Everyone seems to think product-market fit is a clear before-and-after, like you wake up one day and suddenly you never have to worry about acquisition again and all you have to do is scale.
It only looks like that in hindsight. While you're building the startup (not when you've made dozens of millions and brag about it on podcasts), it looks and feels different.
First, it's not a binary: There's levels to this game! That might be the most important insight. I really like First Round's four levels of PMF framework and we use it internally at CommandBar to see how we'll get to the next level.
Here's how it worked for us and what we noticed along the way:
First level
Looking back, the biggest challenge with this is that none of it is repeatable. If you sell to a CPO today and to an eng leader tomorrow, you need two different skillsets and don't know whom to target marketing at.
When you solve for that, you get to the next level
Second level
Here, the problem to solve was how to get. more. leads. Once we put more marketing & sales in place, we found a way to drive demand consistently, which is when we started to enter stage 3.
Third level
This means it's time to stop focusing on getting something to work at all, but getting something to work well.
And that's level 4, which we're doing everything to reach! I wrote a detailed breakdown as well with exactly what we did to ascend the levels, telltale signs we made it to that level and what we're doing next to get to level 4. You can read it here: https://www.commandbar.com/blog/we-found-pmf/