Article · ~3,000 words

A guide for finding product-market fit in B2B

Lenny Rachitsky · Lenny's Newsletter Freemium Intermediate

Consumer PMF advice does not map cleanly onto B2B, where deals are few, considered, and slow, which describes many Indian startups selling to businesses. This guide covers the specific signals that matter when you have ten design partners instead of ten thousand users. Read it if the 40 percent survey feels awkward for your low-volume, high-value product.

  • In B2B, renewal and expansion are your retention signal, not daily use
  • A handful of paying, referring customers can confirm fit
  • Watch whether sales gets easier and cycles get shorter over time
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It answers 7 questions

  1. How do I know if I've found product-market fit?
  2. I'm building outside the big startup hubs and my 'market' is the small businesses in my own town. Is that a strength or a limit?
  3. I've done 20 interviews and every person described a slightly different problem. How do I know if there's a real pattern or just noise?
  4. I am a domain expert but not a builder, is my idea real or just insider bias?
  5. How do I research market size and timing when I can only spend a weekend and have no budget for reports?
  6. How much should I spend building an MVP as a bootstrapped founder in India, and where does the money actually leak?
  7. Two of us disagree on how big the opportunity is. How do we resolve a market-size argument between cofounders?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The definitive essay on where good ideas come from: notice problems you personally have, don't force it. Use it as the lens for... paulgraham.com Essay · ~20 min read How to Get Startup Ideas Paul Graham
  3. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  4. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
  5. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  6. Long-form, candid interviews with Indian founders and investors on how they actually grew, distributed and built brand, one of... The Neon Show / Neon Fund Podcast · 200+ episodes The Neon Show (100x Entrepreneur Podcast) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
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