How to Build a Product with 10 Customers and a Boring Tech Stack | Gravity Climate
Summary
TLDRThe transcript discusses the journey of Gravity, an industrial decarbonization platform, led by CEO Salah. Gravity helps companies manage carbon emissions and energy usage, focusing on scalable solutions for climate change. The CEO shares insights on building products efficiently, the importance of boring yet reliable technology, and how their pilot program quickly generated revenue and feedback. The video highlights key startup lessons, including customer obsession, solving problems over building solutions, and the value of creating a high-speed, product-driven environment to meet real-world business and climate needs.
Takeaways
- 🚀 Startups evolve through different phases, initially selling on vision, then on presentations, and finally building software in response to customer feedback.
- 💼 Gravity helps businesses manage their carbon emissions and energy use, offering practical tools to reduce emissions while aligning with business goals.
- 🌍 The founders of Gravity were driven by the opportunity to make decarbonization attractive to energy-intensive industries, not just from an environmental standpoint but also as a business advantage.
- 👩💻 The importance of using 'boring technology' to avoid wasting resources on experimental tools is emphasized, allowing small teams to move quickly and focus on innovation.
- 📈 Gravity rapidly grew, achieving 4x growth in its second year, with plans to grow by 3.5x this year, driven by customer feedback and market demand.
- 🔑 Key product-building insights include staying customer-obsessed, building a product that solves a clear problem, and avoiding the pitfall of trying to create something that serves everyone.
- 🛠 Building products should focus on solving problems for users, and startups should prioritize rapid execution and customer value over cutting-edge technology.
- 🌱 Gravity’s mission is to accelerate decarbonization by making climate action both economically attractive and aligned with regulatory requirements for large energy-intensive companies.
- 🤝 The pilot program Gravity ran involved a three-month commitment to help companies measure emissions, with over 50% of participants converting into paying customers.
- 💡 Founders stress the importance of defining your company by the problem you solve, rather than a specific solution, allowing flexibility and scalability as you refine the product.
Q & A
What is the name of the company Salah is the CEO of?
-Salah is the CEO of Gravity, an industrial decarbonization platform.
What does Gravity specialize in?
-Gravity specializes in helping people manage their carbon and energy, tackling climate change in a scalable way.
How did Gravity perform in its second year of existence?
-In its second year, Gravity grew about four times and was on track to grow by 3.5 times in the following year.
What was Salah's educational background before joining the workforce?
-Salah started studying physics, but graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.
What was Salah's first job after college?
-Salah's first job after college was as a software engineer at Salesforce.
What did Salah learn from his experience at Salesforce?
-At Salesforce, Salah learned the importance of building prototypes and working with physical products.
Why did Salah leave Salesforce to join Samsara?
-Salah left Salesforce to join Samsara to spearhead a product line called Safety, which was expanding into dash cameras and safety monitoring.
What was the main focus of the thesis Salah developed at Eclipse Ventures?
-The thesis focused on actions and technologies that energy-intensive companies could take to be carbon reductive and aligned with competitive business metrics.
How did Gravity approach its initial product development?
-Gravity approached its initial product development by conducting a pilot program with a cohort of customers, building software, and answering questions around measuring scope one and scope two emissions.
What was the goal of Gravity's pilot program?
-The goal of the pilot program was to find 10 customers, measure their emissions efficiently, and generate a report that could be shared with stakeholders.
What was the outcome of Gravity's pilot program?
-Over 50% of the pilot program cohort converted to paying customers, providing revenue and case studies for further growth.
What advice does Salah give for startups when choosing technology?
-Salah advises startups to pick boring technology to avoid wasting resources on unproven solutions and to focus on innovations that are meaningful.
Outlines
🌱 Founding Gravity: A Journey from Vision to Execution
Salah, CEO of Gravity, an industrial decarbonization platform, discusses the early stages of a product's lifecycle, emphasizing the transition from selling a vision to a tangible presentation. He shares his personal journey, starting with his academic background in physics and computer science, moving through his professional experiences at Salesforce and Samsara, and culminating in his role as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Eclipse Ventures. Salah's narrative highlights the importance of starting with a clear vision and the strategic use of technology that is not only effective but also scalable. He underscores the rapid growth of Gravity, its focus on reducing carbon emissions, and the company's approach to product development informed by customer feedback. The narrative also touches on the importance of choosing reliable, 'boring' technology to avoid wasting resources on unproven solutions.
🚀 Accelerating Growth: The Pilot Program and Customer Feedback
The narrative from the second paragraph delves into the specifics of Gravity's pilot program, which aimed to help customers submit reports in real-time, focusing on measuring scope one and two emissions. It outlines the company's strategy of rapid product development in response to customer feedback, the importance of early revenue, and the conversion of pilot customers into long-term clients. Salah emphasizes the value of hiring individuals with a sense of urgency, agency, and customer obsession. He also discusses the pitfalls of becoming too attached to a specific solution too early and the importance of defining a company's identity by the problem it aims to solve, rather than the solution itself.
🛠️ Building for Impact: The Role of Technology and Product Mindset
In the final paragraph, Salah reflects on the role of startups as a force for good and the power of a small, motivated team. He stresses the importance of creating an environment that fosters a clear understanding of objectives and a relentless pace of execution. The discussion turns to the challenges of decision-making in a startup, the need for 'boring' technology to ensure efficiency, and the benefits of a simple tech stack that allows for rapid iteration and problem-solving. Salah encourages a shift in mindset from being a software engineer to being a product person, with the goal of solving problems through software development. He concludes by reiterating Gravity's mission to accelerate decarbonization and make climate action attractive to energy-intensive organizations.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Decarbonization
💡Pilot Program
💡Scope 1 and Scope 2 Emissions
💡Carbon Footprint
💡Startup
💡Return on Investment (ROI)
💡Technology Stack
💡Carbon Accounting
💡Revenue
💡Customer Obsession
💡Sustainable Economy
Highlights
Gravity is an industrial decarbonization platform that helps manage carbon and energy.
Gravity focuses on scalable solutions to tackle climate change.
The company grew four times in its second year and is on track to grow 3.5 times in the third year.
The CEO's background combines physics, computer science, and mathematics, influencing Gravity's approach.
Gravity's early phase involved a pilot program to help companies submit reports on emissions in real-time.
The importance of picking 'boring technology' to focus resources on meaningful innovation.
Gravity's rapid growth is attributed to its focus on solving the problem of carbon emissions for energy-intensive companies.
The CEO's experience at Salesforce and Samsara shaped his approach to product development and market strategy.
Gravity's thesis is centered around making climate action attractive to energy-intensive organizations.
The company's early success was due to its pilot program and the feedback from the first cohort of customers.
Gravity's approach to product development is to build quickly and adapt based on customer feedback.
The importance of hiring for urgency, agency, and customer obsession in a startup environment.
Gravity's tech stack is intentionally 'boring' to allow for rapid development and scalability.
The CEO emphasizes the need for startups to focus on problems, not just solutions.
Gravity's mission is to accelerate decarbonization by making climate action attractive to the most energy-intensive organizations.
The company's success is measured by its ability to drive revenue and ship code rapidly.
The CEO encourages software engineers to think of themselves as product people focused on solving problems.
Transcripts
any product kind of goes through a few
phases first one is like selling on
Vision the next one is really selling on
a presentation the pilot program was
somewhere between those two we went to
people and we said for 3 months we will
do X in this case was help you submit a
report to a requesting body in real time
we were basically building software and
answering the questions that they had
around how to measure their scope one
emissions or their scope two emissions
completely informed by this first cohort
as a startup you have so few resources
and you really can't afford to spend
spare calories trying to pursue unknown
return on investment experimenting with
powerful new databases in my opinion is
a luxury for people who have more time
and money to burn it's important to pick
boring technology hi my name is Salah
I'm the CEO gravity an industrial
decarbonization platform we help people
manage their carbon and manage their
energy gravity is tackling climate
change in a scalable way and then
identify plan and execute real world
projects to reduce those things last
year was our second year in existence
and we grew about four times and this
year we're on track to about 3 3 and
1/2x again which is really
[Music]
exciting in college I started off by
studying physics I ended up graduating
with a degree in computer Science and
Mathematics computer science to me was
the application of math in software
while physics was the application of
math to the physical world and uh I
would say that was kind of the beginning
of marrying Adams and bits for me so
fresh out of college I went to a company
called Salesforce I landed as a software
engineer there on a team called the iot
cloud I fell in love with it but my
favorite times were when we were
building prototypes and we actually had
the physical products in our hands and
so I knew that I wanted to get closer to
it and so in leaving Salesforce I looked
to a company called samsar one of the
most incredible sales machines and go to
market machines and I them to spearhead
a product line they called Safety Safety
was expanding Beyond fuel efficiency and
GPS tracking and a number of other
classical telematics offerings into dash
cameras and safety monitoring in leaving
samsara I joined an industrial Venture
Capital firm called Eclipse joined them
as an entrepreneur and residence
incubating a number of different ideas
but the thesis that I really started to
obsess over was one that centered around
the ground swell in both actions and
technologies that energy intensive
companies could take that were carbon
reductive but also incredibly aligned to
competitive business metrics and so
there was a lot of opportunity for them
to take action that was aligned to
climate what really itched me though was
that increasingly these entities were
being pressured to disclose or even
lambasted for being carbon intensive by
a lot of people who were eagerly pushing
forward the climate agenda they had this
incredible opportunity to participate uh
and weren't doing so I had known solid
socially for several years he was always
somebody that I had wanted to start a
company with and then in late 2021 he
called me from a very crowded hostel in
Glasgow he was out there for cop 26 the
climate conference he told me about how
he had been an entrepreneur in Residence
at Eclipse Ventures and at Eclipse he
had been incubating a thesis about
pragmatic decarbonization he walked me
through his thesis and it was like
getting struck with a bolt of lightning
I knew that if I didn't leave to pursue
this opportunity with him I would
probably come to regret it I learned how
to code when I was seven around senior
year of high school interned at a
company called ibata which is B Toc a
consumer couponing application and it
was 20 people in the basement of a
firehouse in Denver that was the summer
that iata hit a million users and it was
just intoxicating seeing us build
something put it out there watching it
grow in real time and then I went to
college for a year I actually dropped
out of college after freshman year I
think because I had such a good
experience at ibata when my friend
called me and said hey I want to drop
out of Stanford and start an analytics
company I said that sounds awesome so
both my parents are Educators and I
remember talking to them and saying hey
I have a once in a-lifetime opportunity
to move to California and work on this
company and my mom said you're 19 what
do you know about once in A- lifetime
opportunities which I think is a very
fair point company that I joined after
freshman year of college was called
clear graph clear graph was an analytics
company so we built a natural language
search tool kind of like Siri but for
structured data worked at that company
for several years and got an acquisition
offer from Tableau so we sold that
compan to Tableau in 2017 and then I
stayed there for a couple years one
thing I learned was that it's very
important to Niche down for a Target
customer at Clear graph I think one of
the challenges we had was the long-term
ambition was to make data accessible to
all manner of business users who
couldn't currently access it but because
of how broad that ambition was we ended
up building a product that was quite
horizontal it wasn't specialized in the
ways that it needed to be specialized
and because it was trying to be
everything to everybody it ended up
having a lot of trouble adding value
whatsoever and so if I could go back I
would have niched down earlier for Clear
graph we also learned a lot about the
right way to build software at an early
stage company we made some decisions
that really slowed us down like
splitting the codebase into
microservices and that sort of thing and
having the learnings from Clear graph
definitely influenced the way that we
operate engineering and product here at
gravity gravity was born out of the
thesis that a lot of this growing meure
that energy or carbon intensive
companies were feeling to disclose or
participate in the climate transition
was rooted in software not being built
to make that process easier and business
dots not being connected to make that
more attractive there's got to be some
Missing Link rather than having an arm
twist to pull these people into the
climate transition we could incentivize
it it could be attractive we help
companies measure their carbon footprint
and energy usage and then identify plan
and execute real world projects to
reduce those things the actual math of
carbon accounting is quite simple you
need to figure out all the things that a
business does and then you need to
figure out how much carbon they Emit and
then you multiply the quantities by the
emission factors and then you sum it up
and that's a carbon footprint but the
art of building a good carbon counting
product actually has mostly to do with
the inputs and the outputs how do you
get the right data in from the Myriad
sources throughout a business throughout
a business's supply chain where it needs
to come from how do you output it and
report it in the format that is useful
that lets a business accomplish its
goals we built the first version of the
product really fast uh we were in the
Market within a month or two of getting
going we've been generating revenue from
about that time as well and I think that
has done really well for us because more
important than the early Revenue has
been the feedback and The Real World
customer Pain any product kind of goes
through a few phases before it ends up
becoming the actual costed and sold by
many sales reps effort first one is like
selling on vision and that is often to
new hires that's often to investors that
next one is really selling on a
presentation to an extent and so you
actually go to a buyer and you share a
slide deck of could be features but you
pitch them as existing and you try to
attach some sort of a cost to it the
pilot program was somewhere between
those two we went to people and we said
for 3 months we will do X in this case
was help you submit a report to a
requesting body we'll come measure your
missions efficiently we'll do it through
the software powered experience and
we'll generate a report that you could
share with either your shareholders your
largest customers or if you were in a
regulatory Market you could share it to
a regulatory so the pilot program was
minimally finding 10 customers is what
we wanted to do we wanted them to be a
mix of different organization sizes and
a mix of going directly to those
Industrials as well as some private
Equity firms just to get a feel for like
the two-sided Market that we were
starting to see for during that time
I'll be honest we had only a few lines
of code and a lot of hypotheses but in
the spirit of if they come we will build
it we wanted to be very reactive to the
initial demands of these organizations
in real time we were basically building
software and answering the questions
that they had around how to measure
their scope one emissions or their scope
two emissions thinking about what
Integrations what automations we wanted
to actually build completely informed by
this first cohort of course there's risk
there that if you choose a cohort that's
not representative of the rest of the
market you've built something tailored
to them and no one else but we tried to
figure out the lowest common
denominators that were highly useful and
at the end of those three months as was
kind of communicated early on to those
organizations we said you have the right
to walk away there's no kind of
commitment to purchase or if you'd like
to continue with us here's a highly kind
of discounted early partner rate um we'd
love to work with you and over 50% of
that cohort converted and so the pilot
program ended up being really impactful
for us we got revenue in the door within
the first four months of our existence
which was astonishing and we built the
product rapidly in reaction to explicit
customer feedback and had all these case
studies that we could use to then
evangelize not only to net new customers
but to sales reps who wanted to know
that they were joining a company that
was drisk from a selling perspective uh
and so we started hiring and growing the
team when hiring I think it's really
important to look for urgency agency and
customer Obsession the urgency in the
agency are because you need people who
can take a high level objective and
relentlessly get after it and drive
results double quick the customer
obsession is because you also need to
pair that with a level of self-awareness
or Focus that lets you see when you're
going down a rabbit hole and getting
sucked into something that isn't
actually going to be valuable to the
user asking people about speed of
execution is important you want people
where when there's a problem they act
fast and I think to a degree that can be
learned for some people it's innate
looking for times that people saw a
problem on their own or were very close
to the customer and actually took a
problem into their own hands deviced a
solution implemented it and got it out
the door is important and that is
inherently a high agency Endeavor a good
reason to start a company is if you fall
in love with the problem or the people
who have that problem I think a big
failure mode is getting attached to a
specific solution too early a lot of
companies want to build something but
they don't want to solve something and
if you build something and it doesn't
actually solve a problem then your whole
identity can crumble rather rapidly so I
think it's important to Define your
identity by a problem and not by a
solution especially when you're in the
pre-ra hunting for the solution
especially the scalable solution days
that you can bring to Market I do think
startups are a potent Force for good it
is perpetually astounding how much can
come from the work of a small focused
motivated group of people and as a
Founder I think it's your job to create
an environment where people know what
their Charter is and then to drive
Relentless tempo of execution so that
you can capitalize on the
vision as a startup you have to make so
many decisions you have to pick the
right database pick the right Tex stack
build your software in a certain
architecture
and the sheer number of choices presents
a lot of surface area to get things
wrong but it's important to pick boring
technology because as a startup you have
so few resources and you really can't
afford to spend spare calories trying to
pursue unknown return on investment so
experimenting with powerful new
databases in my opinion is a luxury for
people who have more time and money to
burn it's important to pick
wellestablished databases keep it very
simple so that you can spend your
calories on the innovations that are
actually meaningful at gravity for
instance we have a very boring Tech
stack it's allowed a very small team of
Engineers to scale to somewhat comical
amount of data and to drive significant
Revenue it does allow us to ship code
dozens of times per day and if problems
come up we can fix them in minutes not
hours and if we want to build features
we can do it in a really predictable way
because we're never Fighting Tools we're
never breaking out of a prison of our
own creation which does sometimes happen
I think of engineer as a skill set but I
think that engineering as a sense of
identity can be limiting for individuals
as a startup your job isn't to build
software your job is to build a product
and that product needs to be useful for
people the job is to make decisions that
allow you to maximize the rate of change
of your product so that you can get the
most revs so that you can have the
highest shot of building something
useful so I would encourage software
Engineers to think of themselves as
product people where the way that they
build product is by using software and I
think that's an important mindset shift
because a product person falls in love
with the problem and the person who has
the problem in that sense almost every
problem can be really interesting if you
get in the weeds enough with it carbon
accounting somebody would reasonably
call it dry and a little bit boring but
if you're really serious about solving
the problem and if you're really serious
about building software to solve the
problem then of course you need to
understand the problem and the way it's
laid out the terminology the language
the people who have it in order to begin
to create Solutions I think like many
other companies in the climate space our
ultimate mission is accelerating
decarbonization and the transition to a
sustainable economy but our particular
contribution is to do so by succeeding
in making acting on climate extremely
attractive to the most energy intensive
organizations more attractive fiscally
more attractive from a labor perspective
and easier to comply with the growing
needs from a regulatory perspective
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