All posts pertaining to product market fit or PMF appears here.
This is over 20k words long! Feel free to print or download to your Remarkable / Daylight / Kindle Scribe / iPad for easier reading.
About this essay: This is the second chapter of a book I am writing on Product Market Fit or PMF (The first chapter is here). This chapter, The Pick, is about how to pick or select your startup idea / problem to …
This is about 13k words long! Feel free to print or download it to your Remarkable / Kindle Scribe / iPad for easier reading.
About this essay: This is the first chapter of a book I am writing on Product Market Fit or PMF. This chapter, Understanding PMF, starts out by setting context for why PMF matters to early stage startups. It then lays out a definition for …
TL;DR: PMF or Product-Market Fit is not a singular fit, but in fact two sequential fits. First, you need to achieve Product to Problem Fit or PPF (where you validate that your solution is able to address problems for a set of customers), and then you need to achieve (Go-to-Market) Motion to Market Fit, or MMF (where you can reliably, affordably, acquire lookalikes of the above customers to build a …
So, two new products launched last week. One was Airchat. But this isn’t about that. This post is the about the second one, First Round’s PMF Method! It is essentially a framework, and a program for founders. The framework helps B2B companies with a top-down motion systematically work towards product-market fit (PMF hereafter). They opened up the framework in a post (and in a Lenny’s podcast episode) but much …
The term ‘CM2+’ (pronounced CM2 positive) is frequently used in startup conversations, but often its true meaning and significance are misunderstood or not apparent. In this note I explain it significance and why becoming CM2+ is a key goal that early stage startups should strive for, and why it is integrally linked with getting to PMF (product-market fit).
In the essay I have used CM2+ as a shorthand for ‘CM2 …
I have been interviewing founders, operators, and investors on their perspectives on product-market fit (PMF hereafter) over the past few months, as part of research for the book I am writing on this topic. I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of the first ten interviews and review the definitions of PMF that have emerged. Thus, this essay where I tease out common strands and themes …
Of late, I have been thinking of a concept I call the Congruent Square (or Rhombus for the math-purist) to better explain to founders why some of them are struggling with hitting product market fit (PMF).
Congruent Square says there has be a broad alignment / congruency in the product you are taking to market, the team that is taking it there, the consumers / market …
Two discussions, one with a founder, and another with an experienced operator, both around the definition of product-market fit (PMF) encouraged me to write this post.
Product-market fit (hereafter PMF) is seen variously as the ‘holy grail’ for startups (Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund) to the ‘only thing that matters (Marc Andreessen) to ““arguably the most critical milestone for a startup” (Jill Soley & Todd Wilms, …
An innocent google query around the origins of the term ‘product-market fit’ sent me down the internet rabbit hole a few nights back.
‘Product-market fit’ (or PMF hereafter) is a seminal concept in startupland. It is considered as a turning point in the life journey of every successful startup, and not being able to achieve PMF is considered the leading cause of failure (see here and here).
The term …
Product Market Fit or PMF is amongst the most discussed and evergreen startup topics. Popularised by Marc Andreessen in a celebrated post titled ‘The Only Thing That Matters’, PMF has become a keen topic of study and analysis in the startup community. Not a year or a quarter passes by without a celebrated article or twitter thread offering a new take or slant on it. After all PMF …