[wslh]

I am glad to continue the discussion and narrow it as much as possible:

Please forget the "novel" meaning for a while, and let's continue with the CRM example. I am a Hubspot customer now. As most companies we have used spreadsheets, vTiger [1], SugarCRM [2], among other apps. My main point was that if they are not/were succesful by the HN startup definition is because they had issues in the GTM not in PMF and this is a common confusion. There was always PMF for CRMs the problem is marketing/selling them. That market is so huge and known that thinking in PMF is deviating the attention from just selling! That is what my "middle east business side" says.

[1] https://www.vtiger.com/

[2] https://www.sugarcrm.com/

[svnt]

You are essentially saying that some people oversimplify and equate traction, GTM, and PMF.

As you note, lack of PMF can be a reason why there isn’t traction, but it isn’t the only reason.

You can have a good GTM and good PMF and still have poor traction for a number of reasons.

Ultimately failure or success often comes down to traction, which is all of GTM, PMF, and customer retention/expansion working.

[wslh]

Thank you, and because you named traction, I remember the book from DDG's founder Gabriel Weinberg [1], that was previous to his success.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Cu...