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A framework to help B2B founders find product-market fit
- dangoodmanUT 3y agoThe amount of design that went in to this, and the fact that they override the scrolling logic, makes me curious what their intention actually is. They do a lot of telling what if "feels like". Also... does this site... have motion blur?
- j45 3y agoThe idea is likely to increase production value to boost engagement, and help signal value of what's written to be of higher quality. As someone who has worked in building multiple B2B SaaS when it was not popular at all in the retail VC funded universe (consumer social media apps were the rage for a long time), ostracized, and more, it's kind of fun to see VC's trying to play in this area.
- slimsag 3y agoI mean, it's working. They are #1 on Hacker News currently - so like it or not they should continue doing this if that is their goal.
- swatcoder 3y ago#1 on Hacker News while none of the comments engage with the content, and instead just express confusion, uncertainty and aesthetic discomfort is not what you want. It means you probably struck onto a concept or theme that's speaks to active interests (the headline draw) but delivered on it poorly. Which is sort of beautifully ironic, given the subject.
- geraldhh 3y agomaybe the irony implies some sort of artisanal play
- j45 3y agoEyeballs are one thing, and maybe useful for brand mindshare, or worse some vanity metrics... but action is another. It's good to try and take the good from anything.
- dartos 3y agoAre platforms like Vercel not B2B?
- j45 3y agoI don’t think what you are saying makes sense. Vercel is just a programming framework for coding, not how to architect an app or the process of it for a particular market. Vercel can be used for any type of web app including b2b. I don’t think it’s exclusively for it. Building an mvp for b2b in my experience is best to go with the simplest setup, much simpler than normal to allow the quickest iteration from market feedback.
- monitron 3y agoI just want to meet the dev who wakes up in the morning, sits down with their cup of coffee, rubs their hands together and says "Boy, I just can't wait to make a website where scrolling feels like trying to run across an ice rink!"
- adtac 3y agoIf you're on Safari, open devtools, click the monitor icon on the top left, disable javascript, reload. The content reads fine without JS.
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- bendecoste 3y agoThe scroll on this website made me bounce
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- Lucasoato 3y agoThe quality of the web design is exceptional but maybe it hasn't been tested on giant monitors :/
- williamdclt 3y agoit's not even great on laptops. to be fair, HN is just as bad in terms of font size (too small), but at least it respects browser zoom which this website doesn't
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- yuppiepuppie 3y agoEverybody complaining about the design. But from a non-founder, does this framework actually seem legit? Or is it a fluff piece?
- bko 3y agoSeems like a lot of fluff. I think the key is to deliver value to customers. Do something you know. Don't be arrogant and enter a random business you know nothing about. Trying to get a startup off the ground is basically 2 things: pushing code and talking to customers. Set a metric like how much users are using the app (proxy for usefulness). If you create something that's valuable, it'll probably work out. There are a few exceptions which they touch on a bit. Movie pass model where you sell $10 for $5 obviously doesn't work. Or if you take investors and scale up too fast also screws you. You could be perfectly profitable and have fit but if some VC throws money at you and convinces you to hire dozens of people, then it could sink your product despite fit. An investor doesn't necessarily have your best interests in mind. They may prefer a 10% chance of $100m co where as you prefer a 50% chance of a $20m company in that time frame.
- leetrout 3y ago> Do something you know. Don't be arrogant and enter a random business you know nothing about. Within reason. I think there is a path to success in partnering with customers in the market you want to serve. Following Seth Godin's advice- "Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers." As devs we have the capacity to join ranks with our customers and learn and build to solve their problems.
- luckyou 3y agoIt's easier to find PMF by myself them to read this post and find a template there. Very difficult text with a lot of words.
- mritchie712 3y agoat a glance, it seems like good advice. It's just waayyyyy to long.
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- kenm47 3y agotl;dr us someone. No way anyone actually reads that. Especially the people who want it.
- jasonjmcghee 3y agoIt doesn’t take that long to read - probably 15 minutes, and a few minutes to skim. For tl;dr use ChatGPT. “Summarize this <link>”. You can ask questions about it if you’re interested. In general it talks about pmf, gives advice on different stages of pmf, and some strategies to be used to help navigate towards pmf at each stage. As far as people that want this, i sure hope they can spend 15 minutes (or even 30!) on an article if they are spending years trying to achieve pmf.
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- RivieraKid 3y agoAnyone got a tldr?
- mdekkers 3y agotoday we’re proud to unveil Product-Market Fit Method, an intensive 14-week experience designed to help exceptional pre-seed founders build epic B2B SaaS companies. Its spam
- godzillabrennus 3y agoIt's the Lean Startup Method but in course form.
- semanser 3y agoThere is also a video on Lenny's podcast (feat First Round Capital) about the exact same topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1Uwhfxacs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1Uwhfxacs
- fouc 3y agoA lot of people upvoting this without wading through this fluff. Someone break out the chatgpt summarizer ha
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- makerdiety 3y agoI'm here to tell the tragic truth that there isn't a lot of opportunity for large scale repeatability that happens after the minimum viable product is discovered. Startups are basically cryptocurrency pyramid schemes hidden in the domain of legitimate entrepreneurship. You shouldn't seek anything that is beyond one order of magnitude higher than the minimum viable product. Because Facebook already exists. World of Warcraft already exists. You're not gonna discover the product-market fit for the next Google. Because there is no next Google. It's sad how people are being lied to. Startups are literally just another lottery to waste resources, time, and energy on. The bubble will eventually pop and people will be disappointed with reality.
- tannedNerd 3y agoYes there is probably no next Google, but you know what there are a lot of. Companies that the googles etc buy because they have gotten to the point where they can’t really develop new products themselves. So yes you many not be able to make the next Google or Microsoft, but there are plenty of success stories to still be had.
- makerdiety 3y agoA lifestyle business isn't the success this "black boxed highly performant Product-Market Framework" article is advocating for. A lifestyle business is a small business that is no better than a corner store selling liquor and cigarettes or whatever. The popular trend is to chase after frameworks and technology that enables inhuman commercial growth. You don't need a Kubernetes cluster for a little gas station business. You also don't even need the concept of a minimum viable product for that "humble" little success which is more probable for the average person to achieve. Silicon Valley startups want big achievements. Astronomical stuff. That's why MVPs, PMFs, and KPIs were invented. For doing aerospace science as opposed to building local mud huts.
- citizenpaul 3y ago>You don't need a Kubernetes cluster for a little gas station business. Chick-fil-a has a Kubernetes cluster at each location. Maybe its not so far fetched. Gas stations are all franchises of a major corp. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7Ww_AlhAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il7Ww_AlhAg
- cameron_b 3y agoalternatively - https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pmf-framework/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40020601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40020601
- altdataseller 3y agoI found that one lacking a lot compared to this one
- tomschwiha 3y ago[flagged]
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- neom 3y agoJust an FYI, as dang told me in an email when I complained about being flagged last year for using ChatGPT to do something similar in a comment: comments written primarily by bots are not welcome on hn.
- tomschwiha 3y agoI see, thanks for your feedback. Would make sense if that ruling is still active. However at least I would know for the future, though I also learned reading this article would probably be helpful. So guess it woudn't be a bad thing either way :)
- pvg 3y agohttps://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20generated%20comments&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Same now and likely for the future.
- bjornsing 3y agoInteresting, but I get the feeling that they’ve packed so much into the PMF concept that it’s basically the whole business. In my mind it makes more sense to reserve the term for what’s called Level 1 here: the early stage where you need to make big adjustments and potentially pivot to an entirely different product or market.
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- turnsout 3y agoThis framework is attempting to make PMF seem so hopelessly complicated that you'll need their magic system (pricing unavailable, apply here). Trust me, you don't need a system. It's so much simpler than this. First, start with the M, not the P. Talk to real human beings in any market to find a painful problem, create a product that addresses (doesn't need to 100% solve) that problem, and (don't forget this part) charge money for the product. That's it. Anything else is galaxy brain. Don't get distracted.
- billmalarky 3y ago>First, start with the M, not the P. Well said! This is basically the linchpin behind the Jobs to be Done theory commonly attributed to Clayton Christensen (many thought leaders developed the theory over the years which he credits, but Clay seemed to be the leader of the group). The premise of Clay's book "Competing Against Luck" is about this JTBD theory (he also calls "Jobs Theory") which aims to surface the fundamental causality of customer purchase behavior, which allows you to build your solution such that it aligns directly with that behavior instead of all the abstractions and manifestations of that behavior that are often red herrings (ie: pointless features, solutions that in reality not aligned but this is not obvious, etc). Ultimately, Jobs Theory is an approach that that aims to objectively lower risk around innovation. It teaches you to think of customer needs/objectives independently from solutions/technologies, so that it's more natural to innovate to serve the ultimate need rather than compete against preexisting solutions or be misled by customers who are not often able to articulate (or they may not even consciously know what drove their behavior -- it can be very complex) what a better solution for them would be and as such will just mislead you. Instead of taking shots in the dark, you build better solutions around preexisting needs (more accurately called "jobs" in JTBD Theory, and it isn't just semantics). Apologies for nerding out on a topic you probably already know well but I figured I'd add to the conversation for others who might be interested. I really love JTBD. It helps solve imo the single hardest problem around startups -- product/market fit. Read Competing Against Luck folks!
- turnsout 3y agoAbsolutely! I work in design/innovation consulting, and we use JTBD quite a bit. It's a nice way to interpret user needs and avoid the pitfall of taking user feedback too literally. I view JTBD as a flavor of Human-Centered Design that gives teams structure around the "Desirability" piece of the Desirability / Viability / Feasibility framework. We also hear the advice to "make a painkiller, not a vitamin," which is sort of a JTBD/HCD test in disguise.
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- nextworddev 3y agoVCs have very much embraced content marketing
- bradhe 3y agoYeah was going to say...with this and the Sequoia article the other day...
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- awad 3y agoIt should be noted that First Round have done a great job putting out content for many years. https://review.firstround.com https://review.firstround.com is a great resource for founders
- niles 3y agoMy initial impression of this was poor, but I think that has more to do with the formatting of the slides not being conducive to mobile and the sheer volume of text. After reading through and watching the candid videos, I can say there are valuable things that early stage founders can pull out so it is worth powering through. I think more iterations and more depth on the case studies would be helpful for levels 1&2. Meaning, a broader sample of startups in the portfolio, and more tangible examples of changes that made a customer stop chrunning or sign up faster. Using hypothetical or anonymized case studies and too few largely keeps this framework in the level 1-2 quadrant, which is ironic. Almost like this document was built (a technology) rather than helping a specific reader (a problem + solution).
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- from-nibly 3y agoIf you believe this I've also got a remote job where you just write a couple posts every day. I've pulled in $41,485 just this last month.
- darkhorse13 3y agoWhat do you actually write?
- haliskerbas 3y agoI think it’s sarcasm. It must be saying both the remote job and this article are not believable.
- from-nibly 3y agoYes and apparently it wasnt received well. :/
- light_triad 3y agoGreat they share specific metrics and give a sense of how they evaluate companies, although all First Round articles have this tendency to be so overdesigned it takes away from the content. The discussion on Lenny's podcast is easier to digest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1Uwhfxacs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1Uwhfxacs I think the 4 P's is a valuable framework for getting to PMF: Persona, Problem, Promise (Pitch), and Product. Usually startups that don't work have a fundamental problem with a few of these (they try to solve too many problems for too many people in a subpar way - i.e. they don't have a strong answer to: which problem are you solving, for who and why it is better than alternatives?). Startups that are willing to iterate over the 4 Ps have a shot at getting to PMF, those that don't usually will struggle and then die.
- rgalate 3y agoThanks for linking the interview! I listened to it and found it insightful.
- light_triad 2y agoLenny recently interviewed YC's Dalton Caldwell which you might also like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7LvNTbaqSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7LvNTbaqSI
- tempusalaria 3y agoThey talk about selling a dollar for less than it’s worth as not being a PMF indication. However, this does not match with actual VC funding trends, as the vast majority of private unicorns are loss making. In fact if you can consistently sell a dollar for 90 cents it’s likely you can raise a lot of money on the back of that. It’s funny also that their Ironclad example clearly describes fraud/dishonesty on the part of the founder and this is celebrated as hustle. Seems far too common that this type of behavior is not only tolerated but actually suggested by VCs.
- Cilvic 3y agoI'd love to find something like this for "product-led growth" ideally not B2C but still B2B just not "sales led". Any ideas?
- neom 3y agoElena Verna is the name you're looking for. She's got a lot of stuff all over the place so might take a bit of digging, but imo there is nobody better, she's a PLG wizard for sure.
- svnt 3y agoThe tldr is provided in the article itself: > To be clear, pieces of this approach may exist here or there in different frameworks — after all, all great ideas are built on what's come before. If you haven’t spent much time seeking PMF in a B2B company there is useful information here, but to me it looks like a refactoring of what’s come before. The article under-delivers on its promise, which is stated up front as: > 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. And later on it even admits it doesn’t actually do what it promised: > For example, a startup might be stuck at developing PMF, but later find that pivoting to a new buyer is the move that unlocks the next level. Or another company may have stumbled onto nascent PMF with resonant positioning, but then can’t ship the correct product that delivers on its promise. > These levers, of course, fall more into the camp of how to go about finding PMF, which is not the focus of this essay. Isn’t “tactical” advice supposed to be the answer to the question “how?”
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- hampowder 3y agoIf anyone has any useful frameworks for B2C PMF/iteration I'd be very appreciative
- Marietta040 3y ago[flagged]