Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by allenu | Hacker News Reader

> This case study makes me wonder if PMF is only accidental. Many startups I know have accidentally stumbled on the idea that made them big. This is one such story.

It does seem accidental to me in this particular case.

The more I read about successful product-market fit, the more I'm convinced that even if it's a real thing, knowing about it doesn't actually lead to any useful advice other than "keep pivoting until you've made something people really want" (or else you run out of money).

The term "product-market fit" makes it seem like a concept that is measurable. Maybe, it's measurable, but only after you've achieved it. So what does that tell you exactly? If you're not successful, you don't have it. If you are successful, you must have had product market fit. Amazing. Now go forth and make stuff that has product-market fit. Good luck.

It feels more honest to just just call it "making a product people desperately want and will you give you money for". It would simplify a lot of discussions. "We worked on this product and didn't know if people desperately wanted it or would give us money for it. Then we released it and realized people didn't want it and would not give us money for it. The lesson we learned is we should make something people desperately want and will give us money for."

Apologies for being negative, but I think I've watched too many videos and read too many articles from successful people/companies and am starting to think that survivorship bias and luck gives too much authority to advice that is actually not that useful.

> Apologies for being negative, but I think I've watched too many videos and read too many articles from successful people/companies and am starting to think that survivorship bias and luck gives too much authority to advice that is actually not that useful.

I agree with you. How many founders are able to find success twice? How many thrice? It's shockingly low, even amongst the most respected tech magnates.

Here's an example I like to use which I'm sure will be controversial, and I want to preface this by saying I've personally met and respect Justin Kan. But if you look at his history of starting companies, he only gets worse with time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Kan

He started with twitch which sold for just under $1 billion, then had SocialCam which sold for $60 MM, he then sold Exec for an undisclosed amount, and after that his initiatives shut down or are ongoing. Obviously he still has time for some big exits, but the trend doesn't make it look like he's learning.

Combining this with another reply elsewhere about learning sales.

I wonder if the problem is before the idea had to be so valuable to get funded despite Justin being bad at sales, now he’s gotten better so he doesn’t need to refine the idea nearly as much to get interest and investment.

In other words the friction of being bad at sales makes them work twice or mores times as hard refining the idea. I’m not sure what to call this broken feedback loop, lower burden of proof, something else, all of the above?

Might also be now he has capital he wants to work idea he cares about and wants to make reality rather than just finding the next unicorn (unless he also took large investments again to fund next company then I’d agree)

Justin’s first startup was Kiko calendar. Google launched Calendar and it died, they auctioned it and got 250K. Then started Justin.tv, and it led to Twitch and Socialcam.

It takes time to build a billion dollar company, it’s unfair to compare his current ongoing initiatives to Twitch.

Minor nitpick: According to your Wikipedia link SocialCam (launch March 2011, sold July 2012) predated Twitch (launch June 2011, sold August 2014), so that was an upward progression.

> How many founders are able to find success twice? How many thrice? It's shockingly low

Hmm, I felt I've read the occasional "serial entrepreneurs more likely to be succesful again" articles. So, I duckduckgo'd exactly that sentence, and I found immediate proof, with the all-reliable (right?) Forbes at the top search result:

    "Serial Entrepreneurs Are More Successful" (from an independent contributor)

But then the second search result sets me straight:

    "Research: Serial Entrepreneurs Aren’t Any More Likely to Succeed" (from HBR, so arguably more reliable?)

Both articles are ~10yo, fwiw.

---

Edit: this "feeling" about serial entrepreneurs to be more successful gets fed on a constant drip. Sometimes by the same culprit (hi, there, Forbes). This on my timeline yesterday: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kmehta/2022/08/23/older-entrepr...

If they are more likely to succeed again, it’s because they either already have money or have easy access to capital. It’s somewhat common knowledge that investors will invest in the same people again, sometimes even after failures.

There is some measure of not making the same mistakes twice, to be fair. Your first few weeks as a brand new founder you might accidentally find yourself debating which bank to use for days or a week; the second time you'll never make that mistake because it will have been entirely inconsequential the first time.

Basically, it gives you the opportunity to do less "work that looks like work" because you did that before and was ineffective. You'll find plenty of other ways to do that, but at least you've narrowed the scope of stupid things to do a little bit. :)

You missed an important point, though - he didn't start with Twitch, he started with Justin.tv which eventually pivoted into Twitch. He didn't start with PMF, he moved into it.

> "making a product people desperately want and will you give you money for"

That’s all pmf has ever meant though, right? It’s just fewer words to have a label for the concept.

Yeah, it's even in the OP: "Users saying that it's a good idea / product after a demo doesn't mean that the product has PMF. Users desperately wanting to use the product and pay for it ie., retention / repetitive usage is PMF."

The bigger issue is clearly that the advice boils down to something more like "if you don't have buyers, you won't make sales", which is just common sense and I'm surprised we need to have a whole buzzword about it.

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