What not having product-market fit feels like
3 companies, no PMF. What I know about what it isn't.
Hi, it’s Melissa, and welcome (back) to “your founder next door”, a weekly publication with stories and tidbits of my human journey bootstrapping eWebinar to $5m ARR. No BS, just straight-up truth bombs on what it’s like to build a company without an abundance of resources or friends in high places.
The Big Aha! 💡
This is the story of building 3 companies without ever finding product-market fit, and what that feels like from an expert on the topic. After 15 years of chasing it, I finally figured out what’s actually missing for me. And it isn’t the product.
Backstory 👩🏫
“The only thing that matters is getting to product-market fit.”
That’s what Marc Andreessen famously said. Most founders I know (myself included) have spent their career chasing this thing called product-market fit like it’s the holy grail.
Hockey stick growth. Customers ripping the product out of your hands. Investment bankers staking out your house. That’s the dream. That’s nirvana.
If you ask 10 founders what product-market fit is, you might get 10 different answers.
A few months ago, I posted a poll on LinkedIn asking founders who have product-market fit how they found it. 51 people voted. 29% said “we created it.” 24% said “it found us.” 16% said “the market eventually caught up.” And 31% picked “other”, and dropped their own experience in the comments.
The comments were all over the place. One person said PMF is a made up term. Another said it’s a continuum, not a milestone. Another said “all I know is I don’t have it but I have a lot of revenue.”
If you Google “what is product-market fit,” the AI summary cites a Stripe blog that defines it as “the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand.” Lenny has an article on “How to know if you’ve got product-market fit”, quoting Marc Andreessen, Elad Gil, Steve Blank, Andy Rachleff, Michael Seibel, and a handful of other industry leaders. Each one has their own definition.
Here’s what I think: most founders aren’t chasing product-market fit. They’re chasing “hockey stick growth.” That mythical unicorn moment when an abundance of customers rush to buy your product. So they keep looking for more prospects to convert, believing it’s a numbers game.
I’ve been one of them. For 15 years across three companies.
I’ve never had it.
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What people think PMF is 🤔
In startup land, the most common belief is that $1M ARR is the magic number. You’ve made it and you’re ready to scale.
That is not true. (I even made a ProfitLed Podcast episode on this: The 12 Most Shocking Surprises on Our Way to $1M ARR)
A revenue number is not an indication of product-market fit. Revenue can be brute forced. Revenue can be bought with paid ads, hustled with cold outreach, willed into existence by a founder who refuses to give up.
Hitting $1M ARR means you have a business. It does not mean you have PMF. At $1M, you’re still trying to figure things out.
The other popular framework comes from Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman. Rahul wrote an article called “How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit.” He took Sean Ellis’s leading indicator question, “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?”, and built a whole data-backed methodology around it. If 40% or more of your users say they’d be “very disappointed,” you have PMF. Below that, you don’t.
The startup world has been treating this as gospel for a decade. John Hu, the CEO of Stan, even made an awesome YouTube video walking through this exact process while he makes pizza. (Highly recommend you watch it.)
It’s a logical framework. But there’s a huge flaw, and it took me years to see it.
The Superhuman survey assumes your customers know they have a pain because they are your customers. They’re using your product already. It assumes they can articulate why they love your product. It assumes they’re already in the market for what you’re selling.
Those assumptions hold for products in an established category. They don’t hold for products like ours.
For a category-creating product, none of that applies.
What it feels like to not have PMF 😩
If you’ve ever wondered what not having product-market fit feels like, let me tell you. I know this all too well.
It feels like every sale is an uphill battle.
It feels like long sales cycles, not because customers are deciding between you and a competitor, but because they have to be convinced they need you at all.
It feels like every conversation is an education in pain and value, not a comparison of features.
It feels like champions inside companies fighting for budget that doesn’t exist, because in order for you to exist as a line item, something else has to go. You’re not a replacement, you’re an addition. And additions are hard to justify.
It feels like answering the same objections over and over. “Is this really worth it? How do we measure ROI? Is this an investment or a cost?”
It feels like only the innovators will buy from you. The rest are watching, waiting for more proof.
It feels lonely. It feels like you’re explaining something so obvious that you start to wonder if you’re the crazy one. You want to scream into a pillow, “WHY DON’T YOU JUST FUCKING GET IT?!!” because the value is so clear to you and you can’t understand why others walk away confused.
You have no idea what’s going on or how to fix it.
This was my experience at my first two companies, both first-to-market in their respective categories. (I’ve written about my full founder story here if you want the long version.)
We didn’t have a lot of revenue for either one (sub $1M ARR). Not because we weren’t trying. Not because we didn’t have customers who loved us. But we couldn’t convert enough of them. We were dragging the market behind us, and the market wasn’t ready to be dragged.
I wrote about this in 10 painful lessons from blue ocean strategy. Being first to market sounds romantic. In practice, it’s a slow, treacherous grind.
The false positive 😰
Then I started eWebinar.
For the first time in my career, I had customers who found us on their own. They Googled what they wanted and compared us to a couple of competitors, signed up for a trial, and became paying customers without me picking up the phone. (They were mostly course creators, which by the way, wasn’t our ideal customers. People who’d been automating their sales webinar using similar products and looking for something better.)
This felt different than previous experiences. This felt like the thing everyone talks about; people coming on their own. Were we close to PMF?!
For years, I thought the answer was yes… or at least, yes, we’re on our way there. The numbers were growing. Customers loved us. Revenue was pretty good. We just needed more time. Right? Wrong. At some point, growth completely stalled.
I started eWebinar as a purple ocean business, taking a proven business model (red ocean) and bringing it into a market that hadn’t seen it before (blue ocean). For 6 years, I assumed purple ocean meant my entire audience would have some awareness of the product category. Some red ocean familiarity, just spread thinner.
What I didn’t realize until 6 years in (right now) is that purple ocean isn’t one audience with mixed awareness. It’s two completely different audiences in one market. One is red ocean: people actively looking for what we sell. The other is blue ocean: people who would benefit from what we sell but don’t yet know they have the problem we solve. (I went deep on this realization in purple ocean strategy and reframing your business if you want the full story.)
The red ocean audience gave me a false positive. Because that audience felt like PMF, I assumed the same thing would happen with everyone else, at some point. They just needed more time. More examples. More case studies.
It took me six years to admit that wasn’t true.
When I started replaying every sales conversation in my head, every demo, every lead that went silent, I noticed a pattern. The people who got it, got it fast. They came in already feeling the pain. They were comparing solutions, not learning about the problem.
The people who didn’t get it asked questions like:
“Can I use this to sell my product too? (Not just software.)”
“Do you have a script I can follow?”
“How does the chat work? Do I have to staff it 24/7?”
These are questions I would hear over and over from people who would ask inside our demo, while they’re in our product (we use eWebinar to demo eWebinar). People who were literally experiencing the product and still couldn’t immediately get how their business could apply it.
That’s not a product problem. That’s a messaging problem.
PMF lives on a spectrum 📊
I learned that PMF isn’t binary. It’s not a switch you flip from off to on. It’s a spectrum.
With my first two companies, almost nobody got it. Few did loved us, but not enough to build a good business on. We were on the far end of the spectrum, the “almost nobody gets it” end.
With eWebinar, enough people got it that it created momentum. Customers found us, signed up, and stayed. Revenue grew. The business is real. But there’s still a large, consistent group of qualified prospects who don’t get it, even after seeing the product, talking to us, and seeing their peers succeed with it.
We’re somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. It’s not nowhere. But it’s not where I know we should be.
That middle is a tricky place to be. Because it gives you enough wins to think you’re close, and enough losses to wonder what’s wrong.
Product messaging fit is the heart of product-market fit 💜
You can have a great product that solves a real problem, but if your ideal customers don’t understand what you’re selling, they will not buy it. No matter how much money you spend on ads. No matter how many case studies you publish. No matter how good your sales team is.
April Dunford wrote about this in her book, Obviously Awesome:
“If your prospect can’t figure out what you do, quickly, they will invent a position for you, one that potentially hides your key strengths or misrepresents your value.”
That’s exactly what was happening at eWebinar. Prospects were inventing their own positioning for us, based on the word “webinar.” They thought we were Zoom, GoToWebinar, or something like it. We’d say we ‘automated webinars’ and they’d ask how it works because they’d never heard of it. Or they’d ask if we also host live webinars. Explaining what we actually do, and how we can benefit them was a much longer conversation.
Another quote from Obviously Awesome that hit hard:
“Weak positioning is a wind in our face, constantly slowing us down. Great positioning feels like we’re cheating.”
For six years, I’d been pushing into the wind for most prospects. I thought it was because a portion of our market wasn’t ready. Now, I realize we just hadn’t figured out how to talk to them.
How do you know if you have a messaging problem versus a product problem?
Here’s what I think: You have a messaging problem when you have a meaningful group of raving fans who love your product, paired with a meaningful group of qualified prospects who don’t get it at all.
If your existing customers describe your product completely differently from how prospects describe it, you have a positioning problem. (That’s another April Dunford line, paraphrased.)
If everyone is confused and no one is buying, that might be a product problem. But if half your audience is on fire and the other half is staring at you blankly, the product is fine. The story isn’t.
The trap of building from your own customers 🪤
This is where the Superhuman methodology falls apart for blue ocean and purple ocean companies (remember that flaw I mentioned earlier?).
If you survey only your existing happy customers to figure out PMF, you’ll just find more people like them. You’ll segment your way into a smaller, tighter, more loyal niche. Your “very disappointed” percentage will go up. The framework will tell you you’re winning.
But you’ll never expand. You’ll never reach the audience that doesn’t yet know they need you. You’ll keep building features for the people who already love you, and the rest of your potential market will keep walking past your front door.
To find PMF in blue/purple ocean, you have to do something different. You have to talk to the people who aren’t signing up. The people who saw your product and didn’t care. The people who came to your demo and ghosted. They’re the ones holding the answer to your messaging gap.
At eWebinar, we’re in the middle of a massive repositioning project right now. We went back to first principles and pulled out every customer interview, every objection, every confused sales call, and rebuilt our messaging from the ground up.
The shift was simple but painful, because messaging touches every part of the product and business. Instead of leading with the product assuming people know they need it, we now lead with a problem everyone has and can’t dispute whether they know it or not.
Live delivery can only reach so many people. It’s not scalable. It’s not available 24/7. On average 60% of your audience never shows up, that’s a growth ceiling you’ve accepted as the norm.
Same product, same value, different perspective.
We haven’t fully launched the new messaging yet. (Stay tuned.) But early signs are promising, as we sent our COO to a conference two weeks ago to test our new positioning in person.
Finding product-messaging fit in purple ocean 🔍
If you’re building something purple ocean like me, here’s a starting point for surveying your prospects in a way that surfaces the gap. The traditional PMF survey assumes your customer knows their pain. A blue ocean survey doesn’t make that assumption. Instead of asking “how would you feel if you couldn’t use this product anymore,” you ask questions designed to help them understand the cost and ROI of what they’re doing today versus what they could be doing.
The questions below are an example to illustrate the mentality, not a script to copy. Adapt them to your business. The goal is to lead the prospect through their own current reality so they arrive at the conclusion themselves:
How are you currently doing [the thing your product replaces]?
What about that process do you feel has to happen [the way you’re doing it]? You’re asking them to articulate why they think their current way is necessary.
What is the cost of doing what you’re doing today? Cost in time, in headcount, in dollars.
What is the revenue you are generating from what you’re doing today? Together with the cost question, this gives them the ROI on what they’re doing today.
What do you wish you could be doing more of? This surfaces the lost opportunity.
If you could have your dream scenario, how would that change your business? This is the vision question. The gap between what they’re doing today and the dream scenario is their cost of inaction.
The sequence is intentional. The first two questions map their current reality. Questions 3 and 4 force them to confront the cost and ROI. Question 5 names what they’re missing. Question 6 opens the door to a different future.
By the time they finish, they’ve built the case for your product themselves.
That’s the kind of work that closes the messaging gap.
What PMF is 🎯
Here’s what I’ve come to believe PMF is:
It’s not having customers who pay you money. It’s not a revenue number. It’s not being able to make sales. It’s not having a good business.
It’s having a great product that solves a real problem, that most (if not all) of your ideal customers understand right away.
It’s selling without needing to explain the pain, because your prospect already knows they have it and is actively looking for ways to solve it. They want to buy. It’ll either be you or your competitor.
PMF lives inside the audience you serve. The corner coffee shop with a line out the door every morning has PMF for the people in that neighborhood. The fact that someone an hour away wouldn’t drive to that coffee shop doesn’t mean it doesn’t have PMF. It just means the market is geographically defined.
Not every startup will find PMF. But I do believe every startup can evolve into it, if that’s what they want.
It takes time and iterations. It takes evolving the product and repositioning the messaging, sometimes many times over. Sometimes, it takes the market catching up. Salesforce, Netflix, Nvidia… all of them built for years before the world caught up to what they were doing.
The biggest lesson I learned through all of this is:
Product messaging fit is the beating heart of product-market fit.
Now that I see this, I can’t unsee it. I think about all the founders out there who are trying to fix their product, when they should be fixing their pitch. I feel for them.
First, find a product that people can’t live without. Then, figure out the messaging to get it into the world.
The biggest opportunity for a purple ocean business is to become profitable with your red ocean audience, so you can take your time and unlock your blue ocean audience. That’s how you access your total addressable market in a way your competitors never have.
Reflections 🪞
Do you NEED to find product-market fit? No.
You can have a really good business and live a great life without it. I’m proof of that. You just won't have a great business by traditional measure.
The truth is, business decisions are also lifestyle choices. (I wrote about this when I talked about designing the life you want to lead.) How hard do you want to push? Are you happy with where you’re at? If yes, then stay there.
If you want to find PMF, you have to be willing to throw out what you thought was working. That’s hard. That’s humbling. It’s almost like starting over; it’s a long road ahead. That’s what I’m doing right now.
If I’m being honest, after 15 years of pushing against the wind... wouldn’t it be fun to feel what it’s like with the wind at my back?
Thank you for reading!
Till next time,
— Melissa, your founder next door ✌️
What did you think of this article? Let me know!
Stuff mentioned in this article 👇
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit by Rahul Vohra
How to Find Product-Market-Fit as Fast as Possible by John Hu, CEO of Stan
How to know if you’ve got product-market fit by Lenny Rachitsky
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
My LinkedIn post that inspired this article here
Article: Purple ocean strategy
Article: Reframing your business
Article: Design the life you want to lead
Article: My founder story
👋 If you enjoyed this read, would you please consider restacking it and sharing it with your audience? Forward it to a friend who you think would also enjoy this piece.
This spreads the word and keeps me writing content that will inspire founders to keep doing what they’re doing, knowing they’re not alone. Thank you 💜
huge respect. this is the wisdom founders need. we track which positioning angles are landing across the rounds and pitches we see in our briefings; would love to see if you find it useful for pre-seed
Very helpful piece. Thank you Melissa.
~Tray Bailey