Lenny Distilled

Real commitment shows through payment, not promises

Discovery → Problem Identification

If we're super serious about this, send us $1 million. Wire us $1 million. We'll happily wire it back anytime you need it, but let's actually put some stake in the ground about the value.

Jeff WeinsteinBuilding product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession

Ready to pay is different than paying. Significantly different. Paying is an independent group of people saying, 'My problem is burning enough that I'm willing to exchange something I have that has value for the promise of what you're going to do.'

Jeff WeinsteinBuilding product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession
Supporting

Suddenly, the call didn't end with 'Oh, this sounds super interesting.' The call sounded like, 'Wait, how are you pricing this? When can we start doing a POV? I know exactly who I need to connect you to in my team.'

Raaz HerzbergBuilding Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history
Supporting

Sometimes you just need to sheer it from the market and know that it's there, the poll, to know the right places to focus. Because if it's difficult to sell, if it's extremely difficult to sell the marginal customer, you're not going to be able to grow a huge business.

Brendan FoodyWhy experts writing AI evals is creating the fastest-growing companies in history
With caveats

You don't want to get friend-zoned by your customers, where your customers like you, but they don't love you and they don't need you.

Todd JacksonA framework for finding product-market fit