Product-Market Fit
🗒️ Description
Product-Market Fit (PMF) is the degree to which a product satisfies strong market demand. It’s the most critical milestone for any startup — without it, scaling is premature and dangerous.
Marc Andreessen: “Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”
🧩 How to measure:
- Sean Ellis test — ask customers: “How disappointed would you be if [product] didn’t exist?” If 40%+ say “very disappointed,” you likely have PMF.
- Customer retention — do customers come back without being pushed?
- Organic growth — are new customers coming from word of mouth?
- Sales require no customization — if every sale needs custom work, you don’t have a product yet
🔗 My experience with PMF
Building Qamera AI — currently in pre-PMF validation phase:
- Need 10-12 active paying customers from outside founder network
- Current challenge: most sales come from personal connections
- Pre-PMF priority: direct sales (60%) > marketing (30%) > processes (10%)
📖 Further reading
Company of one — different perspective: not every business needs VC-scale PMF Principles
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