most common break is that handoff from sales to customer implementation, like success, always broken. There's other places that are usually broken too, but typically that's almost always broken initially, where the salesperson goes and sells a deal and then success has to pick it up. And then for some reason, there's a miscommunication in that process or there's not complete understanding and it takes too long to set the customer up. The customer's not the right customer for some reason. They didn't really have a good understanding of what their ideal customer looked like. It takes some work. I mean, I went into my company at Figure 8, which was an AI and machine learning and helped with this a lot. And actually took over the CEO for a bit and learned this firsthand again on the ground is that that's usually broken in some way.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't even realize it had its own nav bar slot. That's pretty awesome. I go to Market Council came about and it really has always been about, but we just formalized it, I would say. And the reason we did is that we were all talking over many conversations about when companies won, when companies like Lending Club or Doximity or Luminar or the whole host of these companies, like when they won, what mattered? What did we do that was different? And how can we do that more and better? And I thought about it and I'm like, well, it's marketing marketing and marketing. And it's funny because marketing kind of has this weird name sometimes with endmares. A lot of people don't even understand what marketing is in a way. Or maybe we just have a different definition.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm always mystified by people who assume, and I say, well, who's your customer? And they tell me, and I said, well, have you looked at the data to tell who your customer is and what kind of geographic spread that has or male, female age or whatever? And it's really interesting how long sometimes it takes. And for me, that's just so fascinating to really understand who's adopting early, what that life cycle is, what country it is. I mean, there have been a few companies I've diligent in the past where like, here's how many customers we have. And we crack that open. And they're not interesting customers, right? Because they're in a bracket either, maybe not in the US, or maybe they're too young or, you know, something where they're just not high value customers. And on the other end of that, we've seen companies that maybe look like they don't have a ton of customers, but they're incredibly high value customers. And who is your customer? Super easy to get on surveys.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. I think surveys always can be helpful and effective, especially if it's your customer and especially if they've been using your product. If there's a customer using your product, 100% we can go through and ask them a survey. And also 1,000% is to figure out who the hell your customer is, right?”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How many girlfriends have you had in your past life? Who answered that, right? And so that's the number one thing is just this judgment call of asking those kind of questions and then not applying the filtered logic around it to see if it's reality.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of times people will say, Oh, do you like this? Would you use this? They're like, oh, of course I would use that. Yes, that makes so much sense because they should. It's just same thing in healthcare. Do you track your diet? Do you exercise? How many drinks do you have, right? Let's just take that one. How many drinks do you have?”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reality is are two different things. That's the number one sin of quant surveys is that they ask questions where consumers infer there's a judgment and then people don't understand the bias that's interpreted in that. So it's always like what people do versus what they say. So that's where we say, okay, we'll just test it, right? Just throw out some splash pages. Let's just run it and test it and just get a real read on it. That's a better way to do those things, but it's really hard. How much of a product do you actually make to let them see, touch, and feel to test versus just ask? P&G had some really great concept and use tests. So we would send mocked up product out into the hands of consumers where they could actually get their hands on it and use it. And then we'd ask them questions. And so tried to instill that at my companies and say, well, you know, let's put some splash pages out there. Let's just run with the minimum viable product and just get some feedback.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to do that. And I said, Well, I don't understand. This is how we do things. He said, not in financial services because there is a judgment. And I thought about it and I'm like, you're right because we had to be really careful about this, especially with some products at PNG. And so whenever there's a judgment about how somebody should think, feel, or act, you stay away from surveys. So in other words, if you ask somebody, do they pay their bills on time? It's a judgment. People feel they should answer that question a certain way. So oftentimes quantitative surveys can really lead you astray. If you ask them something more hardcore, like, hey, what's your credit score? They can kind of give you a ballpark range because that doesn't really imply as much of a judgment, but do you do something where you've been told you should do it all the time? Do you balance your checkbook? What people will say they do and what they're doing.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing is there are certain kinds of products that surveys will get you nowhere and possibly the wrong answer. I learned this kind of the hard way. When I came out of Procter Gamble, I had this crazy job at PNG. I reported to the global head of the entire category, right? And help launch new products. And I got that at an incredibly early age at Procter& Gamble. So I had tons of great exposure, right? So I came out to Silicon Valley, wanted to work at a startup. So I took this role heading a product at a company called Nextcard. And we were the first online credit card company. And this was back in the Stone Ages where you bounce servers at midnight. You literally did sleep all night at the office because, you know, if the code didn't roll at midnight, you had to roll back before the East Coast woke up. And I say that because I came in and thought I had a great bag of tricks and said, hey, we're going to do surveys on credit card products. And my CEO, who I was a very experienced financial person from a bank called Pervidian, said over my dead body.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feature focused, and we were able to through that exercise really shifted over to addressing our target audience. And so what felt like kind of pushing a rock uphill suddenly felt much easier when we had the right messaging for who we were serving. And there's always a question too, of who's our customer today? Who do we want to be our customer? and who's our customer tomorrow and then also the PNG experience of this customer lifecycle management. The hardest company to be in is the company where you have to reacquire the consumer every single time. What you really have to think about is what is that customer value life cycle? How do I capture somebody when they're a baby?”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The CEO told me we have a millennial audience dudes essentially. And we are helping them, you know, with their finances. I won't name names or anything like that. And I was kind of looking at their product thinking, I don't think so, right? And I said, I bet you that your product is probably middle-aged women. And it's not because I'm so smart. It's because that's who kind of handles the finances for people in the households. And, you know, when I was looking at what was happening in the app, sure enough, was what women do for household finances. And so they were like, you're crazy. And I said, okay, I could be crazy. I'm often crazy. But let's just find out. And sure enough, we did the survey and guess what? The average age was late 40s, early 50s, female had a financial household. And it was interesting because our marketing was so sort of bro focused, right?”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Usually, my first question is how many consumers have they spoken to and which consumers and what did they learn? What surprised them when they talked in consumer and what did they learn about it? Oftentimes they have spoken to the consumer, but sometimes it's been a little while. And sometimes when they did speak to an end consumer, they only spoke to the person that loves their product or that hates their product sometimes. Sometimes they just end up on the support calls. And it's really important to get a spectrum of people who love you, who just kind of like you, who are pissed off at you, who haven't tried you, and sort of get that whole gamut and really understand the consumer. And I have to tell you, it is probably shocking, but shouldn't be shocking that oftentimes they have an assumption of who their consumer is and it's not right. For example, I was in a fintech store.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even in different parts of the United States, you had very different consumer preferences, even for things like laundry detergent and toilet paper, believe it or not. And I could talk to you all day about the differences in like Charmin in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Germany. It's fascinating what those different consumer preferences might be. And what Crocter and Gamble teaches you is humility. That what you think really doesn't fucking matter.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Marketing marketing and marketing. So it's really interesting. At Procter Gamble, Most of the marketers and product people I worked with were chemical engineers. And to figure out what product we were going to offer our consumers, we actually developed pretty good models to model out which variable had the biggest factor effect, what We were going to do to the product to move more cases out the door, essentially. And it really varied by geography. So, in Mexico versus Japan versus Germany versus Canada.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Procter& Gamble, when it was. Was a chemical engineer, believe it or not, in my old life that just tends to be hoobed procter and gamble likes to hire. And so I worked at P&G and learned a lot about marketing and branding and product market fit and all that when I was there. But you typically lead with this umbrella concept. Like your highest tier product. That's always what people advertise. So in every category, you'll offer your highest tier, your biggest benefit. And that umbrella kind of encapsulate everything underneath it. Their example, we're going to run your dog and make that dog incredibly fit and it's aspirational. It's aspirational offering that you can give to somebody. But then typically you have other products underneath that. But they all kind of ride under that umbrella and that bigger, higher level promise.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I just realized how incredibly important it is for anyone to learn these concepts and how they do translate from a dog running business to autonomous cars. And I think it's just really fascinating because I'd almost challenge people just to pick any idea and let's just go through it because the building blocks and the things you ask and the foundational elements are all the same.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, formally book time on my calendar and they came in, and they had their whole plant. And it was so fascinating because what I take for granted, I realize is not sometimes intuitive. We talked all about supply and demand and how to run a meeting, how to run an effective meeting, how to make decisions, how to have accountability, how to try different channels and what you try first, second, and third on how to go to market and acquire supply and demand. And then how to have a customer promise that resonates and deliver that promise. And then how to have an umbrella concept like, hey, we're going to exercise your sort of obese dog, which is what she's getting the request for. And in reality, the dog probably is just going to walk, but they're offering the running part of it, right? Is there a higher level benefit? And I was just fascinated because I thought, wow, I think a lot of us in our careers take for granted what our knowledge.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I probably wouldn't do nuclear engineering, which is some of what I did when I was there. I probably would go back and teach startup 101 and force everyone into really thinking out of the box and starting a company. And what I learned recently through my daughter, who's only 16, is that it almost doesn't matter in a way what your idea is because you're going to learn so much just by going through that process. My daughter, Hazel, she came home and she said, hey, my friend and I want to start a dog running business. And I was like, okay. And I almost said no, like, that's not super interesting. But then I listened. I've learned to listen three more beats typically. And she said, hey, our advantage is that we're going to run the dogs and actually exercise them. And she's a cross-country runner. And I said, okay. And she said, hey, can you spend some time with me and my friend while we do this? And so they actually.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of Positive Sum, and the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guest guest guest guest guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of positive sum or O'Shaughnessy asset management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of positive sum or O'Shaughnessy asset management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.”
2022-12-27 · Invest Like the Best · Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source