Thanks for sharing and posting this out. You may not believe, but I had thought of sending you an email asking for 'planning for PMF' as a post or insights on that.
The intent being, when building out a product beyond that "love" part, how to work for PMF in the foresight, because most of the time, it seems to be in hindsight when achieved or missed.
As much as I enjoyed reading the diverse views in your post on PMF, it also makes me wonder, if it is a classic case of - "once successful, it is relatively easier to label the steps taken as the strategy, given their is successful outcome to showcase'.. hence I have always find Ben Thompson's example of Twitter never finding it's PMF a good example. It is hundreds of millions of users, and running between profits and losses, but it never figured out it's PMF. And while it is debatable, it does have some merits.
It is so true, that PMF is a VC lense and probably not fair for operators and builders to focus on PMF itself because PMF is the outcome to assess the scalability and go to series A/B and thus operators focus on doing things that are right for users rather than harping over PMF during the build phase.
But, I would love to hear your views through the expert lense, if one was to build a product considering, you would like to see PMF in 1 to 3 to 5 or more years (whatever the horizon be), how to plan for it for your product? Yes, ofcourse there will be pivots and adjacent markets that will change the context, but how should one define PMF for your product in future, and how to go about planning milestones to get there. If there is a North star metric that can help define and choose the path, why not have some milestones that align to the PMF as one builds. I have lately started asking product builders this question early on, what would PMF' look like for you product in a measurable way and the answers are broad and difficult to standardize..
Insightful newsletter
Stimulating stuff! I like tech news I can get lost in, and you've provided me with more than a feast!
Very intresting read!
Hey,
Great Sunday read!
Special thanks for intro to 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Thanks for sharing and posting this out. You may not believe, but I had thought of sending you an email asking for 'planning for PMF' as a post or insights on that.
The intent being, when building out a product beyond that "love" part, how to work for PMF in the foresight, because most of the time, it seems to be in hindsight when achieved or missed.
As much as I enjoyed reading the diverse views in your post on PMF, it also makes me wonder, if it is a classic case of - "once successful, it is relatively easier to label the steps taken as the strategy, given their is successful outcome to showcase'.. hence I have always find Ben Thompson's example of Twitter never finding it's PMF a good example. It is hundreds of millions of users, and running between profits and losses, but it never figured out it's PMF. And while it is debatable, it does have some merits.
It is so true, that PMF is a VC lense and probably not fair for operators and builders to focus on PMF itself because PMF is the outcome to assess the scalability and go to series A/B and thus operators focus on doing things that are right for users rather than harping over PMF during the build phase.
But, I would love to hear your views through the expert lense, if one was to build a product considering, you would like to see PMF in 1 to 3 to 5 or more years (whatever the horizon be), how to plan for it for your product? Yes, ofcourse there will be pivots and adjacent markets that will change the context, but how should one define PMF for your product in future, and how to go about planning milestones to get there. If there is a North star metric that can help define and choose the path, why not have some milestones that align to the PMF as one builds. I have lately started asking product builders this question early on, what would PMF' look like for you product in a measurable way and the answers are broad and difficult to standardize..
looking forward to more insights.. :)