[collin128]

Strong agree here. I'm a non-technical founder.

I tend to interview 30-50 people initially to find a gap in the market. If I'm into something (strong PMF), a good percentage of those people I interviewed will be future buyers.

I typically have cascading meetings for the following steps:

1 - is this 10X better than what currently exists

2 - does our prototype look 10X better

3 - does our v1 solve the gap we found

4 - what features do we need to build in order to get you to pay for it

5 - what features do we need to get you to refer us to 3 friends

A meeting for each of those goals typically leads to customers (again, if I've found PMF).

[ericd]

How do you usually find the people you interview?

[redbonsai]

You can use a platform like Respondent to recruit extremely specific demographics. It's not cheap, but if you're strategic with your interview questions you can get really concrete directional signals with as few as five participants.

[ericd]

Ah very cool, thanks for the pointer!

[abadar]

I'm in sales. This is going to sound shallow and tautological, but you find the people to interview for Product Market Fit by looking for the people you THINK are the ideal customers.

If you can't find your target market, you might want to consider a different demographic that you understand better. Most successful startup founders started a business specifically to solve the problems they dealt with at their last job. They understand their product market fit because they ARE their target market.

[ericd]

Thanks, but I meant more in a tactical/practical sense. What channels do you tend to use to look for those people and contact them?

[gomox]

Depends on the audience, the not-so-technical marketing term for the concept is a "watering hole".

First step is guessing who your customers might be.

[ericd]

Yep, makes sense, have any good illustrative examples? Thanks for the term, though, makes it more googleable.

[gomox]

Tell me who you think your customers might be? Or ask ChatGPT what's a good watering hole for them, it will definitely come up with some reasonable guesses.

[yokuze]

My question exactly.

[csacc]

Also my question