The product-market fit playbook

Early access to the course I *wish* I had as a founder

Hi all,

Before going from $0-$4M ARR in 2 years, I spent 2 years hitting my head against a wall trying to find the magical product-market fit.

For these painful pre-PMF years, I followed the “best practices” I found online, in books, and at Harvard. They didn’t work. It was awful. Stressful. Ego-murdering.

When I finally found PMF, I realized that the conventional wisdom was mostly wrong and counterproductive. It’s not you - it’s the bad advice you’re following.

Fortunately, there’s a much simpler way to find PMF and scale. For the past few months, I’ve been working on a really exciting book and course about this.

Both are nearly done, and I’ll share some of their secrets in this newsletter!

This newsletter gives you a preview of - and early adopter access to - my product-market fit course.

The Product-Market Fit Playbook

Life before PMF is a ticking time bomb.

You have a product and some revenue, but the whole thing isn’t working.

Every day you waste is a day closer to failure. It’s brutal.

And the worst part? There’s a million things you think you should be doing:

You know that 99% of these things are useless. The problem is, it’s really hard to know what 1% of things are worth doing.

After guiding a few founders through the process, I’ve realized that there are five “traps” founders fall into that prevent them from finding product-market fit. Unfortunately, these five traps are the direct result of following conventional startup advice…

Once you understand these traps, you’ll immediately feel relieved. When I explain these traps to founders on my advising calls, I see their eyes widen and stress leave their bodies… not kidding.

You go from feeling like you’re balancing a million different considerations, to cutting out most of the BS and finally being able to focus.

But knowing what to avoid isn’t enough. You’re going to want a better definition of Product-Market Fit. A definition that will help you exclusively focus on the right things, rather than just avoiding the wrong things.

After a lot of tweaking and testing, here’s mine:

And finally, when you understand this PMF definition, you’re going to ask one very important question:

What’s the fastest way I can get to PMF?

That’s why I’ve built the four-stage PMF model, which helps you do 3 things:

1. Understand what to focus on right now

2. Know how to execute on the most important thing right now with clear exercises

3. Finally feel confident that you’re on the right path!

Here’s my 4-stage “path to PMF” model:

Of course, there’s a lot more detail in the course. Want to dig in deeper?

I’m offering newsletter subscribers early access to PMF Playbook Course before I launch it more broadly.

You’ll get:

• A 53-slide walkthrough of:

  • The five product-market fit traps

  • The product-market fit definition and REALLY important considerations + implications

  • The four-stage model and all exercises to find PMF FAST

• A workbook you can use to hone your ICP, sales process, and progress towards PMF

• Tons of templates, including:

  • Outbound email templates

  • Email cadences

  • Sales demo deck

  • Sales process

  • and more

This is all available to email subscribers at an early adopter price - $149. (Pricing will increase to $249+ once I launch more broadly.)

The early adopter opportunity comes with one big request: When you find this massively helpful, please share a review of it on social media or in any entrepreneur communities (e.g., Techstars, YC, etc.)

HERE’s your early access - public launch and price increase will come in the next few weeks!

And of course, if you don’t find this worth 10x your investment, I’ll refund you!

-Rob