Bob Moesta
Chapters
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:00:00 - 00:04:58
Bob Moesta (00:00:00): I think one of the biggest misconceptions around Jobs to Be Done is this notion that it’s pain and gain as opposed to context and outcome. When you hear somebody’s story and it seems irrational, like we’ll have people go, “Oh m…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:05:07 - 00:09:06
Bob Moesta (00:05:07): I think the easiest way to think about it is that I’m an engineer, electrical, basically have been building product for almost 30 years and one of the lies I was told growing up was build it and they will come. And so we always…
Practical Advice and Actionable Tactics
Duration: 00:09:51 - 00:14:24
Lenny (00:09:51): To unpack the framework a little bit more, if you were to come to a founder and tell them, “Hey, you should be paying attention to struggling moments,” I feel like all of them will say, “Yeah, we know that. We do that.
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:14:47 - 00:18:39
Lenny (00:14:47): Is there an example that can make this even more real of a company or a product?
Bob Moesta (00:14:51): So one of the companies I work with a lot lately is a company called Autobooks, they’re based here in Detroit. And basically th…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:19:18 - 00:24:00
(00:19:18): And so the first thing we do is we start to frame, let’s just talk about what causes people to say today’s the day they want to go on vacation or today’s the day they wanted a new set of windows. And you start to frame around that, and t…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:24:01 - 00:27:37
Bob Moesta (00:24:01): And so now I’m a teacher, I’m adjunct lecturer at the Kellogg School at Northwestern, and then I guest lecture on the East Coast in kind of different business schools, and then I help Techstars and Y Combinator. So I’m really m…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:28:09 - 00:31:41
(00:28:09): The second is I only talk to people who have already tried to make the progress, right? So for example, people talk about like, “Well, you can’t apply this to something that’s new. It doesn’t exist.” So I worked with a company that was, …
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:32:48 - 00:37:23
(00:32:48): When I think about Jobs to Be Done, I’ve never fully implemented any sort of structured framework, but I find that it’s been really useful in my newsletter work and my podcast work, just thinking about what is the job my newsletter is do…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:37:43 - 00:42:33
Lenny (00:37:43): And so in those conversations, is there something you find that just this is a sign they’re actually really serious, or do you just like, “I’m not going to listen to anything they’re saying in this case until we actually build it an…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:42:41 - 00:47:31
Lenny (00:42:41): Yeah, brand new product is kind of the question there.
Bob Moesta (00:42:42): Yeah, so at Techstars we basically make sure that everybody, they come in, they usually don’t have a product to start with, at least in the Chicago and S…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:47:34 - 00:51:48
Bob Moesta (00:47:34): I bought a couple, but I didn’t use them, but I bought a couple. And I mean, you go deep into it, you start to realize that this is the crazy part, everybody thinks they compete, but if you literally go back to a moment when yo…
Founding Story and Company Origins
Duration: 00:52:21 - 00:56:38
Lenny (00:52:21): In those cases, is there a different framework you recommend or is it just like you don’t really have a lot of options?
Bob Moesta (00:52:26): In a lot of cases to me, I’d do some ethnography, I’d literally figure out kind of where…
Personal Story and Background
Duration: 00:57:18 - 01:02:10
(00:57:18): So here’s a really good one is that this is in 1990, so one of the things that happened was when my youngest kid moved out and basically moved out of the house, I had my notebooks from almost 30 years of every project on everything I wor…
Closing Remarks and Key Takeaways
Duration: 01:02:23 - 01:06:20
(01:02:23): The other is to find a place in a very large organization where a group is struggling, they can’t deliver product, they can’t move fast enough, they keep getting the wrong insights, they say it’s going to be this big, and literally focus…
Closing Remarks and Key Takeaways
Duration: 01:07:05 - 01:09:30
Lenny (01:07:05): That’s incredible. What a beautiful way to wrap up our chat, Bob.