Most people describe finding product-market fit as an art, not a science. But when it comes to sales-led B2B startups, we’ve reverse engineered a method to increase the odds of unlocking it. We’ve worked with some of the world’s most iconic enterprise founders and distilled what they did in their first six months into a series of tactical sessions for taking a straighter path to PMF. Today, we’re open sourcing the first session, which shares how we’ve broken PMF down to an incredibly granular level in order to help more builders get there faster.

DECONSTRUCTING THE PROCESS

Even though finding product-market fit is the single most important objective any company must achieve, it’s still a black box for founders — seemingly requiring some mysterious combination of luck, market timing, and sheer grit.

While much has been written on the topic, no one has broken down the inputs, leading indicators and tactical steps that could increase the odds of finding PMF. In our view, one of the key reasons this topic hasn’t been successfully “framework-ified” is that most folks still talk about the concept in generalities. 

Fish are jumping into the boat. Leads are falling on the floor. You’re chasing — not pushing — a boulder. The product is being pulled out of your hands. You’ll know it when you see it. You can feel when it’s not happening. These descriptions lack the specificity that we see in other areas of company building.

Another issue? Most resources target a wide range of builders — which results in watered-down advice that’s more hand-wavy than tactical. Founders are left with approaches that are neither replicable nor practical, ranging from unhelpful “We kind of just started going viral” founding stories to one-size-fits-all frameworks that don’t address the nuances of their specific business. 

While the hunt for PMF can be more of a dice game with poor odds for, say, consumer apps, our experience has taught us that for sales-led B2B companies, you can reduce the role of luck. 

Here’s how we’ve developed that conviction: As a firm of former founders and startup builders, we’re coming up on our 20th year of investing in pre-product-market fit startups. Along with Square, Notion, Looker, and Verkada, we’ve backed hundreds of companies when they were just a couple of founders and an idea.