Podcast · 50 min

How to find product-market fit before you start building (with UserLeap's Ryan Glasgow)

Ryan Glasgow · First Round Review Podcast Free Intermediate

A practical conversation on validating demand through structured customer research rather than gut feel or friendly signups. Glasgow is specific about the questions and cadence that reveal whether people actually have the problem you think they do. Good for building a repeatable habit of listening, not a one-off round with friends.

  • Validate the problem with structured research before over-investing in the build
  • Continuous, lightweight user research beats one big round of interviews
  • Signal comes from patterns across many users, not one supportive person
Open on review.firstround.com ↗

The question it answers

  1. My first 5 customers were friends who signed up to be nice. How do I know if any of them actually want the product?

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 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
  3. The nuanced counterweight: PMF isn't a single binary moment, it can be lost, and 'market' is doing more work than founders... a16z.com Article · ~20 min read 12 Things About Product-Market Fit Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
  4. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  5. The foundational text of customer development, 'get out of the building' started here and became the backbone of the Lean... steveblank.com Book · ~370 pages The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win Steve Blank
  6. Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →