After setting a modest goal of signing 10-20 hotels at their first major conference, Canary Technologies signed over 200 in just eight hours. This massive, unexpected pull from the market served as the definitive, visceral signal that they had achieved strong product-market fit.

Despite lower volume, leads from high-intent forms like 'demo request' converted at double the rate of product trials. They also resulted in deals that were twice as large, highlighting a massively undervalued pipeline source that was being ignored in favor of high-volume, low-quality trials.

Eve knew they had product-market fit when customers found a bug that let them bypass invite restrictions. Users onboarded their entire firms months ahead of schedule, demonstrating an urgent, unmet need for the product.

Even after scaling past $10M ARR, Canary's founder gets back on the phone to cold call customers for every new product launch. This ensures the leadership team directly tests messaging, understands customer objections, and validates the new offering's value proposition before scaling the sales motion.

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.

Canary's founders achieved an impressive 50-75% demo-to-close rate in the early days. While this rate decreases as a sales team scales, such a high initial conversion is a powerful leading indicator of product-market fit, proving that qualified buyers want the product once they see it.

The ultimate validation of product-market fit isn't retention or satisfaction scores, but the percentage of new revenue driven by customer referrals. When 30% or more of your new top-line monthly revenue comes from existing customers recommending your product, you've built something people genuinely love and need.

After experiencing numerous lukewarm responses to failed ideas, the intense, urgent demand from a customer for a successful product becomes an undeniable signal. The contrast between a polite 'maybe later' and a frantic 'how do I get this now?' makes true product-market fit impossible to miss.

While the company's overall win rate was a dismal 3-5%, opportunities from high-intent 'hand raiser' leads (e.g., demo requests) converted at 14%. This shows a highly effective GTM motion was being completely obscured by blended pipeline data, causing the team to overlook and underinvest in their most valuable channel.