🤩 How to perfect your prioritization, A guide to mastering negotiations, ...
Hello!
Adam Thornhill here.
‘The Podcast Guy’ saving you 10 hours a week.
Ready for the 60th edition of Podup?
Enjoy the best bits from Indie Hackers, The Calum Johnson Show, and This Week In Startups:
🥊 Why you should always punch up
🤝 A guide to mastering negotiations
🤩 How to perfect your prioritization
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🥊 Why you should always punch up
🥉 Indie Hackers (2 min read vs 53 mins listening)
The AI headshot race feels like yesterday. In fact, it was over 6 months ago since Danny Postma and Pieter Levels went to war with ProfilePicture.AI and AvatarAI.me.
https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1630452568173457408?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Okay… war is an exaggeration. They messaged each other daily and spoke highly of each other. But their rivalry netted each of them $300,000+. Learn why it’s important to punch up and the impact this had on Danny’s success.
What they say
Pick a fight
In the book Rework by 37signals there’s a chapter called Pick a fight.
They talk about intentionally going out of your way to have a rival.
They have one constraint. They say always punch up.
Everybody loves an underdog. You never want to be the popular person picking on someone who’s less far along.
Courtland Allen
The results?
On Twitter we had this little rivalry. I went from 15,000 to 60,000 followers because Pieter was tweeting about me all of the time.
Pieter is building only one tool. I’m trying to do all these different verticals, like individual headshots, team headshots, and modelling.
You can reverse engineer my revenue. I quit doing it because I’ll get so many competitors but you can do the math.
Danny Postma
What I say
Why it matters
“There’s a fight!” Remember hearing this as a child? It’s probably the fastest I’ve ever run in my life. We were indoctrinated at school to follow fights. For many of us, we still love the drama. That’s why the pick a fight technique works.
A public rivalry can capture the interest of prospective customers and transform the buying decision into a direct choice between you and your rival, rendering other competitors irrelevant.
However, be cautious not to "punch down," as this can make your business appear like a bully, damage your reputation, and inadvertently bring credibility to challenger brands, causing you to lose customers.
https://twitter.com/peeplaja/status/1338818626221125639?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Next steps
A rivalry doesn't have to be hostile to be effective. In some cases, friendly competition can lead to collaboration and joint growth, as seen with Danny Postma and Pieter Levels.
This approach is especially beneficial when exploring a new market. You can grow the pie together, benefit from the shared attention, and push each other to stay motivated and ship faster.
So what can you do? Find a friendly competitor in your space, connect with them, and see if you can replicate the Pieter and Danny dynamic.
🤝 A guide to mastering negotiations
🥈 The Calum Johnson Show (2 min read vs 1 hour 31 mins listening)
What’s the most high stakes negotiation? Selling your business. It’s an emotional rollercoaster and a minefield to navigate. Ankur Nagpal tells his story of selling Teachable and the strategies you can use to maintain leverage in any negotiation.
What they say
Be outcome independent
Selling your business is the hardest thing in the world. Outside of a few executives, no one at your company can know. You can't distract your team.
There's a massive level of uncertainty. You have to make the assumption it's not going to happen until it closes.
The two outcomes are so dramatically different. The closer you get to being outcome independent, the more leverage you have.
If you’re not okay with either outcome, lie to yourself. A lot of it is just what you tell yourself.
Ankur Nagpal
Threaten to walk away
Right up until two weeks before the deal closed I threatened to walk away because they were taking so long with the paperwork.
I was like 'We signed a term sheet that was under the assumption we would get it done in a certain period of time. At the very least I'm going to ask to renegotiate.' That immediately sprung them into action.
Ankur Nagpal
What I say
Why it matters
Never lose your ability to walk away from a deal. You lose all leverage when a certain outcome becomes a need, not a want. That’s why it’s best to:
Fundraise before you run out of cash. You can negotiate better terms with investors when you’re not desperate or on a time crunch.
Apply to jobs while you’re employed. You’re in a position of strength, reducing the urgency to settle for less than ideal conditions.
Sell to SMEs before selling to enterprise. You can perfect your offering and build a strong reputation that you can leverage in negotiations.
Negotiate with multiple SaaS providers. You can play one off against another, ensuring you get the best possible deal while having a fallback plan.
Next steps
Define your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). This is the course of action you'll take if your current negotiation fails. Knowing your BATNA gives you the confidence to reject proposals because you have a fallback plan. Your BATNA may not be perfect but it makes it easier to say no to unsatisfactory terms.
🤩 How to perfect your prioritization
🥇 This Week In Startups (3 min read vs 1 hour 9 mins listening)
Effective prioritization is essential for success. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shares why the company focused on core services before exploring new ventures and the process by which they prioritize projects.
What they say
Focus on core before explore
We only have permission to do something new if customers love our core service. If they're complaining on Twitter about unclear pricing or having to do chores when they check out, then we don't have permission.
We created a blueprint of everything people complained about:
We created a storyboard of the end to end experience.
We reviewed all 150 screens on the app and all 72 user policies.
We mapped tens of thousands of social media posts and millions of customer calls.
Based on this blueprint, we were able to prioritize the top issues. We said 'We're going to get through every one of these before we do something new.'
Brian Chesky
How Airbnb prioritizes projects
Analyzing issues is a science. Prioritization is more of an art.
The first thing we did was collate all the inputs: social media posts, listening sessions with guests and hosts, user behavior in the app. We put the inputs into 100 different buckets.
Next we looked at the frequency and the severity of the issues. We started to look at relationships between issues.
Then we had a group of 10 or 20 of us who deeply understood the issues. We live the product. We use the product.
We assessed these data points against engineering capability using t-shirt sizing. We weighed a thousand contradictory things in our head and made all those different trade-offs.
We update the roadmap twice a year. We spend a couple of days together. We debate everything on the roadmap, we adjust it, and we roll it out.
Brian Chesky
Brian holds the keys to the castle
I personally decide on the final prioritization of every single project in the company that a customer will see.
I only make a call if I'm informed. I'm only informed if my team understands so I make sure that I know the details, that my directs know the details, and their directs know the details.
Brian Chesky
What I say
Why it matters
Companies often struggle with finding the right balance between maintaining core offerings and pursuing new opportunities. Even the greats like Google are shutting down projects left, right, and centre. Just look at Stadia and Google Optimize.
Brian Chesky has not only perfected prioritization at Airbnb, but he’s also taught us a lesson in listening to your customer and corporate comms:
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1653739785113010178?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Next steps
Brian Chesky's prioritization methodology uses a unique combination of data analysis and instinctive decision-making. To adopt these principles, consider using:
The Eisenhower Matrix. This time management framework can help you delegate or delete unimportant tasks.
The Lean Startup methodology. This encourages iterative development and being receptive to customer feedback.
Your intuition. Frameworks are helpful but at the end of the day you know your customer best. Trust your own judgement.
https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1530554542366261248?s=46&t=4jkXDwa6bEyPFYqd9YJt9g
Note, these quotes were pulled at different points of the episode. Some sentences were left out to make the narrative more concise. I am not associated or affiliated with any podcast (unless otherwise stated). All roundups are independently written and do not imply any sponsorship or endorsement by the podcast.