[marcus_holmes]

Utterly pointless because he didn't interview failed startups about how they felt.

It's like doing an experiment and only counting the "successful" results - this is worse than "bad science", it's intentionally misleading science that actually sets us back.

We really don't need any more survivor bias. Please go interview some failed startup founders. There might have been a crucial difference in step 2 of these 5 steps that successful founders did and failed founders didn't, but we won't know about it because there's no data from failed founders.

[Xenoamorphous]

I guess if the point is to find out How long it took different companies to find product-market fit (title of the submission) you could argue that failed startups never found it?

[boringg]

I agree with OP - lots of survivorship bias here. To be fair to the author - going through the heaps of companies that didn't make it would be a sig more work.

Most likely the failed companies didn't find it but possibly were close or other issues sank the company. Curious actually if there are companies that found product market fit and didn't survive. That's an interesting group.

[quickthrower2]

Median, mode and mean time: infinity

[AndrewKemendo]

You’re assuming that there’s a population of companies that failed, but also had PMF

This is a contradiction as PMF is defined as having BOTH successful business relationship and product used.

Where are these failed companies with useful products that people are using?

[cainxinth]

I asked gpt your question:

> Achieving PMF is just one stage of a startup's journey. Once PMF is achieved, the company still needs to scale, navigate competition, manage its finances well, adapt to changing market conditions, etc. Mistakes in any of these areas could lead to failure even with a strong PMF.

> For example, one of the first successful smartwatches, Pebble had a great product-market fit with a passionate user base. Yet, they struggled against larger competitors like Apple and Fitbit and eventually had to sell their IP and shut down.

[AndrewKemendo]

In which case PMF clearly makes marginal difference in the long term

And that’s what’s playing out irl- companies that last are ones that keep investors happy

The product is fungible and incidental - if you can use other means to force product adoption then PMF is irrelevant

[marcus_holmes]

I think the point is that PMF is a significant milestone on the journey. But it's not the destination. You can still mess it up despite achieving PMF.

And I don't think "keeping investors happy" is the key, either. Plenty of successful founders with unhappy investors.

I'm struggling to see how you could force adoption of a product in a way that matters. The example given was Pebble, who were struggling against Apple. Apple still needed PMF, despite their market dominance. If their product was so bad that it didn't solve the market need, then it would have failed despite their money and effective monopoly. I don't think PMF is irrelevant, it's just not the only necessary thing. You can still fail despite having PMF, but you have to have PMF to succeed.

[AndrewKemendo]

Think of all the trash products you use

Why are they there? Has nothing to do with product capabilities

[marcus_holmes]

But I do use them, so I must gain some benefit from them.

There's even more trash that doesn't get used and we never hear about (or hear about and decide not to use). A lot of that is produced by large companies with big budgets.

[sails]

Interestingly he did share an anecdote. Startups fail quietly and obscurely?

https://twitter.com/lennysan/status/1687138482152783873

[marcus_holmes]

Nice write-up :) I'm always fascinated by the lessons learned from the failures.

It would have been great if he'd incorporated those into the article. I bet there's a ton of interesting stuff to learn from that.