Great they share specific metrics and give a sense of how they evaluate companies, although all First Round articles have this tendency to be so overdesigned it takes away from the content. The discussion on Lenny's podcast is easier to digest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1Uwhfxacs
I think the 4 P's is a valuable framework for getting to PMF: Persona, Problem, Promise (Pitch), and Product. Usually startups that don't work have a fundamental problem with a few of these (they try to solve too many problems for too many people in a subpar way - i.e. they don't have a strong answer to: which problem are you solving, for who and why it is better than alternatives?). Startups that are willing to iterate over the 4 Ps have a shot at getting to PMF, those that don't usually will struggle and then die.
Interesting, but I get the feeling that they’ve packed so much into the PMF concept that it’s basically the whole business. In my mind it makes more sense to reserve the term for what’s called Level 1 here: the early stage where you need to make big adjustments and potentially pivot to an entirely different product or market.
My initial impression of this was poor, but I think that has more to do with the formatting of the slides not being conducive to mobile and the sheer volume of text.
After reading through and watching the candid videos, I can say there are valuable things that early stage founders can pull out so it is worth powering through.
I think more iterations and more depth on the case studies would be helpful for levels 1&2. Meaning, a broader sample of startups in the portfolio, and more tangible examples of changes that made a customer stop chrunning or sign up faster.
Using hypothetical or anonymized case studies and too few largely keeps this framework in the level 1-2 quadrant, which is ironic. Almost like this document was built (a technology) rather than helping a specific reader (a problem + solution).
This framework is attempting to make PMF seem so hopelessly complicated that you'll need their magic system (pricing unavailable, apply here).
Trust me, you don't need a system. It's so much simpler than this. First, start with the M, not the P. Talk to real human beings in any market to find a painful problem, create a product that addresses (doesn't need to 100% solve) that problem, and (don't forget this part) charge money for the product.
That's it. Anything else is galaxy brain. Don't get distracted.
Well said! This is basically the linchpin behind the Jobs to be Done theory commonly attributed to Clayton Christensen (many thought leaders developed the theory over the years which he credits, but Clay seemed to be the leader of the group).
The premise of Clay's book "Competing Against Luck" is about this JTBD theory (he also calls "Jobs Theory") which aims to surface the fundamental causality of customer purchase behavior, which allows you to build your solution such that it aligns directly with that behavior instead of all the abstractions and manifestations of that behavior that are often red herrings (ie: pointless features, solutions that in reality not aligned but this is not obvious, etc).
Ultimately, Jobs Theory is an approach that that aims to objectively lower risk around innovation. It teaches you to think of customer needs/objectives independently from solutions/technologies, so that it's more natural to innovate to serve the ultimate need rather than compete against preexisting solutions or be misled by customers who are not often able to articulate (or they may not even consciously know what drove their behavior -- it can be very complex) what a better solution for them would be and as such will just mislead you.
Instead of taking shots in the dark, you build better solutions around preexisting needs (more accurately called "jobs" in JTBD Theory, and it isn't just semantics).
Apologies for nerding out on a topic you probably already know well but I figured I'd add to the conversation for others who might be interested. I really love JTBD. It helps solve imo the single hardest problem around startups -- product/market fit.
Absolutely! I work in design/innovation consulting, and we use JTBD quite a bit. It's a nice way to interpret user needs and avoid the pitfall of taking user feedback too literally. I view JTBD as a flavor of Human-Centered Design that gives teams structure around the "Desirability" piece of the Desirability / Viability / Feasibility framework.
We also hear the advice to "make a painkiller, not a vitamin," which is sort of a JTBD/HCD test in disguise.
Is there a way I can connect with you off HN? I'm a student of design/innovation though my background is in engineering. I'd love to be able to learn from you from time to time.
Exactly. Technology can be used to solve problems. Understanding a problem is the key. If you don't have the domain expertise to identify the problem you need to speak with stakeholders in the industry to grasp the problem and solve it.
The Mom Test is a great book around this. It really helped me (as an engineer) realize that the M part isn't a daunting sales task, it just involves talking to people about what they do. And people like to talk about themselves.
Elena Verna is the name you're looking for. She's got a lot of stuff all over the place so might take a bit of digging, but imo there is nobody better, she's a PLG wizard for sure.
They talk about selling a dollar for less than it’s worth as not being a PMF indication. However, this does not match with actual VC funding trends, as the vast majority of private unicorns are loss making. In fact if you can consistently sell a dollar for 90 cents it’s likely you can raise a lot of money on the back of that.
It’s funny also that their Ironclad example clearly describes fraud/dishonesty on the part of the founder and this is celebrated as hustle. Seems far too common that this type of behavior is not only tolerated but actually suggested by VCs.
The amount of design that went in to this, and the fact that they override the scrolling logic, makes me curious what their intention actually is. They do a lot of telling what if "feels like".
I just want to meet the dev who wakes up in the morning, sits down with their cup of coffee, rubs their hands together and says "Boy, I just can't wait to make a website where scrolling feels like trying to run across an ice rink!"
The idea is likely to increase production value to boost engagement, and help signal value of what's written to be of higher quality.
As someone who has worked in building multiple B2B SaaS when it was not popular at all in the retail VC funded universe (consumer social media apps were the rage for a long time), ostracized, and more, it's kind of fun to see VC's trying to play in this area.
Vercel is just a programming framework for coding, not how to architect an app or the process of it for a particular market.
Vercel can be used for any type of web app including b2b. I don’t think it’s exclusively for it.
Building an mvp for b2b in my experience is best to go with the simplest setup, much simpler than normal to allow the quickest iteration from market feedback.
#1 on Hacker News while none of the comments engage with the content, and instead just express confusion, uncertainty and aesthetic discomfort is not what you want. It means you probably struck onto a concept or theme that's speaks to active interests (the headline draw) but delivered on it poorly.
Which is sort of beautifully ironic, given the subject.
Seems like a lot of fluff. I think the key is to deliver value to customers. Do something you know. Don't be arrogant and enter a random business you know nothing about.
Trying to get a startup off the ground is basically 2 things: pushing code and talking to customers. Set a metric like how much users are using the app (proxy for usefulness). If you create something that's valuable, it'll probably work out.
There are a few exceptions which they touch on a bit. Movie pass model where you sell $10 for $5 obviously doesn't work. Or if you take investors and scale up too fast also screws you. You could be perfectly profitable and have fit but if some VC throws money at you and convinces you to hire dozens of people, then it could sink your product despite fit. An investor doesn't necessarily have your best interests in mind. They may prefer a 10% chance of $100m co where as you prefer a 50% chance of a $20m company in that time frame.
> Do something you know. Don't be arrogant and enter a random business you know nothing about.
Within reason. I think there is a path to success in partnering with customers in the market you want to serve. Following Seth Godin's advice- "Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers." As devs we have the capacity to join ranks with our customers and learn and build to solve their problems.
The tldr is provided in the article itself:
> To be clear, pieces of this approach may exist here or there in different frameworks — after all, all great ideas are built on what's come before.
If you haven’t spent much time seeking PMF in a B2B company there is useful information here, but to me it looks like a refactoring of what’s come before.
The article under-delivers on its promise, which is stated up front as:
> Most people describe finding product-market fit as an art, not a science. But when it comes to sales-led B2B startups, we’ve reverse engineered a method to increase the odds of unlocking it. We’ve worked with some of the world’s most iconic enterprise founders and distilled what they did in their first six months into a series of tactical sessions for taking a straighter path to PMF.
And later on it even admits it doesn’t actually do what it promised:
> For example, a startup might be stuck at developing PMF, but later find that pivoting to a new buyer is the move that unlocks the next level. Or another company may have stumbled onto nascent PMF with resonant positioning, but then can’t ship the correct product that delivers on its promise.
> These levers, of course, fall more into the camp of how to go about finding PMF, which is not the focus of this essay.
Isn’t “tactical” advice supposed to be the answer to the question “how?”
Just an FYI, as dang told me in an email when I complained about being flagged last year for using ChatGPT to do something similar in a comment: comments written primarily by bots are not welcome on hn.
I see, thanks for your feedback. Would make sense if that ruling is still active. However at least I would know for the future, though I also learned reading this article would probably be helpful. So guess it woudn't be a bad thing either way :)
today we’re proud to unveil Product-Market Fit Method, an intensive 14-week experience designed to help exceptional pre-seed founders build epic B2B SaaS companies.
I'm here to tell the tragic truth that there isn't a lot of opportunity for large scale repeatability that happens after the minimum viable product is discovered. Startups are basically cryptocurrency pyramid schemes hidden in the domain of legitimate entrepreneurship.
You shouldn't seek anything that is beyond one order of magnitude higher than the minimum viable product. Because Facebook already exists. World of Warcraft already exists. You're not gonna discover the product-market fit for the next Google. Because there is no next Google.
It's sad how people are being lied to. Startups are literally just another lottery to waste resources, time, and energy on.
The bubble will eventually pop and people will be disappointed with reality.
I can tell you how finding PMF went at DigitalOcean. Moisey one of the founders was like "EC2 is expensive and hard to use, lets make it easy and cheap" - then you all used it.
Without AWS there would be no DigitalOcean, and although (much to my displeasure) our CEO often said "we're going to be the next AWS", we really just wanted to be a $500MM ARR alternative.
Not sure if I'm agreeing with you or disagreeing with you tho, hah.
Maybe the next Google or the next Amazon is an inheritable phenomenon that exists on a spectrum? If the next Google is just a class of points within a gradient, and if Google, Facebook, and Amazon are runaway monopolies formed by a stacking of scalable wins like the successful implementation of a theoretical product-market fit framework, then what is a local optimum which is where a perfect neo-Google sits at? And what would be its antithesis (i.e. the local minimum to its corresponding local maximum)?
I call it "Wake building" basically building a business in the wake of a new giant. Amazon was building AWS for itself and for businesses like it. It was inventing cloud services, and it was always going to be complex and expensive. The rest of the industry didn't seem particular bothered to go run behind them, so we did. It was a fine enough strategy I think, the only people I really ever felt I needed to be careful of were Linode and Joyent, so I kept a sharp eye on them, but otherwise yeah, no much to do but listen to how SMB devs didn't want to consume AWS services and build them in a way they did. These days it seems like Matthew and Michelle over at cloudflare have picked that mission up and are doing an amazing job at it, so kudos to that team for sure! :)
That sounds like the generational dynasty of modern American politics. And that's my original point: as birds of a similar feather flock together and start up political parties and enterprises that might eventually become immovable behemoths or peripherals or complements to the giants, other groups don't get to use these now already consumed resources which were used to establish empires, dynasties, and corporations. As a result of the national entropy progressing forward unencumbered, the population that can be sustained in the area, the nation's territories, is decreased, especially as time, now a representative of entropy, progresses. The force that dwindles a land's capacity for life works at a rate where the future is accurately seen as desolate. No investor that is serious about astronomical returns should ever look at planet Earth for keeping a portfolio.
And that's why effective accelerationism was born. To economically and scientifically venture out to new places where money may keep its present value. At the effective science, we have the bravery to investigate conditions considered impossible by the mainstream. We're sailing down a river where the flow is unprecedented and the source of new investments and potentials. A battery of possibilities, even the impossible possibilities.
First: both Blizzard and Google started out as small startups.
I'm curious, if not startups, where do you expect innovation to come from? The things startups do are usually too high risk for large corporations to take on.
No civilization is entitled to technological innovation and economic growth just because it demands it. You have to engineer that goal into reality.
And if you want risk-taking startups and entrenched corporations to work together, you are going to have to devise a communist style government or something. The free markets would just forgo national gross domestic product maximization and line up their own little pockets, free from the top-down authoritarianism required to organize large scale techno-economic activity.
The Roman empire started out as two little baby boys and a momma wolf's teats. Good luck replicating that evolution from zero to hero without the right framework.
Yes there is probably no next Google, but you know what there are a lot of. Companies that the googles etc buy because they have gotten to the point where they can’t really develop new products themselves. So yes you many not be able to make the next Google or Microsoft, but there are plenty of success stories to still be had.
A lifestyle business isn't the success this "black boxed highly performant Product-Market Framework" article is advocating for. A lifestyle business is a small business that is no better than a corner store selling liquor and cigarettes or whatever. The popular trend is to chase after frameworks and technology that enables inhuman commercial growth.
You don't need a Kubernetes cluster for a little gas station business. You also don't even need the concept of a minimum viable product for that "humble" little success which is more probable for the average person to achieve.
Silicon Valley startups want big achievements. Astronomical stuff. That's why MVPs, PMFs, and KPIs were invented. For doing aerospace science as opposed to building local mud huts.
I don't think being pedantic is appropriate for good discussion.
The lesser point is that, as things like Kubernetes is for large scale software development models, a small business will find it detrimental to copy Google's internal organizations and practices. They don't have the same genetics and they're playing different games.
And, the more important point, there's no room or space for any new, neo-Google to form now. It's over, as they say. The end of history, I guess.
I think the 4 P's is a valuable framework for getting to PMF: Persona, Problem, Promise (Pitch), and Product. Usually startups that don't work have a fundamental problem with a few of these (they try to solve too many problems for too many people in a subpar way - i.e. they don't have a strong answer to: which problem are you solving, for who and why it is better than alternatives?). Startups that are willing to iterate over the 4 Ps have a shot at getting to PMF, those that don't usually will struggle and then die.
After reading through and watching the candid videos, I can say there are valuable things that early stage founders can pull out so it is worth powering through.
I think more iterations and more depth on the case studies would be helpful for levels 1&2. Meaning, a broader sample of startups in the portfolio, and more tangible examples of changes that made a customer stop chrunning or sign up faster.
Using hypothetical or anonymized case studies and too few largely keeps this framework in the level 1-2 quadrant, which is ironic. Almost like this document was built (a technology) rather than helping a specific reader (a problem + solution).
Trust me, you don't need a system. It's so much simpler than this. First, start with the M, not the P. Talk to real human beings in any market to find a painful problem, create a product that addresses (doesn't need to 100% solve) that problem, and (don't forget this part) charge money for the product.
That's it. Anything else is galaxy brain. Don't get distracted.
Well said! This is basically the linchpin behind the Jobs to be Done theory commonly attributed to Clayton Christensen (many thought leaders developed the theory over the years which he credits, but Clay seemed to be the leader of the group).
The premise of Clay's book "Competing Against Luck" is about this JTBD theory (he also calls "Jobs Theory") which aims to surface the fundamental causality of customer purchase behavior, which allows you to build your solution such that it aligns directly with that behavior instead of all the abstractions and manifestations of that behavior that are often red herrings (ie: pointless features, solutions that in reality not aligned but this is not obvious, etc).
Ultimately, Jobs Theory is an approach that that aims to objectively lower risk around innovation. It teaches you to think of customer needs/objectives independently from solutions/technologies, so that it's more natural to innovate to serve the ultimate need rather than compete against preexisting solutions or be misled by customers who are not often able to articulate (or they may not even consciously know what drove their behavior -- it can be very complex) what a better solution for them would be and as such will just mislead you.
Instead of taking shots in the dark, you build better solutions around preexisting needs (more accurately called "jobs" in JTBD Theory, and it isn't just semantics).
Apologies for nerding out on a topic you probably already know well but I figured I'd add to the conversation for others who might be interested. I really love JTBD. It helps solve imo the single hardest problem around startups -- product/market fit.
Read Competing Against Luck folks!
We also hear the advice to "make a painkiller, not a vitamin," which is sort of a JTBD/HCD test in disguise.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40020601
It’s funny also that their Ironclad example clearly describes fraud/dishonesty on the part of the founder and this is celebrated as hustle. Seems far too common that this type of behavior is not only tolerated but actually suggested by VCs.
Also... does this site... have motion blur?
As someone who has worked in building multiple B2B SaaS when it was not popular at all in the retail VC funded universe (consumer social media apps were the rage for a long time), ostracized, and more, it's kind of fun to see VC's trying to play in this area.
Vercel is just a programming framework for coding, not how to architect an app or the process of it for a particular market.
Vercel can be used for any type of web app including b2b. I don’t think it’s exclusively for it.
Building an mvp for b2b in my experience is best to go with the simplest setup, much simpler than normal to allow the quickest iteration from market feedback.
Which is sort of beautifully ironic, given the subject.
It's good to try and take the good from anything.
Trying to get a startup off the ground is basically 2 things: pushing code and talking to customers. Set a metric like how much users are using the app (proxy for usefulness). If you create something that's valuable, it'll probably work out.
There are a few exceptions which they touch on a bit. Movie pass model where you sell $10 for $5 obviously doesn't work. Or if you take investors and scale up too fast also screws you. You could be perfectly profitable and have fit but if some VC throws money at you and convinces you to hire dozens of people, then it could sink your product despite fit. An investor doesn't necessarily have your best interests in mind. They may prefer a 10% chance of $100m co where as you prefer a 50% chance of a $20m company in that time frame.
Within reason. I think there is a path to success in partnering with customers in the market you want to serve. Following Seth Godin's advice- "Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers." As devs we have the capacity to join ranks with our customers and learn and build to solve their problems.
If you haven’t spent much time seeking PMF in a B2B company there is useful information here, but to me it looks like a refactoring of what’s come before.
The article under-delivers on its promise, which is stated up front as:
> Most people describe finding product-market fit as an art, not a science. But when it comes to sales-led B2B startups, we’ve reverse engineered a method to increase the odds of unlocking it. We’ve worked with some of the world’s most iconic enterprise founders and distilled what they did in their first six months into a series of tactical sessions for taking a straighter path to PMF.
And later on it even admits it doesn’t actually do what it promised:
> For example, a startup might be stuck at developing PMF, but later find that pivoting to a new buyer is the move that unlocks the next level. Or another company may have stumbled onto nascent PMF with resonant positioning, but then can’t ship the correct product that delivers on its promise.
> These levers, of course, fall more into the camp of how to go about finding PMF, which is not the focus of this essay.
Isn’t “tactical” advice supposed to be the answer to the question “how?”
https://review.firstround.com is a great resource for founders
For tl;dr use ChatGPT. “Summarize this <link>”. You can ask questions about it if you’re interested.
In general it talks about pmf, gives advice on different stages of pmf, and some strategies to be used to help navigate towards pmf at each stage.
As far as people that want this, i sure hope they can spend 15 minutes (or even 30!) on an article if they are spending years trying to achieve pmf.
to be fair, HN is just as bad in terms of font size (too small), but at least it respects browser zoom which this website doesn't
Same now and likely for the future.
Its spam
You shouldn't seek anything that is beyond one order of magnitude higher than the minimum viable product. Because Facebook already exists. World of Warcraft already exists. You're not gonna discover the product-market fit for the next Google. Because there is no next Google.
It's sad how people are being lied to. Startups are literally just another lottery to waste resources, time, and energy on.
The bubble will eventually pop and people will be disappointed with reality.
Without AWS there would be no DigitalOcean, and although (much to my displeasure) our CEO often said "we're going to be the next AWS", we really just wanted to be a $500MM ARR alternative.
Not sure if I'm agreeing with you or disagreeing with you tho, hah.
And that's why effective accelerationism was born. To economically and scientifically venture out to new places where money may keep its present value. At the effective science, we have the bravery to investigate conditions considered impossible by the mainstream. We're sailing down a river where the flow is unprecedented and the source of new investments and potentials. A battery of possibilities, even the impossible possibilities.
I'm curious, if not startups, where do you expect innovation to come from? The things startups do are usually too high risk for large corporations to take on.
And if you want risk-taking startups and entrenched corporations to work together, you are going to have to devise a communist style government or something. The free markets would just forgo national gross domestic product maximization and line up their own little pockets, free from the top-down authoritarianism required to organize large scale techno-economic activity.
The Roman empire started out as two little baby boys and a momma wolf's teats. Good luck replicating that evolution from zero to hero without the right framework.
You don't need a Kubernetes cluster for a little gas station business. You also don't even need the concept of a minimum viable product for that "humble" little success which is more probable for the average person to achieve.
Silicon Valley startups want big achievements. Astronomical stuff. That's why MVPs, PMFs, and KPIs were invented. For doing aerospace science as opposed to building local mud huts.
Chick-fil-a has a Kubernetes cluster at each location. Maybe its not so far fetched. Gas stations are all franchises of a major corp.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7Ww_AlhAg
The lesser point is that, as things like Kubernetes is for large scale software development models, a small business will find it detrimental to copy Google's internal organizations and practices. They don't have the same genetics and they're playing different games.
And, the more important point, there's no room or space for any new, neo-Google to form now. It's over, as they say. The end of history, I guess.