All of our Product-market fit articles
Alma’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How to Pivot and Succeed as a Solo Non-Technical Founder
Alma founder and CEO Harry Ritter sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he tackled a huge pandemic pivot that turned his initial startup idea on its head and found product-market fit twice.
Kubecost’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How the Co-Founders Validated Their Idea with 100 Customer Conversations
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Webb Brown sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he and his co-founder validated the idea for Kubecost.
Webflow’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons on Creating a Market with Rigorous Customer Empathy
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Webflow’s Bryant Chou sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he and his co-founders leaned into the power of customer empathy to create the leading visual development platform for building powerful websites.
Binti’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons in Immersive User Research
In this post in our “Paths to Product-Market Fit” series, Binti’s co-founder and CEO Felicia Curcuru sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how her time spent shadowing family social workers in San Francisco empowered her to build a product.
X1's Path to Product-Market Fit — How the Consumer Credit Card Company Pulled off a Pandemic Pivot
In our "Paths to Product-Market Fit" series, X1 founder and CEO Deepak Rao sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the dramatic story of how his company pivoted during the pandemic and found product-market fit with a bold launch strategy.
Maven's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Leveraging Community in the Early Days
In the second post for our new series, "Paths to Product-Market Fit," Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the inside story of the first female-led telemedicine startup to achieve unicorn status.
Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit — Lessons for Building Horizontal Products
In the first post for our new series, "Paths to Product-Market Fit," Airtable co-founder Andrew Ofstad sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to share the inside story of the no-code platform's long journey and the challenges they came across while building a horizontal product.
Finding Language-Market Fit: How to Make Customers Feel Like You’ve Read Their Minds
After more than a decade of running B2B growth teams at PayPal and investing at 500 Startups, Matt Lerner now spends his days helping early-stage startups with growth. He's seen firsthand how changes in a handful of words can yield jaw-dropping differences in conversion.
The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas
The traditional approach is to do some customer research, throw an MVP out there as fast as possible, and hope it hits. After being early at three startups that achieved over $1M in run-rate in their first six months of going live, Gagan Biyani has landed on an approach that’s quite different.
8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear — This PM-Turned-Founder Shares His Playbooks
Repeat PM turned first-time founder Ryan Glasgow addresses the tough product questions every founder faces, from segmenting the market and iterating on early MVPs, to finding product/market fit and spinning up a second product.
This Founder Built Startups in 2008, 2016 and 2018. Here’s What He’s Learned About Resiliency
Bob Moore's first brush with life as a founder started in 2008—three days before Lehman Brothers collapsed. Since he cut his teeth as a first-time founder in turbulent times, he's gone on to build two other companies. Here, Moore shares the lessons he's learned along the way.