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Comment by spxneo | Hacker News Reader

My perspective changed from thinking PMF was a lottery when in reality its just sales/marketing grinding until something works.

The reason I used to think this is like other technically orientated founders. If I build for a market that doesn't exist then you are playing lotto. It's not even good odds, you are better off playing 0dte spx coin flip.

What you fear you build for and if all you have are unknowns then you are going to simply end up building everything lose differentiation and your potential customers even if they find you will walk

Despite classics like the SBF article that was taken down, this framework is quite good but the best thing to do as bootstrappers is to focus on generating net positive cashflow as soon as possible not running a PMF search engine which requires lot of minds and capital injection.

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It is a lottery though.

My partner started a business and literally from her first ad she was inundated with customers. Now it's a $10m/year bootstrapped business. I've done exactly the same thing and had 0 customers.

If you are falling into the Hard Fact / Future Vision categories it can very hard to get customers because no one is ever looking for your product.

that just means she had the PMF to begin with

if you done the same and have 0 customers that means you did something incorrectly.

it is IMPOSSIBLE to do the same thing that works and net 0 customers.

You can do same thing at different time. (Missed the chance)

Wrong, even if both agents are identical, and they're operating in the same environment, each run of the simulation will be slightly different, i.e. the process is stochastic (non-deterministic).

In reality the agents are not identical (e.g. different skillsets, or attractiveness to clients), and the environments are different (e.g. different professional or social networks).

And, as another commenter pointed out, the time when agents are starting is also a factor, but my point is that even if they start at the same time the result might be different.

Lastly, there is a butterfly effect - that small changes in the initial conditions may result in vastly different outcomes.

There's not enough details here to say what she did right and you did wrong, but it generally comes down to her idea probably solved a problem customers were willing to pay a lot for today and your idea didn't.

If her idea was "when you pay me x, you get 3x back in new revenue" and your idea was a tarpit idea like "help people find what to eat tonight", it's really obvious why you failed.

What is her business?

And when I write a blog post, I write verbs and nouns and adjectives exactly like Paul Graham does but he keeps winning the lottery of readers.

It’s a lottery, but you control the number of tickets you play.

Far too many companies stick with one, failing ticket

I spoke with the ceo of a top ten AI company on Friday. They are definitely playing the PMF lottery and there is no alternative to this. They have lots of very smart people and tons of conversations with customers. But nobody has any idea what will end up working.

If they don't have PMF, what are they "top ten" in? Amount of cash raised?

Plenty of businesses - probably especially AI companies that do original research - found PMF in a market that’s too small for their cost structure. Like I bet Anthropic and OpenAI have positive margins on their raw APIs if you exclude all R&D costs. Even Google’s AI research is subsidized by one of the largest profit generators in Silicon Valley.

So basically, yes, amount raised.

Its not a lottery, most people just arent intelligent enough to anticipate new market needs. They have no business trying to innovate at that level, but are unaware of their inadequacies. Some people do have the raw intellectual and societal horsepower to bring new paradigms to life.

I wouldn't say its intelligence as there are different types of intelligence but more specifically emotional intelligence and self-awareness that is key.

The guys writing PMF is a lottery are jaded because they are afraid to admitting their own weak points. They failed because they ignored something. The ones with emotional intelligence and self-awareness are able to navigate and negotiate.

Founders keep fixating on pick-me startup, hoping for a cushy exit, that happens less than 0.1% of the time, the odds are as bad as wanting to go to NFL, if not WORSE. VCs and investors also have to deliver returns they can't keep bank rolling something that they don't see a market in.

I appreciate this viewpoint.

There’s also a lot of confusing finding / getting PMF with what PMF is.

Product market fit is pretty straightforward: I have a product that meets people’s needs in a way that the market demonstrates by paying money for (usually with the connotation of profitability).

Finding this is incredibly hard and rare, thus it seems to get convoluted with a lot of emotions.

How do you generate positive cashflow if your product doesn't fit a need that the market has?

Having positive cashflow is so 1986.

You don't. And most of these OpenAI wrapper startups are failgets. The consensus from the buyers side is that they are disillusioned by the hype and dealing with the true reality of this hype cycle.

Did you study business?

It's no wonder so many fail when most people don't bother to study business strategy, entrepreneurship and marketing first.

Can you recommend any practical resources on the topic? Not fluffy business-orientated self help books like all the product management books that are recommended.

Sure:

* Competing against luck

* Four steps to the epiphany

* Positioning by Ries (IIRC)

But also books on business strategy and marketing are essential. I read several at uni. Maybe pick up an HBR guide or FT book if you don't want to go for a full textbook.

They should give you more ways to think about problems, let you be more confident in ideas you choose, and reinforce the need to iterate quickly and only gradually commit more resources.

Most entrepreneurial advice could probably be summarised as: make products with new tech that solve real problems.

The new tech part means you get in before competitors, and solving real problems keeps it laser focussed on customers with important enough problems they'll pay for it.

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