Paths to PMF

The real behind-the-scenes breakdowns of how companies found product-market fit. Learn from what founders actually did in their earliest years — from false starts and painful pivots to the tactical steps that finally unlocked growth.

Read PMF stories

Read PMF stories

Case studies & examples from companies like:

Product

Linear’s Path to Product-Market Fit — Quality and Craft > Speed and Scale

Linear CEO and co-founder Karri Saarinen unpacks the $1.25B company's slow and deliberate path to product-market fit.

Product

Clay’s Path to Product-Market Fit — A 7-Year 'Overnight Success'

Clay co-founder and CEO Kareem Amin sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for a behind-the-scenes look at how he grappled with narrowing Clay’s scope and tactics for landing on the right ICP.

Product

Vanta's Path to Product-Market Fit — Solve the Customer’s Problem, Then Write Code

Vanta founder and CEO Christina Cacioppo sits down with First Round Partner Todd Jackson for an inside look at all the unconventional moves in the company’s first few years — from creating a new category to signing the first 600 customers without a proper website.

Product

Vercel’s Path to Product-Market Fit — From Open-Source Project to Billion-Dollar Business

Guillermo Rauch, raised in Buenos Aires and fascinated by computers since age 7, taught himself to code and moved to San Francisco at 18. His company, Vercel — the frontend cloud service behind open-source development framework Next.js — was recently valued at $2.5 billion.

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Product-market fit isn't a black box.

Dive deep into the four levels of PMF in our seriously detailed essay. We share specific benchmarks for each stage, company case studies, and unprecedented access to Looker's actual metrics.

Read the levels of PMF

Don't take our word for it

Andrew Arruda Founder, @AndrewArruda Haven't seen a PMF framework this detailed. @firstround just published the first session of their new PMF method program. love the definitions, benchmarks, actual data from looker's trajectory, and tactical advice from incredible founders

Flo Crivello @altimor @firstround's new guide to PMF deserves every bit of the hype it's been receiving. I've read everything I could put my hands on about PMF and how to get it, and this is in a league of its own.

Shaun Heng @shaunhengcj Great episode between @tjack and @christinacaci on path towards PMF. Lots of interesting chats around customer discovery in the early days of a company. The hard part is building sth ppl actually want - make sure to nail that before spending all your time building it.

Linh Pham @at_linhpham Massive shoutout to the incredible PMF Method team at @firstround for this invaluable write-up! It's evident the dedication and passion poured into this piece, easily clocking in over 50 hours of hard work.

Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran @kesava_kirupa Todd is so good at helping uncover PMF stories 🙏🏻 go read this!

Lauren Motamedi @laurenmotamedi Love this new PMF @firstround series with @tjack -- especially because it features the great @aofstad and the story of @airtable 🚀 🔥