Happy Thursday 👋

Planning to do buyer research soon? Approach it like a seller.

Because at the end of the day, you’re doing the same thing as a seller—trying to find the right people to reach out to, and trying to get them to book a meeting.

Here are 6 ways to do this:

1. Use signals (like G2 reviews or social posts) to find people who are already sharing their opinion

2. Set up email sequences to automate and add multiple steps to your outreach

3. Don't sleep on LinkedIn DMs (or other social channels if they make more sense)

4. Follow / connect with the people you interview and try to build a relationship—you might be able to learn more from them again down the road

5. Use incentives to encourage participation. I typically offer $50 - $100 for a half hour interview with non-execs, or $150 - $200 for C-level for folks.

6. Use your leadership team's network. Many of them likely have connections that are wiling to chat.

If the backbone of your research is based on interviews like mine, then you've probably struggled to 1) find the right people to interview and 2) get them to talk to you.

Hopefully this short list can help you with both!

Q&A 👊

How Puzzle is competing against Miro and LucidChart

“Tell me the origin story of Puzzle and the gap that you saw in the market”

In 2017, after an anxiety attack landed me in the hospital, I realized something had to change. I was in charge of operations for a 15-person startup, and it was pure chaos. 

Any time a process needed to be changed, I'd have to call an all-hands meeting because no one understood the operational big picture. These meetings, meant to last an hour, would stretch on for hours as I tried to juggle 15 different viewpoints.

It was an unsustainable work environment. To avoid this chaos, you need to write things down. Everyone needs to document their processes in a workspace where it's easy to see how everything connects. 

So over the next few years, I tried using traditional diagrams using LucidChart, Miro, and Figjam to create alignment across the processes I built across departments. They did an okay job, but they didn’t tell the full story…

• They didn’t show a person which step is manual vs automated.

• They didn’t help show what systems are used across a process.

• They didn’t show how a role contributes across one or many processes.

That’s why I built Puzzle. It’s a tool for operators to plan, visualize, monitor, and collaborate on their processes in a drag-and-drop builder, making it easy to manage the big picture. It’s our visual playbook for our business, and a relational operations database.

Today, our entire company operation is mapped in Puzzle and synced with our systems. Every week, our team makes improvements without my involvement. It's a relief and the dream of every operator. Once you have this system in place, you'll never go back.

“How do you differentiate Puzzle from established competitors in your space?”

Puzzle stands out by addressing the key pain points faced by users of LucidChart, Miro, and Whimsical for process and systems diagramming.

Here are the benefits we focus on and their associated features.

1. Clarity and Consistency: Puzzle ensures that diagrams are clear, consistent, and easy to understand, eliminating the confusion caused by inconsistent and outdated documentation.
   
   Differentiated features we offer that solve this:
   - Standardized Visual Language
   - Integrated Relational Database
   

2. Comprehensive Documentation: The ability to embed rich media and add detailed notes within diagrams is often missing in traditional tools, making it challenging for stakeholders to grasp complex systems.
   
   Differentiated feature we offer that solves this:
   Deep Documentation: Users can embed detailed notes, videos, and hyperlinks directly within each step.
   

3. Efficiency and Accuracy: It takes a lot of manual effort to keep diagrams up-to-date, and ensure that they accurately reflect current processes for users.
   
   Differentiated feature we offer that solves this:
   - Real-Time Collaboration
   - Automated System Syncing
   

4. Insight and Optimization: Historically, it’s very challenging for organizations to quickly identify areas for improvement in their day-to-day operations.
   
   Differentiated feature we offer that solves this:
   Operational Cost Quantification: Puzzle allows users to automatically calculate and display the operational cost of each process step.

“What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced while trying to disrupt the market? How have you tackled them?”

Puzzle is a single-founder, 100% bootstrapped company. We’re building a software product in an incredibly crowded space with incumbents who have billion dollar valuations and massive engineering teams.

Our team can’t build integrations as fast as our competitors, and we have nearly $0 dedicated to Sales & Marketing.

Meanwhile competitors are valued at multiple billions of dollars (i.e LucidChart = $3B, Miro = $17B, Figjam = $12.5B)

These aren't challenges to simply 'solve' or 'tackle.' Instead, they guide our company strategy, helping us stay focused on solving problems better than traditional whiteboards. Our features are designed to serve process and system builders in ways that go beyond what any general-purpose whiteboard can offer.

“What's one insight or lesson learned that's been critical to your competitive success?”

The one insight that keeps our product hyper-focused is the fact that the bones of any business operations can be explained by one sentence—people use tools to get jobs done. 

And the best way to continuously improve how your people use tools to get jobs done is to visualize it, quantify costs, and implement automations where you can. 

That’s Puzzle’s product vision moving towards—a diagram that drives efficiency and clarity as organizations aim to achieve System-Led Growth.

“Any parting advice for revenue leaders competing in crowded markets?”

Go experience the problem first hand. Whether you’re a revenue leader who has no experience in your user’s position, or many years. It’s vital to go through the pain point that your users are experiencing as they use the next-best alternative to do their job.

JUICY SCOOPS 🧃

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Stay Healthy, my friends.

💚Andy