marketing
Product-Market Fit (PMF)
The state where the product satisfies strong market demand. The thing every startup is chasing.
Definition
Product-Market Fit (PMF) is the state where your product clearly satisfies strong market demand - customers actively pull the product from you (sign up unprompted, refer others, churn slowly), rather than you having to push it onto them. Marc Andreessen described it as 'when customers are buying the product as fast as you can make it'. Pre-PMF: every sale is a struggle, customers churn, growth requires huge effort. Post-PMF: sales feel inevitable, customers stick, growth feels almost free. The classic PMF survey question: 'How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?' - 40%+ saying 'very disappointed' indicates PMF.
In your business
- →Test PMF with the Sean Ellis survey - 40%+ 'very disappointed' is the threshold
- →Pre-PMF, focus on the product and the few customers who love it - not on scaling
- →Post-PMF, the bottleneck shifts to scaling acquisition and delivery