👋 Hello, I’m Lenny and welcome to a ✨ once-a-month-free-edition ✨ of my newsletter. Each week I humbly tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out at the office.
If you’re not a paid subscriber, here’s what you missed this month:
“When we hit PMF, we started feeling pull for the first time”
“Like getting pressed into the back of your seat by a fast car or a plane taking off”
“Word of mouth was uncontrollable”
“Why won't you take my money???”
“Yeah, you really can't miss it”
This is what you hear from successful founders when you ask them what product-market fit felt like. But is this always what it feels like? I wanted to find out.
Over the past few months I reached out to founders of the twenty five most iconic companies I could get a hold of and asked them one question:
When did you first know you found product-market fit? Whatever that point means to you – was there something you noticed, felt, or experienced where you were like “Damn, I think we got something here!”
After collecting and reviewing their stories (all of which you’ll find below), one thing became clear: every company did have a clear moment where they recognized they had PMF, and many did experience a sudden hard-to-miss pull from the market, BUT many companies did not see it immediately. For many companies, PMF became clear over time through a series of compounding wins or milestones. Here’s how it broke down across the companies I looked at:
1. Market “pull” comes in many forms: