Buying is weird and rare

...which, it turns out, matters a lot

👋 Hey there, I’m Rob, an overthinking B2B founder obsessed with 0-1 and product-market fit. Each week I write a newsletter and record a companion podcast (Spotify, YouTube). Also:

• My book on product-market fit is coming out July 7! Pre-order it HERE.

• I advise some startups when they feel like they’re pushing and the market isn’t pulling. Learn more here (I am booked out until ~June)

Oh and PS: I recorded a 3-hour lecture on the physics of startups. Enjoy - check it out HERE.

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People buy things all the time. Anthropic went from $0-$30B in revenue in like seven days; how unlikely can a purchase be?

To answer this, try to calculate this for yourself: How many products and services are relevant to you?

By “relevant”, the product or service would have to satisfy one of these three criteria:

1. It would solve problems or alleviate pain points you have

2. It would offer you value, ROI, or benefits

3. You want it, or it fits a need.

As you think about this question, a few stats might be helpful:¹

• Amazon, apparently, carries hundreds of millions of SKUs.

• Something like 4 million books were published last year.

• Every grocery store you walk into has 30,000+ SKUs.

• There are maybe 20 million services firms in the US alone.

• There are over 24,000 software tools just in the productivity and collaboration space.

This is all to say, if your answer to the question of “how many products and services are relevant to you” is anything other than “many many thousands if not millions” - you’re thinking about the question wrong.

There are millions of relevant products and services that you could buy. How many of these do you buy in a given day, week, month, year? THE TINIEST FRACTION! And this would be true even if you wanted to buy a lot of things!

The internet says that your likelihood of getting struck by lightning is 1 in 1.2 million in a given year, and that your likelihood of getting bitten by a shark is 1 in 4.5 million per year. Your likelihood to purchase any particular relevant product or service in a given year is in roughly the same probability ballpark of “getting struck by lightning” and “getting bitten by a shark”!²

This is a difficult concept to wrap your mind around. Let me try to articulate it in a single sentence:

Given that there are SO MANY products and services that it wouldn’t be weird if you bought, it would be weird if you bought any particular one of them.

This, obviously, is also true of your potential customers. And it explains a lot.

“This should definitely be working”

When we assume that buying is not weird and rare, we build things that people would be weird to buy!

We assume, for example, that if we solve a big problem, alleviate pain points, provide a compelling value proposition, make an unbelievable offer, if they vibe with our mission and vision and values - they will buy.

We’re missing that there are thousands - if not MILLIONS - of other products and services that solve their many problems and pain points, offer them a cornucopia of compelling value propositions, etc., that they aren’t buying.

So we do our research, build something, maybe arm-twist some design partners, and get cornered in this awful situation where we try to sell our product, and potential customers:

• Have these pain points and problems

• Think our solution would provide real value and ROI

• Totally think our thesis is right

AND THEN THEY DON’T BUY. (Or they buy very slowly, and it feels like we’re pulling teeth.)

And worse: Because we think they should buy - with the implicit assumption that buying is not weird or rare - we misdiagnose what’s happening in this situation, usually:

1. We’re bad at sales

2. Our product isn’t good enough

NOPE!

The answer isn’t to get better at sales, or make the product “better” - it’s to figure out who is in a situation where they would be weird NOT to buy!

So… what do I do?

Admit it: Everyone, almost all of the time, would be weird to buy your product. Even if they should want it, would benefit from it, etc.

I believe there is only one case in which this is inverted - where a person would be weird NOT to buy your product:

They are trying to do X right now, but they are blocked from doing X with all the available tools/methods/options because of Y, and you offer them Z which unblocks Y so they can do X.

This is a form of the PULL framework. There is energy trapped in this person’s situation that can only be released by you unblocking them - and that energy is expressed in the form of the customer buying and pulling the product out of your hands.

This sets a pretty high bar for you, because you have to find someone in a “stuck” situation where they can’t do nothing, but can’t make it work with their existing tools/methods/options.

Not everybody is stuck in this kind of situation right now. Many will be fine if they do nothing. Or if they’re doing something, their current tools/methods/options are good enough. And when someone is in this kind of “stuck” situation, some startup usually stumbles into it, unblocks them, and takes off - in which case this situation now has a default option, and people in that situation are no longer stuck in a way that demands another new startup’s existence.

And that’s the whole point of this startup-building game: Find people in this kind of stuck situation. People in this situation will pull even a not-yet-built product out of your hands so you can grow fast and become the default option for that situation. This is true even if you’re selling enterprise, and even if you’re selling deep-tech.³

If you have customers already, especially if some bought fast (or ghosted you for 6 months then returned), reinterpret their stories through the “stuck” situation / PULL lens to understand why they actually bought. (It’s not the “pain point” or “value prop” story you’re currently telling yourself.)

If you find people who aren’t in this stuck situation, nothing they say matters. Because even if they complain about their pain points and problems, even if they like your product, it would be weird if they bought it. And making the product better and getting better at sales won’t work. Trust me: Life’s too short to push a product that nobody pulls.

Buying will always be weird and rare, but it will feel less weird and rare for your startup if you focus on who is “weird not to buy”.

1. Result of random Googling; could be wrong, but I assume directionally right

2. Even if you think my math is massively off, and that it’s way closer to something like 1 in 1,000 per year…. that just means you’re nearly 20x more likely to get in a car accident than you are to buy any particular relevant product in any given year!

3. Once you find someone in this kind of stuck situation and grow fast, you can then do what most successful founders do: Creatively reinterpret the story of your startup’s path to success (thereby steering future founders straight into the iceberg)