Episode Transcript
Asia Orangio (00:02.043)
Okay, am I still delayed? Cool, okay. This is a good sign. Real time. Oh my gosh, I don't even remember how we kicked off. How did we kick off?
Kim Talarczyk (00:06.678)
No, it's real time Asia.
Kim Talarczyk (00:15.822)
You said that you have talked to several founders that have been in the same boat recently.
Asia Orangio (00:22.398)
Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I've been having a few, I've had over the eight years of running demand. Even now I've had several calls with founders who are in this like early go to market stage, meaning they are pre-product sometimes, usually they're pre-revenue or at least maybe they're like pre first customers. Sometimes though they actually have customers, but they're like pre-launch. They have product, they have revenue.
but they now need to launch. And there are many different, I think, versions of early go-to-market that you can be in. And based on those stages that you might be in, to me, there are several options that you have when it comes to actually executing against your go-to-market strategy and thinking about what partners, providers, options, et cetera, do you have or can you put in place? And traditionally speaking, the most
common approach usually is to hire like a full service agency. But the for me, from my perspective, and I've seen hundreds of examples of this, dozens in this specific stage that go in a number of different directions. But I think I think agencies at this stage have a very special place. And I think unless you
are aware of the trade-offs, you can create a lot of waste, a lot of waste. Like you're literally just setting cash on fire. Like you might as well like literally go light it on fire in your front yard. And it's painful for me to watch because like that is the thing I think that I really want to make sure that, especially if you're bootstrapped, that you don't kind of end up falling prey to in a way. And it's not like, you know, there are agencies out there like trying to get you. I don't necessarily believe that.
certainly it happens, I'm sure. But I do think that there is like a right time and a right place at that early stage. And the reason why I say that is because if you are in that early go to market phase where you don't really understand your product market fit, what ends up happening is you end up spending a lot of money just to find out that you don't have it. And there are simpler, smaller, easier ways to learn that without spending eight to 20K a month.
Asia Orangio (02:50.836)
for six months and then kind of finding out later like, none of this shit works because we're not, like our product isn't ready, our messaging isn't ready, our positioning, et cetera, like our early acquisition channels, none of that is ready. And it's because we don't have like a solid understanding of how buyers interact with product. Now, many people kind of liken this to like chicken and egg, like where it's like, well, like you need people.
to kind of tell you that you're wrong or like you don't have it yet or what have you. I do generally agree. Like, yes, like it needs to meet the sun and like people need to see it and use it and experience it. But I think that there are ways where you can do that without spending bookoos and bookoos of dollars. Like there are ways to get first impressions that are much cheaper, much more effective cost-wise and ultimately can help you de-risk.
like whatever your launch plan or whatever like that early go to market strategy is going to be and give you initial early feedback before you go and spend the next 50, 60 K or whatever on ads, creative landing pages, et cetera. Now, don't get me wrong. I think that there are some brands, there are a lot of brands out there like that that's what they should do. Like you should do that. But there are others where again, it's all about trade-offs.
And yeah, like I just have a really strong reaction whenever there are organizations where it's like, yeah, maybe you guys should chill first before you go and spend like a bunch of on agency. Do that maybe later, but yeah.
Kim Talarczyk (04:31.444)
And yeah, and so what are some indicators that you would know that? Like, is it just about money? Because what if, you know, a company has a bunch of money and they could move really quickly and spend 100K and get data and then, you know, have the agency execute in a different way on different channels. so what are the indicators?
Asia Orangio (04:57.45)
So my first is number or volume of customers. If you have less than 25, 100 customers, you probably are going to feel like, yes, hiring an agency, spending a bunch of dollars, and getting a lot of acquisition like fast is the right move. But I do think it depends on your context. I think that there are some products where you could totally do that.
established software categories, I think that you probably can hire an agency and start the early go-to-market process. It won't be cost-effective or efficient, but at least you will see a pulse on the other side. I think for software categories that are less mature or like everyone always says they're building something new, but there's always something that your customer's comparing you to. So I hear that, but I'm also like...
Kim Talarczyk (05:41.902)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (05:52.798)
when you actually do the research and talk to people, there's something else. There's always something else. Even if it's not software, there's something manual that they're doing. That's less ideal. But what we're looking for really is we're looking for, is there a pulse in this software category that we're in for the market that we're targeting? If we're finding that there's not as much of a audience or there's not as much of like,
there are other successful software in the category that we're in, then that tells me that our go-to-market strategy, when we do execute it, probably will need to be malleable. So might not make sense, for example, to bring on a big performance marketing ads agency if we don't see that our competitors are doing anything similar. But then similarly,
Asia Orangio (06:52.463)
before we go and spend like 100K in like three months, what's like the minimum viable test where we can kind of see like, okay, like, is there a life here? So that's the first.
Kim Talarczyk (07:02.584)
Do you see agencies that will do that? Or typically it's just you're on a retainer and we're executing to the max.
Asia Orangio (07:12.48)
I think the best agencies are very strategic, not just about how they think about channels, but also about the clients they take on. I think there are a lot of really solid, well-performing agencies that the moment that they see a client that's really early stage, they're naturally more cautious because it's not a good successful story to be like,
yeah, I hired so-and-so agency and I spent six figures and I got absolutely nothing. All we did was learn that we didn't have product market fit and we couldn't figure out how to get there. Like that's not a good story for anybody, right? I think the best agencies are strategic and cautious to a degree. And I think that the best partners are like their true partners in this and they're cognizant and thoughtful about what makes sense for this business.
given the market landscape, given the context we're in, et cetera. The other thing too is I think like when, again, if you have zero customers, if you're starting from ground zero, I do think that there are more cost-effective, both partners and ways to start early. I do see some companies go the big agency route. So they're immediately going for like a full service. They're gonna start spending 20 to 50K a month. And usually like,
like, listen, like this isn't going to like put you out of business. But what it will do is it will it will burn your cash reserves. You'll probably have to raise earlier than you want. You'll have a little bit less control over how that money is spent. And depending on again, like your market context and your landscape, you you might not emerge out of that with insights that you need to make better decisions later. And that to me is one of the biggest risks is like, not only do you spend all this money,
Kim Talarczyk (09:04.258)
Hmm.
Asia Orangio (09:05.812)
you don't see the return and you don't learn anything. And I think like that's that to me is the worst. And it's it's very common. Now, do these do these SaaS companies or software companies like go out of business later and like, do they die because of this? No, not usually. But but it is a scenario that creates a lot of discomfort later, because then the next time that you. Start to invest in marketing, you're naturally more skeptical. You're holding your cards a little bit closer to your chest.
And that can create a different dynamic. And so any agency that comes after the first agency that you hire, it can be a mess sometimes. But it's interesting because... So, yeah, so like to answer your first question, like, yeah, the first thing I look for is like, do we have customers? Is this a software category that is relatively established or not? Do the competitors invest in these channels? And if they don't, why? But if they do, then what's our opportunity? The other thing that I look for is actually retention.
So I'm looking for like, if we are, again, if we're very early stage, we're not gonna have like big retention numbers here, meaning like, you you might not have six months of data, you might not even have three months of data. But what I'm looking for is within that first three months of customer retention, is it pretty steady? Or do you lose half of your customers after the first three months? That also tells me that you do not wanna spend
a ton of money on ads or execution or agencies in this early, early stage because you will lose 50 % of anyone who you convert anyway, which basically means, again, you're just, you're lighting cash on fire. And if you don't have a really solid insights gathering process or like information or intelligence gathering process to learn from like why those people are churning to really understand, what's the context that makes
Kim Talarczyk (10:48.738)
Right.
Asia Orangio (11:01.416)
a great customer versus not, then you will continue to churn out that money. You will continue to waste. And this is the thing that I want to wrap my arms the most around because I think you do have to execute. You can't just tinker and turn knobs all day long. You can't just talk to customers and talk to prospects forever. You do have to actually put something on paper and present it to the world. You do eventually have to come out of the cave and emerge into the sun.
But what I strongly encourage is you have to be diligent about learning from whatever that execution is, whether it's big or small. And I think that there are some companies that do get lucky here. And again, there are certainly signs of luck. You can spend the bukkus of dollars, turn out customers, and then hey, maybe a good portion of them do retain. But I'm going to say, just from my experience,
That's not usually the case. It's usually either we spend beaucoups of money and we learn nothing, or we spent like a medium amount of money and we're learning some things, but it's not fast enough, or it's not like, there's clearly something here, we're not gonna go blow our budget or empty our pockets here. But it's usually like one or the other. And I think in that first case,
I just wanna strongly encourage like before you go and put in a ton of dollars into this, just like you have an MVP, I want you to think about what's your minimum viable campaign? What's your minimum viable test to understand what this acquisition is gonna do? Now I do have some feelings about like if you don't have any customers, if the software category is relatively new or different and you really like,
you really are bringing a product to this market that is just like wildly different from what the incumbents are or from what the incumbent behaviors are, then that is where I would say you want to de-risk this as much as possible. I wouldn't even like ads are one of the quickest, easiest ways to kind of see like is there life here? But it's also one of the quickest and easiest ways to create false positives and false negatives, meaning it might give you the feeling of
Asia Orangio (13:26.356)
falsely that like, yeah, you've got something here. Like, yep, this product fits people's needs perfectly. But then when you look at retention or when you look at conversion rates or when you look at like the types of people that you're actually getting through that pipeline, they might not actually be the best fit for the product in the first place. It also could create false negatives, meaning you've built this product for this audience. But based on the way that you ran the ads, you might not be attracting those people. And it might make you think, that
those people don't like my product or they don't find value out of it. But actually it just wasn't positioned to be marketed well. Like it wasn't like maybe you had the wrong messaging, maybe something about the landing page threw them off. Like it could be any number of things. And that might make you assume that this is not the right audience or what have you. When actually it probably is. We're just not doing the best job on the marketing side and that needs to get updated. But again, you might create a false negative. Similarly, you could create false positives as well.
And that is where I would say that's the most risk to me. Because if you don't know what a good customer looks like yet, but you don't go through the process to really understand that, then you might end up kind of getting derailed a bit. And it can become a very stressful, painful, long process. I have worked with founders who have toiled endlessly in this space.
Kim Talarczyk (14:42.156)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (14:54.168)
and they don't know what direction to go because they keep getting false positives and false negatives like left and right. And that can be very confusing. I want to say, though, so I do like I said, like I think I think when agencies are like a hell yes, are when you have clear indications of product market fit. But I want to be careful here because I think I have conversations to founders where they're like, we have product market fit. But then we look at like their long term retention and it's like 50 percent 12 month NRR. And it's like you don't have product.
I'm sorry, you just don't. There's nothing you can tell me to convince me that you have PMF. You don't. Because if you had PMF, they would stay for longer than a year. So either your model's broken, the product is not a fit, the customers aren't a fit. Something here is not aligned. It could be all three of them. It could be just one of them. But something here is broken fundamentally. So again, when I hear, we have product market fit, but we've only had customers for three months.
Kim Talarczyk (15:25.658)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (15:51.232)
And it's like three months in our R is like 50%. I'm like, you don't, that's cute that you think that you do, but you don't. Now the next step is really to kind of figure out who are the long-term customers. And you're really not actually going to know until like a year or two. I don't think that founders hear me when I say that, but you're not actually going to understand your product market fit until you have a full year's worth of data. So if you've launched, you've got customers.
Kim Talarczyk (15:57.038)
you
Kim Talarczyk (16:06.456)
Hmm.
Asia Orangio (16:20.404)
and you're three months later, you're four months later, you're four months in and you're like, we've got PMF. I guarantee you, you don't know that yet. Even if you've got like 100 % four month NRR, you still don't know. You're not gonna know until month 12, you just won't. And then if it's less than 50%, that tells me like, okay, we've got something, something is amiss. We might, we don't have PMF yet, but maybe you have enough product market fit, because product market fit is ever changing, it's always evolving, but maybe you have enough product market fit that...
Yeah, like you can you can invest in marketing, can invest, you can invest in acquisition and you can start to see maybe like that you retain people for at least six months. But the way that your like sales or marketing cycle ends up being, it actually could be like net positive, meaning like you still gain people faster than you lose them. And and it continues to get better every time, like it continues to get more efficient over time. That's still a positive sign, even if you don't have like
incredible NRR. But like I said, most most companies don't have incredible NRR for several years. But that's just because it takes time to build that right? Like, it's all that to say. I like I grate my teeth whenever I hear we have PMF, but you've only ever had customers for three months, you actually don't know yet. And I know that there's the I know that there's the survey that you can run like that's like the PMF survey where you ask people how disappointed would you be?
If we left and we went away and it's like, I'd be very disappointed. And it's like, okay, great, great, great. That's one metric. There are like two to three others that I look for for signs of positive product market fit. I think that's one qualitative way to understand it. I do think it's a good way. It's not the only way. NRR I think is your other solid metric here. But anyway, I digress.
Kim Talarczyk (17:53.048)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (18:07.118)
So are these founders you're talking to, are they kind of thinking, all right, it's either agency, like I either got to pay an agency or I need to pay like a consulting firm, a growth firm, like a demand maven. In their mind, is it like one or the other?
Asia Orangio (18:22.92)
Yeah, I, which is interesting. yes, usually, and I would say usually it's like, you know, they want strategy and execution, which makes sense. If your early stage go to market, yeah, you should be executing like that. That I think makes sense. What, what my caution to the wind, however, is, is, my, my flag that I fly is always and forever going to be okay. But like, let's make sure.
we're not just blowing cash because it's so, so, so easy to do that by accident and not even really realize until later, man, that was super wasteful. We probably didn't need to do that. Now I will say there are certainly companies out there that do just get lucky and they can spend all the money in the bookers or dollars and yada yada. But I think that's certainly possible. But I think like,
Kim Talarczyk (19:13.166)
Right. Or don't realize they're wasting cash.
Asia Orangio (19:19.836)
What I think is interesting though about those companies is, mean, maybe they do get lucky. They don't do as much of that like qualitative understanding or insights gathering or maybe they don't do like a long stealth mode period. But when I think about like Superhuman, Superhuman was building for like what, three to four years straight. And then it kind of seemed like they came out of nowhere, but they really didn't. They actually spent three to four years really honing and perfecting the product and like
refining their craft and really deeply understanding who are the best possible customers. they didn't spend boot-coups of dollars in acquisition. They invested very heavily into product and engineering and they did it quietly for years and years and years until all of a sudden out of nowhere, it seemed like they came out of thin air, but they really didn't. They had been quietly hacking away for a long time. And I love the story of superhuman because superhuman feels like it's everywhere. I can't think of the word that describes that.
well, it feels like superhuman is like part of the fabric now of a lot of SaaS companies. But they had quietly created their luck. And I think that's a very different scenario than we're going to come out the gate. We don't actually understand who our best paying customers are because we're not, maybe it doesn't make sense to take that more strategic approach or
gradual approach. And I think that's why I admire superhuman so much because they could have not. They had the funding. They could have done big splashes. They could have, I guess, shot their shot much earlier. But they didn't because they really wanted to make sure that they de-risked it as much as possible. They also had a big vision. They have a big market, obviously. But I think that's where you would take your time. That's where you would kind of refine.
a little bit, slow down a little bit and really make sure that you understand this before you go and, you know, do a big splash because the big splash, they, there's tons of studies about this, but once that big splash is done, you're kind of left with like this crater. And then assuming that you've built the right thing for the right people, you will start to see it climb back up over time. Most companies don't have that though. Usually it's just like a flat line and it's like, like nothing like you, basically have to like do another big splash to.
Asia Orangio (21:45.44)
see anything happen. But you know you did it right. If you have a big splash, it does kind of crater a bit. But then it starts to creep back up over time. And it almost feels like you don't have to work that hard to do it. And I think that's the sign of like, yep, you got early product market fit. You understand your acquisition channels. You understand your buyer, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, going back to your question, though, founders, I think, kind of come to the
Kim Talarczyk (22:07.437)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (22:13.92)
problem of early go-to-market thinking, okay, we've done the strategic work, now we execute. But what I think is actually more true is you're actually always doing the strategic work. The execution is really what needs to be as flexible as possible because you will change your mind. You're gonna learn things. You're gonna wanna be able to kind of move things around and massage things around. And what I worry about is
Like it's one thing if you have a partner that's not flexible like an agency that might not like but but the thing about it is like flexibility has a cost and Yeah, like your agency can rebuild your whole website if you find you got the messaging wrong or like actually there's a better paying customer over here Let's go and build for that audience now You got to redo everything like like that all those things have a cost and I and I think like for some it makes sense But for a lot of doesn't so I almost would rather founders think of
maybe a different model where they actually instead maybe bring on like contractors, freelancers, like individuals. Like if you know that hiring the big fancy agency right now is just not going to be in the budget because again, like you're going to spend at least 8K a month, five if you are very, very focused, but like 5K a month would be on the low end in my opinion. That would be like maybe a channel.
and probably not even ads, because ads easily gets up to 15k per month minimum. yeah, like you're going to probably be spending at least like 8k a month, but it can easily get up to like 20 to 30. And again, if you don't have strong credit market fit, a lot of that will go to waste. Which to me is like, that's the thing that I hate the most is the waste, especially because there's more effective ways to figure it out. But anyway, I digress. So.
Kim Talarczyk (24:05.964)
Mm-hmm.
Asia Orangio (24:08.468)
To me, yeah, like there's an opportunity to build like an internal team that maybe is not full time, but would be more cost effective. You'd be able to iterate and move faster. Even though you don't have this like fully scaled out agency. To be fair, I think agencies are really good at just like kind of launching into action. And I think when you're ready for that, it's amazing. I love my agency partners. Like I am not knocking them at all.
Um, but I, I do think that there is a right time and the right place for them, depending on who they are and like, like what their strengths are. But I think that there's another option that maybe founders don't consider enough. And that is kind of building like your own internal team. So before you bite off on like a really big expense, before you understand like what your acquisition strategy should be, because it's expensive and it's getting more expensive every day. Um, there is actually a way in my opinion, to kind of build an internal practice to test ideas. And you might, you know, there are some certainly agencies who
take an iterative approach and take an experimental approach. There's an agency that we're working with right now on ads for my fractional CMO role. And I love the incremental approach they take because I never feel like they are bowling me over with 20 million more ideas and spending more money. I always feel like they're very aligned with where we're at.
with what our budget is going to be. And I think that there are certainly partners out there that are like that. And then there are partners out there that are the total opposite. They're like, here's the next thing, here's the next thing, here's the next thing. And that, like I said, I think that there's a time and a place for all those partners. I don't think it's always the early go-to-market stage though. And I think that's the message that I wanna impart to anyone who's in that space is let's really think about what you actually need.
And let's also really think about how confident you are that this is it. And you don't need to do more qualitative or insights gathering or understanding. Granted, like you're still going to do that anyway, but maybe the lift isn't as big as you think it is. And similarly, maybe it actually is bigger than you think it is. launching into execution to a certain scale and size might not make sense. And I think that's the
Asia Orangio (26:35.22)
that's where the risk is and the trade-offs are. And if you don't have a big budget, there's a lot of waste that can happen. And I think also too, if you've raised and like this makes me cringe too, because it's really, it's also very common, but like sometimes like you raise like a million or whatever or 2 million and your first instinct is to hire the big fancy agency. And it's just like, okay, let's pause for a minute and like really think about it because
you will waste money. Like, it's going to happen. You might waste a lot less though if you considered other options and there are other options, especially if there's higher risk.
Kim Talarczyk (27:16.462)
Yeah. And it feels so enticing if you have the money or you just got funding because it's so turnkey for a bigger agency, which can be great. A little bit more thought from the founders leadership team on if you're going to pull together like what you suggested, some contractors or freelancers, right? Just takes a little bit more. But also thinking about what are the incentives of the bigger agencies and
Asia Orangio (27:26.079)
Yes.
Kim Talarczyk (27:45.751)
Of course, they're big and there's so many great sides to that, but also like the incentive is to keep that retainer for as long as possible. That works out for everybody. That works out for them in that case, not to say that they're snakes or anything, but that's just the model.
Asia Orangio (28:02.174)
Yeah, that's how works. Yeah, totally.
Kim Talarczyk (28:03.446)
Yeah. Yeah. So it's good advice for you to have founders be thoughtful. you don't necessarily, it seems like it could be easy and more turnkey, but there might be a more metered approach.
Asia Orangio (28:21.632)
Definitely, definitely a more metered approach. And to me, again, like agencies are a hell yes to me when you do have really clear signs. The ones that I described, hope product market fit. So you have a very strong NRR. Yeah, like you can run the PMF survey and like most people are extremely disappointed in the actual segment that you're targeting. All that's great.
If you have those signals, those quantitative signals and also possibly qualitative, that to me is like, okay, yeah, like you might be ready. The other thing that I would say would be true too is you're not spending too much money on trying to figure out what the channels are because that's expensive. There's going to be an episode that we do that's like, can you be too early to marketing channel? And the answer is absolutely yes. Especially like if the rest of your go-to market is not as mature.
as maybe acquisition. Acquisition, think, does mature with the rest of the business. So you can be too early to channel. But what I think is also interesting, too, is you really it's so tricky. But like. There's more cost effective ways to test acquisition strategies without necessarily spending. I want to call it like the overhead, but there is a there is a margin and
you know, that agencies have to meet and that might not be the most cost effective way. And in fact, I find if you have ACVs or LTVs that are on the lower side, I would argue that that's actually not the best way initially because you really do like need a pretty efficient funnel actually happening, especially if you're PLG, where that cost makes sense. Now, if you have higher ACVs and you know, minimum people are spending five, 10, 15 K with you like per year.
then yeah, like you will see probably very early ROI. It might not be super efficient yet, but at least like you might see very early ROI from partners, like agency partners and things like that. But if you're not, if you're like on the lower end and you're like self-service PLG, you don't have like a sales motion yet. I have a hard time saying yes, go agency, unless they are very specific focused agency because like, you know SEO is the answer. Like, you know, paid acquisition is the answer.
Asia Orangio (30:44.746)
but chances are you might not know. That's why I argue, let's figure out like what are minimum viable campaigns or minimum viable tests to see like is there life here before we go when we spend a bunch of money on something. Because it's very expensive to figure out what your acquisition channels are through an agency versus saying we have data that suggests that partnerships, ads, and affiliates are the way to go. So now help us like scale it out.
That to me is a very different space and a better position to be in than, I don't know guys, what's it gonna cost for me to figure it out? And it's like, well, it's gonna cost you a lot, because we gotta try a million things and we're not necessarily gonna understand how it all works. And then I find most agencies really don't hit their stride. Much like any new employee or contractor or freelancer, most folks don't hit their stride until like month three and four. So you are gonna pay for people to learn.
Kim Talarczyk (31:40.814)
Hmm.
Asia Orangio (31:44.138)
I think that there are some scenarios where that's much more cost effective than others. Again, not knocking agencies at all. But you have to think about like, this is what their model is. And unless you have like really clear signals of like product market fit, but also just stability in your business, it's just gonna be more expensive. You're gonna spend way more than what you might bargain for. Unless of course, you do have a clear understanding of what those channels probably are, because maybe you've run tests or like you've run experiments.
And there are certainly providers, consultants. This is kind of what I think I'm suggesting is I almost would rather founders go with consultants, contractors and freelancers first to really understand performance first before you really invest and scale out something. Because again, you will pay to learn, but you could pay a lot less to learn, especially if you approached it that way. I mean, that's what really all I'm saying. But no, mean, like I said,
I love our agency partners. And I'm not saying that, you know, they're like Eagle or anything. You should absolutely hire agencies. But I think that there are specific times and points in the journey where you do. And, you know, they're obviously awesome to do that with.
Kim Talarczyk (32:55.596)
Yeah. And what you're saying is that early on, you're going to have to be very involved and in tune anyways. So you're spending the time, whether it's with an agency or with freelancers, contractors, because of the stage of the business, right? So.
Asia Orangio (33:13.919)
Right.
Exactly, exactly. I think in terms of where we fit, obviously we've supported business in that early go-to-market stage. I think where we really work super well on the early go-to-market side is when we do product discovery work. if you're pre-product and you're trying to figure out what are the requirements for this product in order for to be successful, we're amazing there.
There is also go-to market strategy. So before you go and invest and drop a bunch of money on an agency to test a bunch of channels, kind of willy-nilly, I'm not gonna say that they're not strategic. There are certainly strategic agency partners that are out there. But what we find is they usually don't have the specialty and the focus that we do when we do go-to-market work for specifically like SaaS PLG companies, which I think is a key difference. However,
If there's like a what's the initial like what is the initial plan or like the initial strategy or like the initial messaging approach. So it's it is in a way kind of like product marketing work and also we're really making sure that pricing and model makes a lot of sense. It's like are we charging the right things in the in the most ideal way for the type of buyer that we're hoping to actually acquire.
And then similarly, we do actually go out and get feedback from the market itself on is this product ready? Is this something that would ultimately solve your jobs to be done or solve your problem as it is now? Or are you looking for other things or do you feel like this doesn't actually solve the problem? And there are ways that we do that that gives us the absolute best insight and also like removes as much bias as possible because most people don't want to tell you that your product sucks.
Asia Orangio (35:05.568)
They'd rather just ghost and not say anything. That's just the way it is. But there are ways that we can validate some assumptions, but also invalidate some things as well. So we can debunk a of myths and realign kind of like what the truth or as close to objectivity as we possibly can be. And then after that, we might say, okay, like now let's get on this freelancer or contractor or consultant.
based on these specific hypotheses. And so instead of spending the 20K per month, you may actually come in at about half that, just to learn the same things and not spend nearly as much or waste as much time. So I think if that's an approach that is really attractive to you, that's where we fit really well. But I will say, though, and I turn founders away all the time when I'm like, listen, you should hire the agency. That sounds great. Go and do the thing.
because they're going to be able to scale up and move way faster than this more methodical approach. again, if you don't have those positive quantitative signals of a really engaged, strong customer base that are retaining, again, you're going to want a more methodical approach. My recommendation would not be to jump into that bed too early.
But if you do have really strong signals, then it very well could be. also not just strong signals, but you also have strong ideas for what channels you would invest in or test. I think if you have that combination, an agency could make a lot of sense because you're decreasing the risk of spending a bunch of money to kind of learn and that be very pricey because
in order for most agencies to learn, they are going to actually execute it. And that requires resources. But again, you probably can hedge your bets better if you do have those positive signals. But if you don't, that's where I would recommend, let's be a bit more methodical about this. And let's make sure we double check our assumptions and myth bust as much as possible before we kind of put all of our eggs into a basket. But anyway, so that's my very passionate spiel about
Kim Talarczyk (37:06.381)
Mm-hmm.
Kim Talarczyk (37:29.55)
you
Asia Orangio (37:30.016)
Does it make sense to hire an agency at this time? I think the answer is it depends based on your context, but I've given some signals that make sense. we have a really strong net revenue retention mark at the six and 12 month mark. If you don't have that much data, maybe wait a little bit. Cause if you see things drop off after month four, that to me says you're not ready for spending big Buku dollars on agencies. Similarly, you have no idea what channels to try.
Okay, well, you got to spend time exploring that before you go and again, spend a bunch of money trying to figure that out and like learn the hard way. The other thing that I'd be looking for is yeah, like you could certainly run like the product market fit survey. But what I would really be looking for is do you consistently have a buyer type that any resource, not just an agency, but any resource, a marketer, product marketer, copywriter, freelancer could start to create assets collateral messaging around.
that does acquire the right type of person. What we also see is in those early days, there are five different customer segments that we could go after, but it's not clear which one is actually the best one for us for now. And that's another tricky situation because, again, you're gonna spend a lot of money trying to attract all these people. And actually, maybe one out of five is gonna actually be a good fit. So that's the other thing that I'd be looking for. Is there anything that I missed? I feel like I...
like that was pretty much the list.
Kim Talarczyk (39:00.52)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that was it.
Asia Orangio (39:02.976)
There are other things that are a little bit harder to define, but I do look for clear product vision. think if you're always going to be figuring out what the right product is as well, you're going to certainly change and adjust and evolve over time. But yeah, I think those are the very specific things that I look for that tells me, okay, yep, you're ready to really invest. I also think too, pricing is going to have a huge impact on how you think about investment into acquisition.
there are some that are just not gonna move as quickly as you think it will. So again, if you have like a higher ACV, like you're charging more for your product, especially if you're B2B, then you probably can get away with the risk of hiring agencies and things like that and kind of investing in execution early. If you have lower ACVs, I would be really looking at de-risking as much as possible. Like if you're only charging like 20 bucks a month for your product, well, one, I kind of already know what your channels probably are, but then also like...
we should be reducing as much risk as possible because the margin on that is gonna be so tight and you won't see media ROI, which means that that first six months will probably be kind of tough. So all that to say, like we really wanna make sure that we're being methodical about that in that situation.
Kim Talarczyk (40:23.407)
Nice. I think that's good advice.
Asia Orangio (40:24.042)
Cool. All right, cool. Well, thank you so much for listening and thank you Kim for listening and talking me through that and asking really good questions. I appreciate it as always.
Kim Talarczyk (40:35.67)
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the advice and we'll talk soon.
Asia Orangio (40:38.644)
Yeah, thanks again. Bye.
Asia Orangio (40:43.36)
All right.
