This week, we're marking the last day you can apply to PMF Method by sharing an extra dose of encouragement, with 20 lessons from 20 different founders on tackling the winding journey to product-market fit.
20 Lessons From 20 Different Paths to Product-Market Fit — Advice for Founders, From Founders
For more than a year and a half now, we’ve been privileged to showcase dozens of remarkable founders in our Paths to Product-Market Fit series, a wide-ranging public study into how all sorts of different companies have tackled the journey to product-market fit.
Importantly, our goal has been to skip over the glamorous, up-and-to-the-right talking points to find out what really happened behind the scenes.
That’s why we’ve told the real stories of false starts and pivots, like how Plaid started out as a consumer budgeting app, how Lattice was focused on OKRs before shifting to performance management, and how Shippo’s founders were originally building an e-commerce site. We shared vivid and detailed anecdotes, like how Vanta cycled through different company ideas, how furiously coding on a train ride convinced Ironclad to change its category, and how Webflow almost sputtered out after a splashy launch on Hacker News.
But ever hoping to be equal parts inspiring and practical, we’ve also dug into the tactical nuts and bolts — from how Gong excelled at leveraging design partners and how Material Security pressure tested different ideas, to how Retool refined its ICP and Airtable took two slow years to launch its beta.
We thought it was well worth revisiting some of the biggest lessons that have stuck with us — so we plucked out our favorite bits of advice from each story in the series so far.
The advice that follows touches on all sorts of different mile markers along the PMF journey, from coming up with the idea and validating it, to talking to customers, building the initial product, and figuring out your market and messaging.
Our goal is that you can find a dose of inspiration, the antidote to a particularly thorny 0-1 problem you’re facing, or a fresh perspective to reframe your thinking.
Thanks, from all of us at First Round, for reading and sharing.
-The Review Editors
P.S. — We’ve also included several videos of the interviews throughout, in case you prefer to hear your company building advice straight from the founder’s mouth (and plenty of the series’ popular timeline graphics, in case you prefer the continuum format).
P.P.S. — If you’re looking to dive even further into what it takes to find product-market fit, check out our new framework, The 4 Levels of Product-Market Fit. You can also apply to join PMF Method by today, May 7 at 11:59 PDT to get help uncovering what customers really need, building the right V1 product, and closing your first commercial contracts.
Recommended resources:
-Review favorites Tara Seshan and Brie Wolfson have started a new podcast, Red Queen, where they tell the stories of the invention and reinvention of the world's most innovative companies.
-Our very own Annie Duke stopped by another Review favorite podcast to chat all things decision-making with the one and only Lenny.
-What Every’s Dan Shipper learned from spending 24 with Github’s Copilot Workspaces product.