HN mostly being anon, I thought it would be an ideal place to share how you found PMF as a service to other startups and founders. Whether you are a 1 person company or 1,000, it does not really matter
- Got feedback early – But we focused on usage, not just compliments.
- Looked for real engagement – When users started referring others, that was a big sign.
- Tracked metrics – Retention, churn, and whether people were paying.
- Iterated based on feedback – Kept refining, but didn’t force things.
- Let it grow naturally – When the product started growing on its own, we knew we had it.
It wasn’t a single moment—just a gradual process of building, learning, and tweaking.
I believe honing the first step is 80% of the job. Would love for you to go deeper
At least for the style of businesses i'm building, my biggest learning is quite simply that finding PMF can not be shortcutted (trust me, I've tried).
For me, finding PMF has meant: - Spending as much time with potential customers as possible (on calls, in their office etc). Learn/Listen - Constantly playing with positioning/messaging/feature-set based on insights you're learning. - Building out a pilot/prototype and seeing if customers will pre-pay to be in a early pilot group
The great news is, most of this can be done without writing a single line of code.
Hope that's helpful
For one of my product we spray and prayed, iterated fast and have not necessarily got/found PMF yet.
For my products we are 'pre-selling' (which feels much much better):
We've been reaching potential customers on LinkedIn, asking them for 15 mins to give feedback on our 'product' (at this point is just a sales deck).
At the end of the 'pitch' we get feedback from the customer. We also explain that we're launching a pilot, and give them an opportunity to join the pilot.
The pilot is paid (but cheaper than the public pricing will be), and it involves signing a v.simple 1 page contract/agreement which allows us to invoice them ahead of the 'launch'.
For us, this has been incredibly effective at:
- Understanding if this product hits a pain-point that customers are actually willing to spend budget on
- Weeding out the 'weak' signals like 'I quite like it' (people who 'like' it but may never buy)
- Giving us financial/commercial confidence, since we have invoiceable revenue guaranteed
And what it feels like? It feels awesome! Sometimes, when you find somebody that really gets it, their body language and attitude is entirely different....they literally PULL the product from your hands (vs. you pushing it on them). They're asking questions like "when can we launch/try it", and "can I introduce you to X Y Z people, who are going to love this?". And they say things like "We're budget constrained, but there are tons of things I'd rather get rid of, to make budget for this"
Happy to help if you have any more Qs