The Power of Pull: What You Need to Know About Customer Demand to Build a Successful Startup (and Why Most Founders Get It Wrong)

A serial entrepreneur shows how to harness customer demand to fuel your startup’s growth.

“A bracing, essential corrective to startup mythology.” —Tom Eisenmann, professor of entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School

Rob Snyder followed all the traditional advice for launching a startup—he did his research, ran experiments, raised millions in venture capital—but his company struggled to get off the ground. It wasn’t until he left the standard playbooks behind that he was able to quickly scale to millions of dollars in revenue. Now he’s a successful serial entrepreneur whose advice has helped hundreds of founders get unstuck and start scaling.

In The Power of Pull, Snyder strips entrepreneurship down to one counterintuitive principle: Customer demand is all that matters. When entrepreneurs find real demand, they stop pushing their product onto an indifferent market, and instead customers pull the product out of the entrepreneur’s hands. Yet most founders misunderstand what demand is and how it works. With examples from early-stage founders, this book shows how to find real demand and create a fast-growing business. If you’re beginning a startup journey, The Power of Pull is the guide you need.

Rob Snyder is a serial startup founder and a fellow at Harvard Innovation Labs. He graduated from Harvard Business School and previously worked at McKinsey & Company. He is also an entrepreneur-in-residence and venture partner for early-stage venture capital funds. Snyder lives with his wife and daughter in New Hampshire.