No You Haven’t Found Product-Market Fit
Until you reach $1M in revenues, everything remains an experiment
Last week, I had the honor of judging pitches from pre-seed, pre-pre-seed, pre-pre-pre-seed, and whatsapitchdeck? startups.
Like a conquistador declaring they’d discovered the golden city of El Dorado, each founder stood on the stage and asserted they’d found product-market fit. They needed money now to conquer the market and bring back untold riches.
Of course, they hadn’t actually seen the shimmering gold with their own eyes much less held it in their hands. But they’d talked with 10 potential customers, with 25 potential users, with over 100 people in the industry, and now they had a notarized map with a big X marking the gold’s location.
Sorry, cap’n, until you’re holding a big pile of gold in your hands, you haven’t found product-market fit. Your confident assertions that you’ve already crossed the valley of death into the promised land lose you credibility.
As a pre-seed startup you have an educated (hopefully) guess of the general neighborhood of where to find that elusive product-market fit, but that’s a long way from excavating the trove of buried treasure.
