Finding Product-Market Fit Lessons From Doing the Hard Way
Finding Product-Market Fit: Lessons From Doing the Hard Way ( My Skull vs Concrete)
"Product/market fit occurs when you feel like you're strapped to a rocket. Not because you landed a $15K pilot, not because 50 people told you your idea is great, and definitely not because a company said they would pay $1,000 (but meant $100, yep these all actually happened, to add to it that stakeholder left, so remember who you interview and sell to and what happens if they leave really matters). PMF isn't revenue, even bad products or services can make money.
It's repeat usage. Retention. Pull from the market, not push. Not customer acquisition costs that's more than Life time value.
How do I know?
- I’ve chased vanity signals, people want to be nice, they’ll tell you they’d use it. They lie.
- I’ve burned months building features that I wanted to believe were painkillers, but were vitamins and or the unit economics didn’t work, thinking I could brute-force my way to product/market fit.
This post is what I wish I’d read earlier. A no-BS guide to product market fit stages, lean product development, and the frameworks that actually help you get traction.
Why You’re Probably Faking It
You can spend months building a thing, get a few signups, and convince yourself it’s working. I’ve done it. I’ve also seen other early-stage founders fall into this trap: you get excited by noise— mentions, meetings, even investors. None of this matters at all. Don’t let this be your fuel it will leave your burnt out.
Product Market Fit Stages
- Problem/Solution Fit – Have you found a real problem worth solving? Can you solve it manually And vet that your idea can even solve that problem? And if so is it really as big a problem as you think?
- Problem/Solution/Customer Fit - Have you solved for your niche? Is this customer segment the right one? Do they care? Is the problem big enough and costly enough/worth the time?
- Product/Market Fit – Do people keep using it? How much, what are your DAU/MAUs (daily/monthly active users) is this number growing, how many of those do you retain and what’s your churn (number of people who signup and don’t come back.)
- Scale – Make the big bucks.
I get asked by people I mentor: “Is using a product once an indicator of product/market fit?”
No. That’s called curiosity.
Repeated use of a product is an indicator of product/market fit. Frequency. Retention. Expansion. PMF shows up in the metrics—use, engagement, referrals.
Problem-Solution Fit Comes First
You’re not hunting PMF right away. First, you need problem- solution fit. Can you describe the user, the job to be done, and a painful problem that they acknowledge?
This needs to be detailed, who are they, what age, job, kids, name, why it sucks, How they solve the problem now, what does it cost in hours, cash, hair transplants?
This is the phase for customer interviews. Talking. Listening.
NO PITCHING. Just: who are they, what do they do, what’s broken? Problem interviews are really repetitive. When 30 out of 45 people give similar answers, you’re getting close. It can be boring, but do this right and you have all your marketing copy ready, and your sales strategy: where, how, why they buy or solve this is super valuable.
How to Know You Have Customer Fit
- They describe the problem before you do.
- They’re already paying for bad alternatives.
- They have some horrible manual process.
- They've built some hacked together solution.
- They've hired someone to handle it.
When you feel you're green on at least a few of these you're ready to move onto prototyping your first version.
Product Market Fit Questions to Ask First
- Is this customer problem worth solving?
- Who has this problem most acutely?
- How do they solve it now?
- Will they pay for something better?
- Is this customer segment worth chasing?
Do Things that Don't Scale
Paul Graham is a legendary founder behind YC, and mentor to Mr Altman of OpenAI. His great advice is do things manually to learn more about your problem solution fit, if you can make it look like the product even if it's more a service to start. It doesn't need to scale to 1000 users, but does it to 10, and does it solve all 10? Do they pay you?
This is a great first Minimum Viable Product step, it costs your time and helps you learn alot about the problem and the user.
The next step would be looking into iterative MVP building a la:
Lean Startup & Lean Product Development
Achieving PMF is hard, but this is where lean comes in. The Lean Startup approach, popularised by Eric Ries, is all about rapid experimentation, customer feedback, and iterative dev. It’s basically build-measure-learn in quick cycles.. Lean product development originated in manufacturing but translates brilliantly to startups: cut out the bullshit, iterate quickly, and respond to real user needs. Lean prioritises validated learning – every feature you build should have a hypothesis behind it and evidence.
Now, how does lean compare to other development methodologies? The old-school way was Waterfall: big upfront specs, long cycles, and inflexible plans. In contrast, Agile and Lean methods favor short iterations, continuous feedback, and flexibility. Agile development (think Scrum sprints or Kanban flow) is actually very complementary to Lean – both embrace change and customer feedback. Lean focuses on reducing waste at every step, while Agile centers on iterative deliver. For example, instead of a year-long roadmap set in stone, a lean/agile team might plan just a few weeks ahead, build a small feature, release it, gather data, and then adjust course. This is often visualised in an agile methodology diagram.
The key is continuous improvement: every sprint or iteration, you learn something and improve the product.These methods rely on people over process.
What is an agile team? People that overcommunciate, work together well, work on insight not feeling, can wear many hats, and aren’t set on product.Agile teams thrive in a lean startup environment because they can pivot mega fast when new user feedback comes in or when experiments show an unexpected result.
Business Model Canvas & Strategy
A part of the validation process is validating not only the customer problem and solution, biut viability in the market. This is where tools like the Business Model Canvas popularised by Strategyzer and has nine components: Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources, Value Propositions, Customer Relationships, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure, and Revenue. Why bother with a canvas? Early-stage founders can get tunnel vision on product and forget the bigger picture. The BMC forces you to acknowledge known and unknowns.
One footnote here, this does not need to be in any order, obviously the caveat is focus on problem first and solution last, but if the format doesn’t work take the titles and use in notion/cut them out and put them on 9 walls, whatever works best. You just want to know the answer to all them inside out. If the BMC is too jargony, try the Lean canvas Model below suited more to tech, same idea:
Here’s the most searched terms for the business canvas model: • Customer Relationships business model canvas: This defines the type of relationship you establish with your customers, is it like Stripe, great product and UX/UI and you self serve, or are you always in the loop. (You need to be in the loop in the beginning of any product but long run?) • Channels business model canvas: How do you sell? Where? Are you selling via Instagram, do you need to be on Salesforce webstore? Do you have a referral programme?What’s the barrier to join that channel? You need to work out the best place to be, and workout how much the channel costs. • Key Activities in business model canvas :What do you do? If you’re software do you also build your own servers? Or buy from AWS? Do you white label big parts of the stack? Do these key activities actually tie into the “Value Proposition” part of the canvas (AKA unique selling proposition, or competitive advantages.) • Key Resources business model canvas: Anything you need to sell, be it Smart Devs, IP, sales budgets, warehouses, contracts with key logistics suppliers? • Cost Structure business model canvas : What does building, maintaining, shipping, securing, selling your product cost, this should be every cost you can think of. Your time counts, favours count, is the products cost justified in the price you can sell it for in “Revenue streams in the business model canvas?”
Mapping your business with the Business canvas or lean canvas model helps in justifying your product’s in areas outside of customer interviews. It makes you consider if all parts of the model align. For instance, if your channels cost more to acquire a customer than that customer ever pays you, probably not a business (maybe a charity though?).
What’s a PMF Startup?
A PMF startup is one that prioritises traction over polish. You’re not optimising yet—you’re validating. Interviews, Non scalable prototypes, BMC are all different ways to assumption test your business and build towards product market fit. Your roadmap should be shaped by what users are doing, not what you or your developer think would be awesome.
What actually is Product Market Fit?
Product/market fit occurs when a business continues to grow due to customer demand—not because you're pushing harder or spending more on ads. Real PMF means customers are pulling your product into the market, not you pushing it onto them. After building (and killing) a few products that went nowhere, I learned that understanding PMF and lean product development isn't just startup jargon—it's the difference between building something people actually want versus burning through your runway on a glorified hobby project.
PMF is constant, not static, everything you do is working out what moves the needle.
The Four Stages of Product Market Fit
1. Nascent Product-Market Fit
- You have some early customers who love what you're building
- High focus on customer satisfaction but limited scale
- Lots of exploration and learning happening
- You're still figuring out if this thing has legs
2. Developing Product-Market Fit
- Growing customer base with improved processes
- Beginning to establish scalable systems
- Market validation is getting stronger
- You're seeing patterns in who uses your product and why
3. Strong Product-Market Fit
- High market demand with operational efficiency
- Strong customer retention and growth
- You're becoming known in your market
- Revenue growth is substantial and predictable
4. Scaling Beyond PMF
- You've proven the model works
- Focus shifts to expansion and optimisation and scaling.
A Product Market fit (PMF) Quiz you can give yourself
- Are users truly dependent on your product? (For example, would 40%+ of users be very disappointed if they could no longer use it?)
- Do you have high retention and repeat usage? (If users keep coming back on their own, that’s a great sign. High engagement and frequent use mean you’re a part of their routine.)
- Is organic growth happening? (E.g. referrals, word-of-mouth, or usage growing without huge marketing spend – a true PMF startup often sees organic traction.)
- Are customers willing to pay? (Strong PMF usually comes with an ability to monetise – users see so much value they’ll pay and maybe even tolerate price increases.)
- Do new features or products get pulled by the market? (When you talk to users, are they asking for more?) Remember each new feature starts back at the beginning of the validation cycle
Product Delivery & Continuous Exploration**
Validation never stops, even when you find PMF for a feature or product keep applying Lean principles and agile methods. In fact, they become even more important as you grow. Product delivery in a startup context means getting new value into customers’ hands quickly and reliably. If you’ve achieved PMF, you want to double-down by improving the product, adding features customers are asking for, and scaling up without breaking things.One development methodology worth adopting is Continuous Exploration. This comes from lean-agile at scale (e.g. the Scaled Agile Framework). Why? Because markets and customer preferences aren’t static – especially after you hit PMF, competitors will emerge and customer expectations will evolve.
Practically, you achieve continuous exploration by engaging with users regularly (through interviews, surveys, usability tests), monitoring analytics for new usage patterns, and keeping an eye on industry trends. This informs a living product roadmap. It’s the opposite of “set it and forget it.” For example, maybe your app achieved PMF for one use-case, but through continuous discovery you realise users are trying to use it for a slightly different purpose – that could open up a new feature or even a new market. Continuous Exploration is tightly coupled with agile product delivery. In agile, we often talk about a dual-track approach: Discovery (exploring what to build) and Delivery (building it). The discovery never stops. When done right, this approach means you’re never flying blind – you always have some evidence for what you’re doing. It reduces the risk of big, wrong releases and ensures you keep that precious product-market fit as you expand the product. It’s much easier to course-correct in small increment.. period.
Also, as you grow, don’t lose the habit of measuring. Keep an eye on those PMF indicators: retention, engagement, conversion rates, churn, customer delight.. Staying lean means continuously learning and adjusting, at 1000 customers just as you did at 10 customers.
Real Life Examples You can Follow
Two of my favourite successful builders are Levels who's behind some very successful $100K MRR businesses and Tibo who has an $8M exit and builds MVPs in public.
Key Takeaways
- Continuous Exploration and Agile Product Ideation is key because Markets shift, users lie (without meaning to), and preferences change. Continuous exploration keeps you close to truth.
- Don’t build before problem solution fit. You’ll waste time and money.
- “Used once” is not PMF. Look for repeated use and demand-led growth.
- Use lean product development to minimise waste. Don’t confuse movement with progress.
- Your BMC should make sense before your prototype. Otherwise, you’re winging it.
- Development methodologies are tools, not rules. Use what works, ditch what doesn’t.
- Validate with users constantly. Continuous exploration > assumptions.
Final Thought
Every founder wants PMF, and honestly it can be boring to run the same interviews 1000s times, And if you’re introverted it’s frickin’ hard too. That said it will save you tens or hundred of thousands, and delivers the BEST ROI Of almost anything you’ll ever do as a founder. So. Talk to users. Kill shit that doesn’t work. Iterate. Then iterate again.
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