product-market fit
also referred to as: pmf · product market fit · products market fit
131 statements across 105 episodes · 16 bullish · 30 bearish · 96 people on the record · first statement Oct 19, 2015 by Patricia Nakache · across every show →
Everything said about product-market fit, oldest first
Oct 19, 2015 negative
Nakache: Ramping burn rate before product-market fit wastes capital
“If the company has not yet reached a stage where there's product market fit and yet the burn rate has been ramped up, To me, that's a yellow flag, and it's interesting, you know, it's one I'm thinking about a lot today in the context of the current environment…”
Mar 4, 2016 positive
Hiten Shah: Startups should only raise VC after achieving product-market fit
“Once you're at a point, my ideal scenario is, you get to product market fit, You start experimenting with channels and things like that so that you're basically ready to scale, and then you wanna make a, make an argument, so to speak, that without money, we wo…”
Jun 20, 2016
Rachleff: Consumer product-market fit requires exponential organic growth, not paid acquisition
“Consumer-related businesses, I think you know you found product market fit when you achieve exponential organic growth. Anyone can gain growth through paid acquisition. If you can achieve exponential organic growth, that's when you know you found product marke…”
Dec 5, 2016
Dec 14, 2016
Jan 20, 2017
Taggar: Startups Should Not Scale Their Team While Finding Product-Market Fit
“You either want to be focused with the smallest possible team on finding product market fit, or you want to be Realize you have product market fit and just be in full on growing, scaling the team and making a functioning organization. You don't want to do both…”
Feb 22, 2017 negative
Product-market fit is a continuous spectrum, not a binary state
“This idea of like product market fit as a thing that you either have or don't have, it's not really true. That's not really the way it works. You can get closer to product market fit and product market fit is this thing you should be continuously striving to a…”
Mar 3, 2017 neutral
Product-market fit means inbound demand outpaces sales hiring capacity.
“I do think, though, that upon product market fit, the market will arrive, but that is that moment for where you would almost know that you reached it, that you can't build up Your sales team quick enough. The incoming leads are faster than what you can train n…”
May 15, 2017 positive
Rabois: Startups with product-market fit should maximize growth speed
“Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the term sustained growth. I think you should take growth right away. When you have product market fit, you want to take advantage of that and really capture the value as much and as fast as you can. It's a very tumultuous world. Thi…”
Jul 21, 2017
Jenna Brown: Early product-market fit requires repeatable value and sales alignment
“The first illustration I think for us is when we have the first set of customers who love the product, who derive value from it, and the value they tell you is very similar from customer to customer, they use it consistently to do the task it's intended for, a…”
Nov 15, 2017 neutral
Feb 26, 2018
May 21, 2018 negative
Startups need cash reserves during fundraising to prevent predatory VC pricing
“I think you need enough money so that you can achieve your milestones and achieve the mythical product market fit, and still have enough money in the bank that the VC goes, Ooh, I better invest now, rather than let them say, ooh, I'll wait this out, and I'll g…”
Jul 9, 2018
Flint: Startups must scale aggressively immediately upon reaching product-market fit
“So when you start to kind of see that spark, when you start to see that product market fit, then it's essential to scale extremely rapidly. Spending significantly to capture market share, and doing that when you can, you know, spending really as much as you ca…”
Jul 17, 2018 positive
Jul 17, 2018
Elad Gil: Early-Stage Startups Only Need to Solve Three Core Priorities
“There's only three things you need to do at an early company. Number one is find product market fit. Number two is don't run out of money, which is another way of saying find product market fit. And number three is don't fight and implode as a founding team.”
Sep 17, 2018
Jan 25, 2019
Feb 22, 2019 negative
Feb 22, 2019
Product-market fit requires 40% of users to be very disappointed without it
“And after benchmarking a hundred startups, Sean found that the companies that struggle to grow almost always get less than 40% very disappointed, whereas companies that grow easily almost always get more than 40% very disappointed. And so what he's saying is t…”
Apr 8, 2019 positive
May 27, 2019
Ralston: Product-market fit is defined by effortless organic growth
“For me, actually, there is a strikingly simple test for whether you have product market fit, and that is, are you growing? Are you growing with no effort at all? Does it just grow because the product solves such an obvious key need that it happens with no effo…”
May 31, 2019
May 31, 2019
Jun 3, 2019
Coelius: Product-market fit is when customers start saying yes to your pitch
“Between those two points, I think there's a point where the entrepreneur finds product market fit. They find that sentence that they can describe to the customer at nine o'clock at night. The customer starts saying yes. And you go from this sort of very amorph…”
Nov 8, 2019
Denehy: Pre-product market fit is about solution design, not custom engineering
“So when you're pre-product market fit, you generally don't get bonus points for building things from scratch. So really that Pre-product market fit stage has more to do with solution design than it does with engineering, or at least it should.”
Nov 8, 2019 negative
Feb 21, 2020
Shear: Product-market fit doesn't reduce startup work, it shifts the sprint
“Product market fit is just as much work. It's a different kind of work, but you're sprinting after it as hard as you can, barely keeping up with this boulder rolling downhill, rather than agonizingly trying to push it up the hill.”
Jun 5, 2020 positive
Jun 5, 2020 neutral
Jun 5, 2020
Jun 5, 2020 bullish
Erickson: Product-market fit will be product teams' primary metric within five years
“In five years, PMF will be the main metric that product teams track to gauge success, much like NPS now is for support and operations teams. ViableFit will have rocketed out of the tech industry and gained a foothold in enterprise companies across all industri…”
Jan 21, 2021
Jan 29, 2021
Palan: Initial product-market fit represents only a fraction of a large company's scope
“If you want to build a big company, the initial product market fit is just a small subset of the company that you're going to build. It's a small, small segment, and it's a small set of needs that you're satisfying”
Jul 22, 2021 positive
Immelt: Startup founders are only allowed to fear losing product-market fit
“In other words, if you're starting a company, you're really only allowed to be afraid of one thing, product market fit. That's it. We can help fill in the people. We can help fill in, you know, the funding. We can help fill in all those other things. But be af…”
Sep 22, 2021
Oct 28, 2021 negative
Nov 17, 2021
Feb 23, 2022
Mar 25, 2022 negative
Apr 6, 2022
Apr 6, 2022
May 2, 2022 neutral
Product-market fit is readable earlier in consumer startups than enterprise software
“All the hallmarks of product market fit can actually be ascertained and deduced at a much earlier point in that company's evolution as compared to a infrastructure software enterprise security company that it's at a Million of ARR with half a dozen or a dozen …”
Jun 15, 2022 negative
Jul 6, 2022
Chennapragada: Early-stage product reviews require small, cross-hierarchy groups
“When the product review is for an early, fragile idea, still in the solve stage, seeking product market fit, you want a small group, and you want the problem solvers in the group, regardless of the organizational hierarchy, and you need a divergent mindset.”
Aug 3, 2022
Stebbings: User growth does not indicate product-market fit; daily usage does
“We don't want to grow users as much as possible. That's not a sign of product market fit. What is, is number of sessions per day, number of tasks created. I don't care about top line growth of users, but the tasks that they do to signify their product love.”
Aug 3, 2022
Aug 10, 2022
Building growth loops before product-market fit wastes resources
“A lot of the times I've talked to founders in pre-product market fit, they're obsessed over things that just are not that important right now. They don't need to worry about how do I build great onboarding flows. They don't need to worry about how do I build v…”
Aug 10, 2022
Sep 1, 2022
Pearl: Early product-market fit requires maniacal focus on one problem
“I think that experience really taught me about sort of the power of focus. Especially in the early days of finding product market fit, just how important it is to kind of maniacally focus on solving one problem and solving it better than any alternative on the…”
Sep 21, 2022
Lieb: If you are unsure about product-market fit, you lack it
“If you don't know if you've got it or not, you don't is the simplest answer, right? It is a thing where something clicks and people just use your product or demand your product so much more than you could have ever fathomed. That is generally when you've got s…”
Oct 7, 2022 neutral
Weil: Rigid product strategies require product-market fit; early startups pivot frequently
“Like you invest in the early stages in companies and they're going to pivot three times before they find anything. So laying out a strategy and sticking to something, it assumes that you have some degree of product market fit.”
Oct 26, 2022
Sahgal: Startups should wait until post-product-market fit to hire for growth
“I think ideally you want to do it post product market fit. In the beginning, you're trying to create value in your product, right? You're not, it's not so much about connection. I mean, there's a minimum amount of connection, obviously that's important, but th…”
Nov 21, 2022 negative
Nov 25, 2022 negative
Nov 25, 2022
Nov 25, 2022 positive
Flanagan: Startups should build growth mechanisms before finding product-market fit
“Growth could be applicable pre-product market fit, right? When you actually are trying to figure out how do I instill these mechanisms within my product To better acquire people, to better onboard people, to better retain people. It's built into your product r…”
Dec 7, 2022
Feb 1, 2023
Bouaziz: Sales operations is the main growth engine after product-market fit
“If you're sure you've got a form of product market fit, Revenue operations, sales operations is what's truly going to enable you to scale because your reps are more efficient. Your close rate is better. You have a better understanding of what's going on. Your …”
Feb 3, 2023 negative
Feb 16, 2023
Duboe: Turning off paid acquisition is the ultimate product-market fit test
“One measure of product market fit health is what happens when you turn off all non-organic acquisition activities. And so ideally you should see some ongoing user base that's retained and ideally generating new users, even if at a much slower clip, right? If y…”
Feb 16, 2023 negative
Mar 15, 2023
Most Growth Struggles Stem From Product-Market Fit, Not Missing Channels
“More often than not, I find that like most of the company's problems aren't That they haven't found the channel that's gonna work for them. It's actually that they don't have product market fit, or that they're pointing the wrong direction, or they're too narr…”
Mar 24, 2023 bullish
Mar 24, 2023
Mar 24, 2023
Maples: Startups start dead and must focus solely on product-market fit
“Startups start out dead and have to prove they're alive. And they have one job to do, which is get product market fit, And that means answering one very specific question, which is, what can we uniquely do that people are desperate for? And anything that you d…”
May 27, 2023
May 27, 2023
Cohen: Retention is the true test of product-market fit, not adoption
“Ultimately you have success with a product when you have real adoption and retention. People actually find product market fit. They're coming back to the product to engage with it. That's when, you know, you really have something and adoption by itself, you kn…”
Jun 16, 2023 neutral
Weiss: Product-market fit is dynamic and must be continually renewed
“But I think the thing I took away was that product market fit. People talk about it like it's a binary thing. You unlock it, and then you have it forever. And I actually think a much more accurate model is that you unlock product market fit, you get to maintai…”
Jun 21, 2023 positive
Gotthilf: Retention equals product-market fit and determines startup success
“Retention is everything. To me, retention is almost like product market fit. If you have retention, it means that people actually like the thing that you made, and it's actually useful for them. And that determines whether something's going to succeed or is no…”
Jul 19, 2023
Jul 21, 2023
Aug 16, 2023
Sep 6, 2023 negative
Sep 20, 2023 negative
Maples: Excess Startup Resources Allow Founders to Pursue Losing Ideas
“And to get product market fit, there's an advantage in being lean, and there's an advantage in having N minus one resources rather than N plus one, because, like, having too many resources lets you pursue losing ideas for too long.”
Sep 20, 2023 positive
Maples: Don't underestimate strong product-market fit relative to other problems
“When a company has product market fit, that's a rare thing, and when they have strong product market fit, that's an extremely rare thing. It's like, don't underestimate how important that is relative to all other things.”
Sep 29, 2023
Nov 3, 2023 negative
Altman: Polite early customer feedback during PMF search is a disservice
“When you're like trying to find product market fit, a customer who's like nodding and saying like, oh yeah, that looks really interesting. Like keep building. We'll check it out because they don't want to tell you it's not interesting. Like they're, that perso…”
Nov 29, 2023
Dec 8, 2023
Dec 8, 2023 positive
Biswas: Genuine product-market fit is unmistakable market pull
“Is this product just getting pulled by the market, right? Like that's what you're looking for. And it's almost unmistakable. You'd have to be blind not to see it because you just like, I've had customers or beta testers call me the next day after after going o…”
Feb 2, 2024
Will Wu: Products should layer in complexity only after finding product-market fit
“If you start simple, then you have a core product. If you find, if you're lucky enough to find product market fit, then you've got a simple core product that people can easily pick up and understand. And then once you've sort of captured their attention, once …”
Feb 14, 2024
Gonto: Strong PMF Startups Wait Too Long to Build Growth Teams
“The biggest mistake that I see is that they start very, very late if the PMF is very strong. I've seen a lot of companies that have a very strong product market fit. And because of that, in the beginning, they just start getting a lot of revenue because big co…”
Feb 14, 2024 negative
Gonto: Startups should never hire growth roles before product-market fit
“I would never hire somebody for growth before product market fit. I think that before product market fit, it's the job of the founder to get to see if there's product market fit. If the founder can't do what needs to be done to find product market fits, I thin…”
Feb 21, 2024 negative
Williamson: Founders should not hire product leaders before achieving product-market fit
“And I think if you hand it off before then, it can be very problematic because it's these decisions, which ICP, what are we going to prioritize to build for them? What's the core user experience? These things are so central to a company, especially if it's a P…”
Feb 21, 2024
Williamson: Introduce scientific product structure only after repeatable product-market fit
“Basically, it's when you've found repeatable product market fit. You know who your ideal customer profile is. You generally know the problems they need you to solve. You generally have confidence that your product experience can both attract and retain them at…”
Mar 13, 2024 neutral
Narayanan: Product-market fit, unit economics, and scaling are four separate steps
“I mean, product market fit, scaling product market fit, unit economics, scaling unit economics. I think those are all four different steps in my opinion. So I actually think that it is, ah, you can get to product market fit, but you may not be able to scale it…”
Mar 13, 2024 negative
Narayanan: Startups should not hire growth leads before product-market fit
“You don't want to hire anyone before product market fit, because at the end of it, I think, as I mentioned to you, I think growth is about scaling the product market fit in a sustainable way. It basically means that if you're not able to grow, if you, if you'r…”
Apr 10, 2024
Apr 17, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 neutral
Apr 24, 2024
Zaparde: Product-market fit is a complex matrix, not a binary milestone
“Product market fit is certainly not binary. It's like a, you know, complicated matrix. And like the first cell in that matrix is like the first set of product market fit you have. But as you distribute, I mean, like you said, you know, we're talking about plat…”
Apr 24, 2024 negative
Apr 26, 2024
Adam Gross: Adding multiplayer functionality requires finding product-market fit twice
“Having a single player product, a product that has value on a single player basis, and that you can then build a multiplayer Right? Collaboration product experience on. You're doing MVP. You're doing product market fit twice.”
May 17, 2024
May 31, 2024 positive
May 31, 2024
Jun 21, 2024
Startups without product-market fit can exit for $400M via traffic arbitrage
“Even if you don't have product market fit, you can sell a business for four hundred million, you know, because if you're just good enough to generate constantly more traffic and it's cheaper to generate or buy traffic than the money you're making, the business…”
Jun 28, 2024 negative
Vasavada: Big Tech Executives Lack Product-Market Fit Experience
“None of these people had to go out and find product market fit. They came into companies where there was already product market fit, and they just had to operate their little part of that company, or big part of that company, where they were kind of keeping it…”
Jul 10, 2024 positive
Mahdessian: Build second products immediately after achieving product-market fit
“As soon as the product You are currently building has great product market fit. You have a high degree of success with customers that buy your current product. Then I think you should absolutely, you know, entertain the idea of building the next product.”
Aug 2, 2024
Sep 9, 2024
Sep 20, 2024
Carter: Startups Should Hire First Growth Leader Only After Reaching Product-Market Fit
“In my opinion, Before you have product market fit, you don't even really know if you're building the right product. And then even once you have product market fit, you then need to figure out how do I get this product to scale within the right channel so that …”
Oct 14, 2024 positive
Oct 16, 2024 negative
Oct 30, 2024 negative
Nov 20, 2024
Dec 11, 2024 neutral
Dec 13, 2024 positive
Jan 8, 2025
Jan 22, 2025
Sivulka: Founders can brute-force any business to $100M ARR
“Like, you can bring a lemonade stand to a hundred million dollars in ARR. Like, there's nothing that's actually stopped. You can brute force your way as a founder. You screw product market. You can literally brute force anything in the world.”
Jan 24, 2025
Carlos Delatorre Lacked the Product Skills to Succeed as CEO
“That was the challenge, frankly, that that I encountered in my CEO journey. I thought I was walking into a, to a situation where the primary you know, the problems were mostly go to market. And sure, there were opportunities for improvement in the go to market…”
Feb 26, 2025
Mar 10, 2025 negative
Saper: Revenue growth without high margins isn't product-market fit
“What that doesn't tell you is have you used AI to provide a high margin service, right? You can sell a lot of something, but if you haven't figured out a way to have a good business model around it, then it's not really product market fit.”
Mar 10, 2025
Saper: Fragmented customer use cases create mirage product-market fit
“One of the cases in traditional SaaS is you're selling a product to a very diverse audience. Who's all using it for different things. And so you think like, oh, I've got product market fit, but the reality is like someone's using your thing for this over here …”
Apr 17, 2025 negative
Apr 17, 2025
May 1, 2025 negative
May 26, 2025
May 26, 2025
Jul 27, 2025
Sep 19, 2025 negative
Oct 2, 2025 negative
O'Driscoll: AI startups risk constantly losing product-market fit as models evolve
“Product market fit When you locked into it in SaaS land, you just didn't unlock for 10 years. Whereas here, you can lock in and out of product market fate as the models change, as things, approaches become, and you look back on the product a year ago and you g…”
Oct 9, 2025 negative
O'Driscoll: Professional CEOs cannot replace founders to find product-market fit
“If on the other hand, you don't have product market fit, the founder's not working out and you think you're going to hire someone to get the product market fit, you're deluding yourself. Don't spend a second because it's just too hard and too unlikely. You kno…”
Jan 19, 2026
Weinberg: Fast-growing startups cycle through product-market fit and company-market fit
“I see, like, stage one as product market fit, right? Stage two is, like, company market fit. In other words, like, have you created the structures of your company that are the same as traditional, you know, B to B SaaS or whatever, consumer SaaS, whatever you'…”
Feb 2, 2026 negative
Zeev: Startups lacking PMF after two years should be valued below their seed round
“The very fact that after a year or two they don't have signs of product market fit, maybe it means that, you know, it should be worth less than what it was worth at the seed, because at the seed you had the option value of maybe within a year or two you will h…”
Feb 9, 2026
Acharya's Main 2021 Investment Mistake Was Assuming Product-Market Fit
“If there's a mistake that I've made, it's been being a bit too casual about product market fit, and this was more of a 2021 mistake, which is assuming something had product market fit, and perhaps it didn't, and perhaps the founder had a super credible theory,…”
Feb 23, 2026
Swisher: Large capital reserves without product-market fit disadvantage startups
“If you have so much capital and not a lot of product market fit, I'd say you probably had a disadvantage. If you have a lot of capital and insane product market fit that allows you to go hire a huge sales force, that's a huge advantage, right?”
May 9, 2026
May 11, 2026
Jul 20, 2026 negative
Lin Qiao: Product-market fit no longer guarantees business durability in AI SaaS
“During SaaS time, product market fit and the durable business almost are equivalent to each other. The hardest thing is find product market fit, and then once you find it just scales as fast as you can. Because CPU is a commodity. The infrastructure you build …”