The Product-Market Fit Score (v1)

A non-BS self-assessment & focusing device

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Quick background

If you’ve been here for a while, you know my general thesis: The way we’re taught to think about startups sounds right, but causes us to build shit nobody wants.

You’ve seen my 0-1 workshop for Harvard here, which can be summed up as:

• Product-market fit is best described as “the demonstrated ability to continuously replicate *ONE* HELL YES customer case study”

• The best way to find product-market fit is to SELL… essentially using your case study to replicate the case study (all while debugging the case study).

• Zooming out: When you’re building a startup, you’re REALLY building a system to replicate case studies.

In practice, the system diagram looks like this:

You build ONE customer case study, and your job is to replicate the case study (by turning prospective customers → actual customers → successful customers).

The PMF Score

Now I didn’t pay $120k for a fancy MBA to *not* flex my spreadsheet skills.

So I’ve created a simple PMF scoring model. It is designed for mid-market B2B startups on the path to repeatable sales engines - *not* low-ticket PLG startups or massive $250k+ enterprise deals.

This model does 2 things:

1. It gives you a PMF Score out of 100 possible points, so you can calibrate where you are vs. where you need to be.

2. More importantly, it tells you *exactly* where to focus at any one point in time

How the “PMF Score” Model Works

Here’s a visual of the six different metrics I use to give you a PMF score, and where they fit in my simple PMF model:

And here’s how these six metrics work:

When I say something is a “bottleneck” - it means I give it a low score that tanks your overall PMF score. In my mind, I have the visual of a factory, where if Step 2 in a 10-step process is broken, it doesn’t matter whether Step 6 works.

Here’s the spreadsheet. Duplicate it, play around, send me ideas, feedback questions.

Why this helps

Here’s why I think this scoring system is not just non-BS, but actively useful:

• This score quantifies the *entire* system, rather than focusing you on a single metric (e.g., the “40% very disappointed” rule).

• The metrics are tangible, not magical. If I had this kind of model in my brain a decade ago, I would have wasted SO much less time on LARPy nonsense (and as a result, I would look ~10 years younger).

• The score punches you in the face. You’re going to get a low score, and it’s not going to feel good. But…

• By highlighting the system bottleneck, this model identifies where your highest-leverage improvement areas are. Focus on figuring this part of your business out, and ignore everything else.

  • As you start to use this model to guide your focus, you start to ask yourself: “How do I solve this bottleneck, while not screwing up the rest of the system?” This is THE right question to be asking, now and forever.

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What do YOU think? What doesn’t make sense? How would you change the scoring methodology? Let me know!