Video · ~10 min

Product-market fit with Michael Seibel

Michael Seibel · YouTube (Y Combinator) Free Beginner

A short, plain-spoken talk from YC's Michael Seibel on how to tell whether you have PMF and what to do when you do not. He is direct about the trap of adding features while telling yourself you are close. Good for a founder who wants the essentials in ten minutes before diving into longer reads.

  • Measure whether users come back on their own, not whether they say they like it
  • Do not confuse a growing feature list with growing demand
  • Before PMF, your job is learning, not scaling

The question it answers

  1. How do I know if I've found product-market fit?

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. This is the essay that forces the honest question underneath your idea: are you building a growth company or a good small... Paul Graham Essay · ~20 min read Startup = Growth Paul Graham
  5. Seibel's whole point is that a market only counts once real customers are grabbing the product as fast as you can make it and... Michael Seibel (Y Combinator) Essay · ~4 min read The Real Product Market Fit Michael Seibel
  6. Video · Talk, roughly 30 minutes David Rusenko: How To Find Product Market Fit David Rusenko (Weebly co-founder)
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