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To find product-market fit, ignore feedback from users who are 'not disappointed'. Instead, focus on converting the 'somewhat disappointed' users who already grasp your core value proposition. They are only a few features away from becoming evangelists.
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The fastest way to improve your product-market fit score is not to build features, but to redefine your market. By segmenting your users and focusing only on the cohort that already loves your product, you can dramatically increase your 'very disappointed' score with zero development work.
Before changing the product, redefine your target market to focus only on the user segments that already love what you've built. By simply segmenting their data to exclude misaligned personas, Superhuman's PMF score jumped 10% without writing any code.
Early customer feedback will be polarized, and this is normal. The key is to compare the 'hell yes' customers with the 'not unhappy' ones. Meaning emerges from this contrast, revealing the subtle differences that drive true product love and guide your roadmap.
Product-market fit isn't just growth; it's an extreme market pull where customers buy your product despite its imperfections. The ultimate signal is when deals close quickly and repeatedly, with users happily ignoring missing features because the core value proposition is so urgent and compelling.
Initially, customers often "round down," focusing on missing features. A key sign of product-market fit is when they start "rounding up"—their faces light up in demos, and they imagine the product's future potential, forgiving current limitations because they believe in the core value.
Superhuman's Product-Market Fit engine advises completely ignoring feedback from "not disappointed" users. This counterintuitive strategy prevents teams from being distracted by requests for features that are unlikely to ever convert detractors into fans.
Don't treat all "somewhat disappointed" users equally. Superhuman only acts on feedback from the subset who still identify the core benefits loved by fanatics. This ensures roadmap items will resonate deeply and successfully convert them into advocates.
Rahul Vohra champions Sean Ellis's metric as the key leading indicator for PMF. By surveying users with this simple question, teams get an objective, benchmarked score to optimize against, moving beyond subjective feelings about product success.
In the early days, Canary's pitch received mixed reactions. However, the strong, visceral "I need this now" response from a few customers was a more valuable signal of product-market fit than getting a polite "that's cool" from everyone. This validates the "10 true fans" principle in B2B.
Success in startups requires nuanced thinking, not absolute rules. For instance, product-market fit isn't a simple 'yes' or 'no' checkbox; it exists on a spectrum. Learning to see these shades of gray in funding, marketing, and product strategy is a hallmark of a mature founder.
