The journey of a startup from idea to product market fit (PMF) goes through three stages.
1/ The first is the selection of the idea, or rather the problem space to pursue. I term this the pick. The best founders spend a lot of time thinking through the pick. Where you play is more important than how you play. And the pick effectively sets the contours and constraints of the …
This is an edited transcript of a conversation I had with Rajan Bajaj, over a couple of years ago, as part of my research into the Product Market Fit Playbook that I am presently writing. Since our conversation, which we had via Zoom on 12 November 2022, slice has evolved from a fintech to a bank, following its merger with North East Small Finance Bank, on the back of an …
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 …
In my latest PMF Convo interview, I spoke to Romita Mazumdar, founder & CEO of beauty products co Foxtale. Romita is a VC analyst turned founder, who started Foxtale during the COVID-19 pandemic, speaking to 900+ women and 100+ brands to figure out the specific sub-problem she wanted to attack in the beauty space. Her earned insight was that Indian customers want instant gratification, and efficacy, and she designed …
As part of the PMF Convo series, I recently spoke to Srikrishnan Ganesan, cofounder and CEO of Rocketlane, a SaaS startup that sells software for better customer onboarding, implementation, and professional services automation. In June ’24, Rocketlane raised a $24m Series B co-led by 8VC, Z47, and Nexus Ventures on the back of strong market momentum in the U.S. market. This was on the back of an $18m …
I recently spoke to Mohit Kumar, cofounder and CEO, Ultrahuman, a fast-growing consumer health startup, as part of my PMF Convo series, where I speak to founders, operators, VCs who have struggled with PMF (product-market fit) successfully, or unsuccessfully, with the startups they have founded or worked with (or work at).
Ultrahuman sells such devices as the Ring Air, a sleep tracking wearable; M1, a continuous glucose monitoring …
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 …
Strategy is amongst the most ill-used terms in business. Its ill-use is, if anything, even more pronounced in the startup world. There are multiple reasons for that. This essay won’t cover those reasons; that is for another time. Instead, this essay will suggest a universal definition for strategy, and relate it to the startup landscape. I will also share how strategy interacts with the concept of culture, another ill-used term. …