Designing around demand
vs. making supply more attractive
Tomorrow, June 8, the pricing for my next bootcamp goes up. Apply here, and get more info here. It is focused on using founder-led sales to find intense demand on the path to product-market fit and scale.
ALSO! I am hosting a workshop on early-stage B2B sales with Eric Martin, Head of Sales at Vanta, on June 18th. Click here to register (it’s free, but attendance is limited).
—
The secret to everything is understanding the subtle difference between:
Designing for “demand”
Making your “supply” more attractive
If you’re new here, I have previously described the distinction between demand and supply as:
Demand is what you don’t control; it’s why someone needs to change. Supply is everything we do control, our product, marketing, messaging, value prop, etc.
Demand is upstream of supply. It makes supply relevant (or not). Demand generates pull that supply responds to.
We often try to make our “supply” more attractive by reducing friction, adding features, reducing price, making it seem cooler, adding testimonials, etc.
Making supply more attractive is less effective and more difficult than making supply a better fit for demand. When we focus on supply, we’re essentially trying to “push” more effectively, rather than finding “pull.”
Our job as founders is to find demand and design around it, so our products are bought more than they are sold. As we do this, the shape of our business changes, through a process I’ve previously described as “unfolding.”
Here is a practical example of how my founder bootcamp is unfolding, and how I’m trying to design around demand instead of making supply more attractive.
Unfolding PMF Camp
As you know, I run a quarterly bootcamp for founders.
It has historically been called “Product-Market Fit Camp.” It is what it sounds like: A bootcamp to help founders find product-market fit.
I love running this bootcamp, and attendees love it too. It has a 90+ Net Promoter Score, and alumni achieve really awesome results (e.g., from $0-$200k ARR and 100+ customers in 3 months after the program).
But.
What founder wakes up in the morning and says, “You know what? I need to focus on product-market fit today.” Or says, “You know what I need to do? I need to attend a product-market fit bootcamp.”
Honestly? Nobody.
Founders have joined despite the name and frame of PMF Camp.
As a result, I have two options.
Option 1: I can try to make supply more attractive, by…
Shouting that you really SHOULD go to a bootcamp about product-market fit!
Trying to convince founders that PMF isn’t some mystical concept, that I can actually help you find it. I promise!
Throwing a bunch of testimonials your way - LOOK AT ALL THE SUCCESS!
etc.
Option 2: I can try to design around demand, by…
Asking my most successful alumni, “when you joined this, what were you REALLY hoping to achieve, why, and what about this uniquely helped you do that?”
…and literally using what they say
Designing around demand
As I’ve talked with alumni, here is what I’ve heard:
They are trying to figure out founder-led sales…
But they aren’t trying to “scale sales” or “push” their product onto the market - they are trying to find demand, find pull, on the path to product-market fit.
In other words, they are using sales to figure out what sells.
The proximate goal is always something customer- or revenue-related. E.g., some join to get to their first 10 customers, others join to make their next 10 customers easier than their last 10 customers.
They are “framework” founders - in that they need to understand how things work at their core, and are totally underwhelmed with surface-level BS that doesn’t explain why from first principles.
They like that I am a founder and have done this before, I’m not a seller who can’t speak a founder’s language. They love that that the program is wildly practical but also deeply theoretical, high signal-to-noise, with a curated group of founders, and that I get very hands-on with each startup.
Given all this: How should I name & frame this thing such that it reflects and amplifies demand?
(Want to see my current answer? It’s here.)
I guessed the name when I saw the first bullet point :)