Anastassia Laskey With Ground Control Research

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software Web3, Healthcare, Tech, FinTech, and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Ana Laskey with Ground Control Research. Welcome.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:00:59] Hey, Lee, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about ground control research. How are you serving folks?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:01:06] Absolutely. So my firm Ground Control Research basically operates as a, we call it a growth accelerator for startups and entrepreneurial teams. So and we do that all through the lens of customer insight and using the needs, wants, desires, goals of your customer to actually inform how you’re going to accomplish your growth goals as a startup. So it’s a pretty fun world and we learn a lot of interesting facts about what people want and what they like.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] So and then having research in the name of the firm would suggest to me that research is an important component about how you go about doing what you do.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:01:49] Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what I found in working in startup environments for many years now is a lot of times folks have some ideas about what their customer wants or they have a sense of it. But what we’re able to really do is, is put hard data behind it and actually go out and speak to customers or target markets or whomever and actually put some rigor around it so that companies can make better and faster decisions with that, with that insight.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:20] Now, what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this kind of work?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:02:24] Yeah, it all happened in sort of an interesting, organic way. I started my career actually at Nielsen, which is a big insights innovation firm, and I was working with large multinationals on new product innovation and new product introduction, and it was a really, really great experience for me. But I was doing that based in San Francisco. That’s just where they assigned me. You know, when I when I joined right out of college and as I got more in the San Francisco sort of community, I started to get really interested in startups. And I wanted to work at a startup and I wanted to be a part of that, that innovation and that sort of big rapid change. And so I moved over into that world, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. And about six years ago, I was kind of at this career decision point, and I could stay inside working in startups, or I could maybe start my own practice, my own consulting firm, and try to actually reach more companies and help more companies with the same types of things I was doing in-house at startups. And so that was how I got my start, and that’s how ground control research was born.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:37] Now, are you finding that in the startup community, I mean, they they talk always about, you know, product market fit, customer discovery. Those are elements of research.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:03:49] Yeah, absolutely. That’s, you know, 80 90% of of what we help companies with is really establishing the product market fit. Or, you know, companies might say, well, I see the signs, I see the indicators that, you know, either things are stagnant or we’re getting some engagement. We don’t really know what are we going to do on it. And I kind of break it down for them in a very stepwise process of, okay, these are the pieces of information that you don’t actually know about your customer, and this is what’s holding you back from product market fit. So let’s close those gaps. Let’s get you that insight. Let’s help you actually blow it up in a good way. Let’s help you. Let’s help you really dial in what you’re doing and the way you’re able to communicate with your customer as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:36] Now, when you talk to an early stage leader or founder, they, I would assume, have some assumptions about who the ideal customer is. And, you know, and the plan to at least reach them kind of based on their gut and based on kind of their understanding of the market in their mind. How often is that accurate?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:05:03] Yeah, it’s interesting because I would say it’s it’s accurate, but it may not be precise. And here I’m going to go a little nerdy. Right. So accuracy means that you’re like you’re hitting the dartboard. Precision is I’m hitting the exact same spot on the dartboard over and over and over again. And what I find with startup founders that I work with is they have a great sense generally of the problem that they’re solving and who the customer is. But when it comes to actually going to market and being successful in market. It’s not just about knowing that in an abstract way. It’s about actually knowing the language that that customer uses to describe their their problem. Right. And it’s about actually knowing of these 27 features that you could offer, which are the three that are that are actually going to move the needle, that are actually compelling. And how do you simplify what you’re saying while increasing the precision of what you’re saying? So I think I answered a question, but they’re mostly like 80% there. But that last 20% is what what we see drive a huge difference in market.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:11] So that by being by being more precise helps them grow faster with the limited resources they typically have.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:06:20] Absolutely. And that’s that’s the big thing that I work with startups on is you could figure this out the hard way by trial and error. And a lot of them come to us after doing that for many months. And, you know, it’s not like I’m trying to say I told you so, but my whole philosophy is like, why wouldn’t we just spend two weeks, three weeks now getting those answers, getting that level of precision, getting you the actual language and the messaging that you need that’s going to resonate with your target audience. And then you can just start using that. So we’re not we’re not bumping into it on accident, which is what happens a lot of the time in that very fast paced startup kind of scale up environment.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:04] So this isn’t something that takes months or years to get enough data to make these kind of precision kind of results that you’re looking for. This is something that is just a matter of weeks or a month.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:07:19] Yeah, absolutely. And that is really, again, why I founded my firm, because there’s this huge misconception that research takes a long time and it’s multiple quarters and it’s like this huge thing and it’s super expensive. And you can do all that for sure. And we do have clients that are a later stage startup or they’re more of a corporate client, and they do that large scale research. But I think what what I’ve sort of been teaching and preaching philosophically is there is a way to balance getting what you need to increase your level of precision in market while not drawing yourself away from everything else that has to happen and doing it in a short order. So a lot of what I’m doing in very practical terms is like, okay, now you’re going to go talk to five of your customers and I just have you ask these questions, right? So they’re very focused, very precise, and the answers to those kinds of questions are going to give us the answer. So it’s I like to make it into baby steps and and bite sizes so that a startup that’s an early stage startup can actually do it. Right. Because if it’s a huge thing, it’s, it’s it’s distracting versus helpful.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:28] So now let’s maybe share some tactics or advice for folks listening now that are in this stage that maybe aren’t ready to hire you and your firm. Is there any work they can be doing today that will help them kind of identify that target audience?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:08:47] Absolutely. Is.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:47] There are some some things that, you know, are that maybe aren’t you know, doesn’t require your expertise, but is something they can do to get a little more precise for sure.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:08:58] Yeah, absolutely. So I have a few main areas of advice. One is always be talking to your customer. And I think this is everyone in the startup world is like, yeah, talk to your customer, talk to your customer, but have a structured way of talking to your customers. Don’t just talk to them about, Oh, hey, we’re considering launching this new feature. What do you think? Which is a lot of what I see having happened in a company have a structured way of talking to your customer that’s really about you maintaining a pulse on what problems they’re trying to solve, what it is that your product is or isn’t doing to help them with that. Some of these broader conversations with with customers and have in doing that, let’s say you’re a startup founder, you block off 3 hours each month to just have four or five conversations with customers like that. You’ll stay way more in touch with the market and what the market needs by doing that versus just focusing on like product or how are we going to how are we going to build the thing? How are we going to scale the thing? So yeah, that’s that’s one piece of advice.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:10:04] And then the other piece of advice that I would offer is don’t just talk to your current customers and don’t even just talk to prospects. Try to get outside of of your bubble and try to talk to members of this broader target audience that have nothing to do with you currently. That’s a great way to make sure that we’re not just sort of targeting a bubble within a within an audience. And we’re actually making sure that what we’re offering is reflective of that bigger group of people as well. And there’s some really great tools that founders and. Early stage teams can use, such as Deep Bench. It’s a tool where you can essentially go to them and say, Hey, I need to talk to 27 SAS founders over the next three months and they will help you pull together a list. Yeah, you do pay for it, but the cost versus the benefit there is is disproportionate. So I recommend doing that versus asking for intros and having all this kind of swirl around it. Just go talk to people, pay a few hundred dollars and get their insight.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:13] Now, when you’re working with a founder and they feel like, okay, we’re kind of honing in on this, how do you maybe protect them from some of these? They make it seem so easy, these kind of growth hacking. Here’s the secret to really growing quickly and almost magically. How do you kind of help them work through that in a way that is going to get them the outcome they desire?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:11:41] Yeah, absolutely. This is something I encounter all the time, and I’m glad you brought it up. One of the things that we often see is that clients will have hired some growth hacker people, whether they’re in-house or whether this is like a firm they’ve brought on and they’re not actually getting results. And that’s actually the triggering event that they come to us and say, hey, like, something’s going on. We don’t know what it is. And what I’ve learned after dealing with that experience many, many times is, you know, there are some amazing sort of operational principles of growing a company that are very important, that startups understand that they use. How are you going to scale up your advertising? How are you going to scale up production of all these materials? Like, how are you going to all those questions? And what we really focus our clients on and where we speak with them is about the why questions. So why are you even targeting that group? Like, why is this message going to land? And so that’s the big difference that I try to push into. And our work it it really is a playbook or a companion or a guide for them to use with all of the growth hacking, quote unquote, activities that they want to do. Right. You’re going to be much more effective at implementing some of these strategies if you can customize them to what your business needs, to what your customer needs to, what you can actually do as a business. And that’s where we really feel the client, our clients get such a benefit in pairing those two types of activities.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:24] Now, most startup founders or anybody in this business for any length of time knows that pivoting, if not is pivoting, is something that invariably is going to happen. How do you help your clients know when it’s time to pivot? Or maybe they’re on the right track and they just have to kind of grind a little longer?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:13:47] Yeah, absolutely. That’s something we work with clients on all the time, and it really comes down to the sense for the customer. And then also like, how are we measuring this pivot? And I think I think typically or historically a lot of the focus is on measuring, let’s say, very particular external KPIs, such as what was the click through rate on this ad that’s like launching a different thing or let’s do like a dummy door test or let’s do all these different things. And one of the things that we work with clients on is what are some of the customer criteria, not just like what clicks and all that, but like what are some of the metrics that you can be measuring on appetite, appeal, interest, intention, consideration, etc. around this, this idea you’re considering, this pivot you’re considering, and how can you do that as part of doing these experiments, these in-market experience experiments? Because we’re all I’m all about like test and market. It’s most efficient way a lot of the time, but we have to find a way to measure that beyond just the numbers that would appear in your Google Analytics.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:02] Now, what for you is the most rewarding part of working with folks at this stage of their business lifecycle, you know, the startup and the early stage?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:15:14] Yeah. So for me it’s really about seeing them succeed. I just as a person, I tend to be more of that. I consider myself to be an entrepreneur and founder. I founded other businesses prior to prior to this business and I just I get so excited to see any business succeed, but especially some of these early stage startups where what they’re doing. It’s really disruptive. What they’re doing is really solving a huge pain point. And I just love the fresh thinking that comes with that environment. So for me, the reward is really just seeing them move to the next stage, whatever that might mean for them, whether it’s three X revenue, whether it’s ten X in revenue, whether it’s preparing and successfully getting the next round of funding, whatever their milestone is, whatever their goal is, I just love seeing them succeed.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] Now, how did you get involved in mentoring with Startup Showdown and Panoramic?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:16:11] Yeah, so that’s a great question. They reached out to me, so I have no idea if someone referred me to them or how it all went behind the scenes. But they reached out and I got the email and I was like, Oh, this sounds really, really cool. So it was a no brainer for me to sign up. And mentorship is something I’m really passionate about in general. So yeah, it’s been a great experience so far. Being a mentor with Startup Showdown.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:39] Now, is there any advice for folks that are involved with Startup Shutdown or any of these type of events to get the most out of their experience? Is there anything that you would recommend they do, maybe pre homework before they get there in order to really wring out the most value from this experience?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:16:56] Yeah, one thing that I would say is if you are accepted into the program and you are going to be participating in Mentor Day, take some time to look up the mentors that are going to be mentoring you or kind of figure out or ask at the beginning of the mentor session like, Hey, where is your area of focus in business? Because what I’ve learned over time is that, you know, there’s all these different mentors that I’ve met and they all have a very unique experience. They have a very different way of seeing the world, and they can provide a really valuable perspective that’s based upon that lens that they see it. But sometimes when companies come to the 30 minute mentor session and they’re in my case, they’re like asking me about the financial terms of the deal. I’m like, Yeah, I understand that as a business person, right? But like, my focus is actually helping you better communicate who your audience is or make sure you’re latched into the right audience or that you’re really articulating the pain that you solve, the problem that you solve. Right? So I guess my long winded advice is, is really kind of know your audience as a startup when you go into this process, I think it will make it a much more valuable experience.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:14] Now for you moving forward, is there anything that you need that we can help you with? What do you need to get your firm to a new level?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:18:23] Yeah, absolutely. So we just launched. We’re in a soft launch kind of phase with it right now, a new way of working with companies. And I think this is potentially really appealing to the smaller or growing startups where we’re actually offering a problem solving series, a workshop series with these with these startups. And we say, hey, come with a problem that you have, whether it’s a it needs to be growth related, right? Like, hey, we don’t know how we’re going to we’re going to ten X our growth. Hey, we don’t know how we’re going to increase our repeat or our retention. Hey, we want to launch or pivot into a new area. What are we going to how are we going to do that? And we’re working with startups to go through this four workshop series to actually as a team, get them aligned around this and teach them through that process how they can gather those insights together. So it’s a facilitated problem solving that gets them the answer. And we do that over a period of about 4 to 6 weeks. So it’s also very fast. So I guess my message is, if anyone’s interested in that, please reach out to us. Go to ground control research dot com to learn more.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:34] Now can you share a story where you helped the startup get to a new level? Maybe share what was the problem that they were kind of struggling with and how you were able to come in and help take them to a new level?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:19:46] Yeah, absolutely. So try to go through and think of a concise example for you. We. One of the one of the startups we worked with a couple of years ago, maybe a year ago. They’re an education technology company, and they have had a consumer business and an enterprise business for a number of years. But their goal was, how are we going to problem? They came with us, came to us with was how are we going to grow our enterprise business? Here’s what we’re saying now and here’s what we think we might need to say and here’s what we see as working. And do we need to pivot? Do we need to launch something new? Right. So you can see it’s a very complex problem. It involves marketing, it involves sales, it involves product, it involves like the whole organization. And we worked with them to essentially gather insight from all of the possible target audiences. So in their case, they had three or four different possible target audiences evaluate that and help them start to reflect changes in their business. And this range from hey, on your on your website. This is the messaging that lands like these are the key messages to use all the way into hey, in your sales process, you can actually optimize that down into instead of six meetings. Like you can get that down to three meetings and here’s the content that you need to cover at each step of the way. So the result of us doing that was, one, simplifying their business operations in a lot of ways, right? Instead of us guessing and having a bunch of meetings, we’re just getting the answers, applying them and let’s go. Right. And then to in terms of like a business effect, they were able to significantly multiply their net new net new customers and net new logo and they really, really strongly increase. I think it’s like three X or four X increase to their average client value. So their average transaction value, so good on them for implementing all of these insights and to how they worked.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:55] And then the amount of time that took was how long about.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:21:58] Yeah, with that client, I would say we started getting initial insights to them within three or four weeks. We worked with them for a considerable period of time that we work with them for over a year to do all the breath that we did with that client.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:16] But the impact was real and it was pretty quick.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:22:19] Yeah, yeah. And that’s the cool thing about working with me or with us is like, I can’t stand to hold back, like I can’t keep it to myself. So we always end up, you know, my team and I, we end up sharing stuff as soon as we can and we want to really we understand how fast start ups move. So that’s why our business is designed around not waiting until some long period of time has passed. Right. Let’s break it up. Do it. Small, iterative. Let’s go.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:44] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success. And thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:22:51] Yeah, thanks, Lee. Appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:52] Now, one more time before we wrap, what is the website coordinates and the best way to get ahold of you?

Anastassia Laskey: [00:22:58] Absolutely. So our website is ground control research dot com. And then folks can find me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active and present there, so feel free to reach out anytime.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:10] All right. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Anastassia Laskey: [00:23:14] Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:15] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Startup Showdown.

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