[Ace__]

I remember digging into the source material used in this article, and contacting the founder, not Nico, but the other gentleman, can't remember his name, an amicable friendly chap. Anyway, I said to him, that a lot of the founders, although I respect their transparency and willingness to talk about unfortunately failing, they appear blinkered to the reasons for their failure. I won't mention the founders reply.

Looking at PMF in terms of:

1. The definition of PMF

2. How PMF is drummed into founders

3. The proposed criteria to evaluate PMF

4. The actual things to measure within the criteria

I won't pull a number out of my backside to state to what degree PMF wasn't the issue, but I will say PMF was not the problem in some of the startups mentioned in the source material. In some cases PMF was not something they should have even been looking for at the stage they were at.

Another reason that cropped up quite a few times. Bad Marketing. Putting growth over retention, automation and efficiency over learning and personally figuring out how to sell in person isn't bad marketing to me. That's a bad decision.

[mattmanser]

Really confused by the last paragraph, what's a bad decision? Are you saying

1. focus on growth, automation and selling in person

Or

2. focus on retention, learning, and automating sales

Both of which seem inconsistent?

[Ace__]

Hello Matt.

I am saying, and I will elaborate:

1. Focusing on growth instead of retention in the early stages and certainly before PMF or at least strong indications of PMF, is a bad decision.

2. Focusing on automation and attempts at operational efficiencies when it comes to marketing and sales, again before PMF or at least strong indications of PMF is a bad decision.

When it comes to growth, automation and attempts at operational efficiencies, you do that when there are strong signals. You don't cut out selling in person, till you have an acceptable closing rate. Even then, I would still recommend frequent selling in person to learn more until there are diminishing returns.

Instead, you'll find an inordinate number of founders attempting to attain double-digit growth while there is triple digit churn. Automation of certain things like scraping lead lists, when the lists are nothing more than dump lists.

Hacking things out, when what they should learn is discarded because the process towards the end-goal cuts out what they need to learn, take on-board and become intrinsic.

Throwing up websites that are clones of well established competitors. Parroting without any deep understanding of why those things are on the site, of why those things need to be said. Oblivious to why they themselves are not in a position to say those things.

I would really like to say more on this. I would call it a pet-peeve, but I got a zoo full of them. If you want to carry on the discussion in private, happy to do so, but for now, I got work to do.

Cheers, Ace.