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Travis
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by GoHighLevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis.
What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast, where it's our mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend, Rob Snyder. Rob's a serial startup founder and a fellow at Harvard Innovation Labs. He graduated from Harvard Business School and previously worked at McKinsey. He's also an entrepreneur in residence and venture partner for early stage venture capital funds. So he's been around the money game for quite some time in multiple different aspects context, from founder to helping other founders, to being at Harvard to working at McKinsey. So I'm super stoked to have him on the show. Rob, what's up, man?
Rob Snyder
Great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Travis
So let's go back in time. First off, tell me, tell me where this journey started for you. What was the first time you ever made a dollar that shocked you? Surprised you made you happy. Yeah.
Rob Snyder
So coming out of college, I got a job offer at McKinsey, which is a big consulting firm and a massive consulting firm. Yeah, massive, massive consulting firm. Before that, I had, like, been a lifeguard. So I was used to making like 10 bucks an hour or whatever. And the McKinsey offer letter, I, like, I thought they had put the wrong number on there. Like, there's no way. I'm 20 years old. You cannot be petting this much money to a 20 year old. This is irresponsible. And so that was pretty cool. And I got to save all that to pay off my business school.
Travis
Oh, no way. Okay, so when you, when you were first starting there, were you, did you have to relocate? Did you move cities? Like, what was, what was it like logistically? Yeah.
Rob Snyder
So I was in McKinsey's Cleveland office, which is the best office in my opinion. So I went to college in Pittsburgh, moved out to Cleveland to work in the Cleveland office, and then, you know, they fly you around. So I figured it out that I could just work on projects in like, Europe and Australia, and they would just fly me out there for a couple months. And they're like, well, it's really expensive to fly you home. So you just fly wherever you want within Europe or within Australia over the weekends. And it was like, you know, I'm 22 years old. Like, this is the coolest thing no,
Travis
dude, that's an awesome. That's an awesome gig. Is that. Is that atypical? Like, were you kind of top of the class, or did you know somebody that worked there? Like, what. What was the.
Rob Snyder
How did the path get forged to McKinsey? I was atypical, and then I was not super good at being a consultant at McKinsey, but very hard job. Very fun job, too. You learn a lot. But, yeah, no, I just had a weird background that got me to McKinsey. So instead of, like, doing traditional jobs and whatnot in college, I just, like, picked up and moved into Tanzania for every summer. And so just, I don't know, had a. Had a resume that I think was sufficiently weird that they're like, all right, I. This doesn't look like the other resumes we see, so let's bring this person in. And that's kind of an interesting life strategy just to be weird enough that they're like, huh? And I think that's why Harvard interviewed me as well. Like, okay, this. This person doesn't look normal.
Travis
Yeah, that is. That is absolutely a life strategy, man. We talk about that sometimes in. In relation to, like, media PR and podcast bookings and getting guests and stuff like that. And I remember I got this advice early on from this, you know, networking quote, unquote, networking expert who always said, be interested, not interesting. Like, always. You know, try to think about the other person or whatever. And then the more I got in this space, the more I kind of realized that it was really just the ultimate combination of both of those things. Like, be interested. Of course. Like, act, you know, talk to people, ask questions, let them, you know, be an active listener, all that good stuff. But also be interesting. Like, do interesting. Like, if you want.
Rob Snyder
If you want more.
Travis
More eyeballs, you want more attention, you want more traffic to whatever it is you're working on. It just works better when you do interesting stuff, like, rather than just sitting there waiting for an opportunity to come your way. So what. What was in Tanzania that brought you out there?
Rob Snyder
Oh, I. I just got bored my first semester in college, and I was like, what would be something weird to do this summer? Like, what would be interesting enough to do this summer? Like, you didn't.
Travis
There was not. There wasn't, like, a job out there or anything. You just lived there?
Rob Snyder
Yeah, yeah. Just. I just, like, picked on a map, found some volunteer things so that I could, you know, at least tell my parents it was. It was useful and just. Just went there. So three summers there, graduated early, went to McKinsey at 20. And it was, it was interesting. Those were like, two very interesting years at McKinsey of, like, realizing that while I was very smart in college, I was very much not smart at McKinsey. And I had to work for the first time in my life very hard to become, like, good at something, which was a really good experience. But, yeah, like, very different pace of life from wandering around Tanzania to actually being in important boardrooms and supposed to say interesting things.
Travis
I was going to say, did you feel like this certain level of imposter syndrome, being that young, being in boardrooms, consulting companies, doing crazy revenues, and then you're sitting there like, oh, yeah, I'm the expert. Let me check out your spreadsheets.
Rob Snyder
Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. It was like, it was, it basically was at the point where I, the reason I didn't want to go back was because I realized I didn't know anything. Like, I didn't know enough. And so I could do analyses and I, but I, I felt like I needed to know something real by starting a company and actually, like, working in it and working on it. And, and so that's, yeah, McKinsey life there, there's a lot of really cool benefits to, to that kind of life. First class, you know, you get a bunch of hotel points, you're in cool rooms, you feel really cool. But I didn't, I just, you know, I was 22, 23, and I was like, there. I shouldn't have the responsibility I have.
Travis
Yeah, yeah. You felt like you needed to go sort of like earn your own adventure before you could come back and sit in that position again.
Rob Snyder
Something like that. Yeah.
Travis
Do, do you, do you feel a certain way about, like, if you're, whether it's for your company or you're advising a founder and they're looking at bringing in a consultant, you're looking to bring in a consultant. Is that a factor that you consider for a consultant that is like, do. What type of real world experience do they have? Or have they been kind of just brought up in this academia perspective that they're still in at this point? Do you balance those in your mind?
Rob Snyder
Yeah, I, so I, I, whenever I bring in a consultant or someone, I, I want to find the best person in the world at that, this specific thing. And I have been burned many times by feeling like I understood something or somebody, having a explanation of something that sounded totally right and made a lot of sense, was logically rigorous, it was defensible, and it didn't work. And I've done that. Like, that's basically true of all of the entrepreneurship advice that I got and all the books that I read on entrepreneurship leading up to starting my first company where it's like, you know, it all makes a ton of sense. Sounds totally right. And you. So you run really fast and run straight into a wall because it doesn't work.
Travis
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Right. Well, that, that's the, that's the thing about having the real world experience, right? It's like that, it's like, you know, taking weight loss advice from somebody that's egregiously overweight. It's like you could have all the book knowledge in the world. You could know what's going on in the body and what's reacting to this or that. But like, if you haven't done it, there's just a level of you don't know exactly what you're talking about because you have like, you have not been in the position to take this quarter million dollar risk or to hire this executive for your team that could potentially bankrupt you or take you to the next level. Like you, like, if you haven't had to make those decisions with capital that's at your disposal, then I just like, the, the advice is it's not to say that it's wrong, it's just to say that I'm gonna ask a few more questions around this because I'm not like, you have this almost like, you know, I hate the word privilege, but almost like a privileged position to be able to tell me what to do. Because you're not the one that has to take the risk. In fact, I'm paying you like right now. Like you're, you, you like literally have no risk in this. I'm taking all of the risk. So if I'm going to make this big decision based on something that you told me to do, then like, I want to know that you've also had some skin in the game at some point and been, you know, faced with this type of a decision before.
Rob Snyder
I'm sure you've had the experience too. Something that before you do it sounds totally right.
Travis
Absolutely.
Rob Snyder
And after you do it, it was like, that was the dumbest thing I've ever done.
Travis
And it seems obvious on the other side of it. You know, that's the annoying part is like, it seems obvious when you're doing it and you think that it's the right thing. And then when you look back, you're like, oh, it's obviously that was the wrong thing, but that's, that's entrepreneurship. I suppose.
So.
So tell me, so you were at McKinsey for a couple of years. Did you go directly into founding your first company at that point?
Rob Snyder
I went to Harvard Business School to get my MBA while trying to start a company. Okay, so two years at HBS was awesome. Raised some money, kind of did all the things by the book to start our company. And you were building a software company in hourly employee scheduling because we had analyzed the market, all the good stuff you're supposed to do, done a bunch of research, got some design partners signed on, built the minimum viable product, and then just got kind of punched in the face for two years when nobody would buy our product. That made so much sense.
Travis
Yeah, I know. I know exactly what you're talking about, man. Yeah, you. That's the weird thing, right, Is like, ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is really where it matters. And then you won't know if the idea is a good idea until you. Until somebody's out there willing to vote with their wallet.
Rob Snyder
Yeah.
Travis
You know what I mean? Not just. Not just tell you this is a good idea. Not just examine your business plan and go, this looks sound and strong. Good. You know, good job. You know, it's like, no, no. Did they take their credit card out of their wallet and put it down on the account and pay me money for this? If not, it is not validated yet.
Rob Snyder
And it's so frustrating. Like, that's. That is the truth. And it's so frustrating because people will do everything around that that seems like it's just the thing you do right before that. You know, they'll say, oh, my gosh, that's the biggest problem that I'm facing. Or, oh, wow, that would save us a million dollars a year. Or they'll say all of those kinds of things, which sound like they are the things that a person who is going to buy would say, but they are not buying it. And the difference is, if you listen to those things as if they're going to buy, you're gonna be wrong and you're gonna get hurt.
Travis
Yeah, yeah. As if they're, like, assuming that that means that this is a customer in the future. Because then you call them up once the product is ready to ship, and then it's crickets.
Rob Snyder
Yes.
Travis
Yeah.
Rob Snyder
Yes. And I did that, by the way. And over those two years, I did that on a cycle probably eight times. So we pivoted. You know what? You're. You're supposed to do a bunch of research to find pain points and problems. Did it kind of got people to force rank their pain points and problems, then came back and said, hey, we solved it and got crickets. And I just repeated that cycle a bunch of times. And then one time it randomly worked and we went zero to 4 million in revenue in two years. But like, it was very strange.
Travis
And that was the same company.
Rob Snyder
Same company.
Travis
Okay, so, so essentially you raised capital for this one idea for a SaaS startup. Yeah, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle. You pivot multiple times. And then finally, like, were you almost out of cash? Did you raise?
Rob Snyder
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we were like, we, we had kind of raised a little extension because there we always had these little signs of life. And then one time, so we had kind of gone through that cycle. I, I, I do think it was like eight times. And then one time somebody, a potential customer that I tried to sell to called me and said, hey, I don't want to buy whatever it was you had tried to sell me. Which does not, does not speak highly of my sales skills. But he was like, but I would pay you to help me do this. And from that moment, two years later, 4 million in revenue in that terrible direction.
Travis
Was it, was it a similar, like, prop, like pain point or problem you were solving or wildly.
Rob Snyder
It was, it was pretty different. It was around hiring and retaining rather than scheduling employees.
Travis
Wow.
Rob Snyder
So kind of in the same ballpark, but I didn't have any reason to believe I didn't have any product to deliver on a hiring product. I became the product in a spreadsheet for the first, like 10, 20 customers. We didn't have a website for it for the first, you know, 20 customers.
Travis
It was an agency.
Rob Snyder
It was, it was a worse than an agency. An agency you actually get paid like we charge like a software, we charge like a software company. And the product was me in a spreadsheet that they couldn't log into. And then eventually we automated stuff and it became more of a software product in time. But that kind of taught me why. Or actually that started my thinking of, holy cow. I might have been taught this kind of backwards in terms of why do customers buy things? Why do startups take off? And so the past decade since then, I've just been trying to repeat that stage of 0 to 1 as many times as possible to try to figure out why does a startup actually take off and how do you cause that to happen?
Travis
What have you found in your research when it comes to that, that, that?
Rob Snyder
Well, quite, quite a few things. The things that we are traditionally taught matter. Pain points, problems, value, props, roi. Those things are generally irrelevant, which is interesting. And the methods that we are traditionally taught, AKA customer research, discovery interviews, experiments, those things more often prevent you from finding kind of market pull than they do help you find market pull.
Travis
Interesting. So how do you find that market pull.
Rob Snyder
Then you, you kind of, you already mentioned it. You, you said selling, right? You figure it out by selling. And, and there's a, there's some nuance here because if you have no idea what you could possibly sell, you can do the Hail Mary question of what I call the Hail Mary question, which is you get on a call with somebody, say, hey, what would you pay me to take off your plate? What would you pay me to help you solve? Yeah, I've had a startup that went 0 to 6 million in revenue in eight weeks by doing that. Insane. What insane? Before, they had a product and customers were thanking them for asking that question and figuring, figuring that out. It was just amazing.
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Rob Snyder
Sometimes you have to go in person and like, do the job with the potential customer. Get your kind of hands dirty and, and, and figure it out there. But the, the kind of key is figure out what they want to buy. What do they need to accomplish? What are they stuck trying to do in their job, in their world, and then see if they try to buy something that isn't quite ready because they have such a strong need.
Travis
Yeah, yeah, because you can always perfect it. You can make it better. I think the keyword that you mentioned there too is what do they want to buy? And I, because I feel like I've gotten into this trap several times in my entrepreneurial career, which is that I look for things that people need and try to sell that to them, but that's so much more difficult than just building something that they want to buy. It's the sort of, the whole idea of the, like, sell them what they want, give them what they need. It's like if you might be the expert and you might know that, you know, doing things this way is not actually going to give them the result that they want. But if they're telling you that that's what they want to buy, then you sort of just kind of got to go, like, all right, great, well, then I'm going to sell you that exact thing. However, in the fulfillment process, like week four, week five, I'm going to start implementing some of these other things that will actually take care of the problem and get you the result that you're looking for. But if I'm, if I'm going to try to convince you during the buying cycle that that's not actually what you, that what you want isn't actually what you need, like, that's just a whole nother layer of persuasion that you have to overcome. And you better have some really good marketing or some really good salespeople or you're going to be dead in the water, like, really quick.
Rob Snyder
Yeah, I, I, I would even say I've seen hundreds of startups now. I've like worked with them through, through Harvard, through a bunch of other places. I have yet to see a case where a startup convinces anybody of anything. It's just so hard. And so it's like, why, why play the, an already hard game on hard mode?
Travis
Yeah.
Rob Snyder
Why, why do you feel like this is not you, but this is in general? Why do I feel like I should be able to tell somebod. Yeah. And what they need. They're kind of the experts in their own lives. Let them tell me what they're trying to do and where they're stuck, where they might actually need my help.
Travis
Yeah, yeah. And I'm just there to fill that gap.
Rob Snyder
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Travis
Sometimes we make it more complicated than it needs to be. You know what I mean? Like, just figure out what people want, sell that back to them in a way that costs you less than it does to, you know, then you can charge for it and then you got a business.
Rob Snyder
And where people often get stuck is, especially in tech, it's always we're trying to do something new that hasn't been done before. Right. And so the question becomes, how would they know they wanted it before the iPhone? How would they have known they wanted that? Right. Don't you, don't you have to. And that Line of thinking is totally wrong. I can explain why, but. But that line of thinking leads you to think, well, they don't know what they want until they see it. So I need to go and build it, then I need to go and convince them they should want it and da da, da, da, da, da, da. And that's a, first of all, total misreading of every tech story that says of every successful tech company that's not how it worked. And second, it leads us to, like me, just waste years of your life and look 40 years older than you are when it doesn't work and you don't understand why it doesn't work.
Travis
Yeah. Why? Can you explain why that is something that doesn't work or why people are misreading that?
Rob Snyder
Yeah, so, so when we think, we think that people want products, they buy products because they want products. Nobody's ever wanted enterprise software, like, that's just not. People don't buy Salesforce because they want it. They buy it taking its framing on the way to buy. But so when we think people want products, that's like, you know, concepts of demand and supply from economics. Right. That's like saying demand equals wanting supply. No, that doesn't make sense. Demand is a separate thing. Demand is. What are they trying to do in their lives. It's this standalone force. I am trying to, for example, for financial advisors, one of my friends, startups sold into financial advisors, they had never heard of an AI notetaker before. This is like a weird thing. So nobody ever woke up in the morning saying, I want an AI note taker. No, they want to stop manually taking notes for client meetings. Right. That's a thing that exists out. That's their demand. It's out there in the world before the startup existed.
Travis
Yeah, yeah.
Rob Snyder
Because that demand was present and there just wasn't supply available to it. When they showed up with an AI note taker for financial advisors, the startup took off and people behaved like they had always wanted. Yeah, yeah, but that's, but it's misreading the story to think that they wanted the AI note taker. And thinking that way will lead you down a very painful path.
Travis
Rob, I appreciate coming on the show, man. I wish we had a little bit more time and we can do a part two sometime. But I appreciate you coming on. I know you're a busy guy. I don't take your time for granted. Where can people go to get more from you and some of the stuff that you've been working on?
Rob Snyder
Yeah, you can find everything@robsnyder.org I have a newsletter and I have a book coming out.
Travis
Yeah, the Power of Pull is Rob's new book that's coming out. So go to robsnyder.org S N Y D E R robsnyder.org make sure you hop up on his newsletter his list so you can get a notification when the power poll comes out so that you can learn some of these techniques. Everything we've been talking about today is basically what his book is about. So if you're finding yourself kind of in that entrepreneurial struggle and you're building stuff that's not selling, then you owe it to yourself to go check out some of the stuff that Rob's been putting out. Rob, I appreciate you everybody else tuning in. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's usually easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.
Podcast: Travis Makes Money
Host: Travis Chappell
Guest: Rob Snyder (Serial Startup Founder, Harvard Innovation Labs Fellow)
Episode: INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building What Customers Already Want
Date: July 7, 2026
This episode dives into practical entrepreneurial lessons with Rob Snyder, an accomplished founder, venture partner, and Harvard Innovation Labs fellow. Rob unpacks the hard realities of startup life, highlighting how founders often waste time building products nobody wants—and what it actually takes to get a business off the ground. The episode focuses on finding genuine market pull, the myth of customer research, why execution trumps theory, and how listening to customers’ real purchasing intent leads to profitable ventures.
"That's basically true of all of the entrepreneurship advice that I got and all the books that I read on entrepreneurship leading up to starting my first company...so you run really fast and run straight into a wall because it doesn't work."
— Rob Snyder ([07:00])
"I became the product in a spreadsheet for the first, like, 10, 20 customers...eventually we automated...But that kind of taught me...I might have been taught this backwards in terms of why do customers buy things? Why do startups take off?"
— Rob Snyder ([15:13])
Rob’s Contrarian Take: Most Startup Advice Is Backwards ([15:55])
The Hail Mary Selling Question ([16:30])
"Before they had a product and customers were thanking them for asking that question...figuring that out. It was just amazing."
— Rob Snyder ([17:05])
Travis on “Want vs. Need” ([18:30])
The Futility of “Convincing Customers” ([19:39])
"Just figure out what people want, sell that back to them in a way that costs you less than it does to...then you can charge for it and then you got a business."
— Travis ([20:23])
Why the Steve Jobs Example Misleads ([20:36])
Real Example:
"Nobody's ever wanted enterprise software...People don't buy Salesforce because they want it...Demand is: what are they trying to do in their lives...their demand is out there before the startup existed."
— Rob Snyder ([21:38])
Travis closes with a reminder:
"Money only solves your money problems, but it's usually easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank."
So focus on building what customers already want—and let your customers’ wallets do the talking.