Discover more from founder therapy
Hi all —
Two weeks ago, I posted on LinkedIn that, if I got 10 founders signed up, I’d do a weeklong “PMF Camp” on how to go from 0-10 customers.
It was partially a joke, and partially out of frustration from having the same conversation with founders 4x in a row.
Something like 50 founders have been joining me for 1hr lessons each day this week, and there are 50+ on the waitlist for the “next one.” Which is great and all, but leaves me with one big reflection:
The startup community is failing founders.
There are a million communities, influencers, books, and courses about building a startup. PMF Camp shouldn’t need to exist.
But it’s clear from founder feedback that something like PMF Camp is desperately needed & wildly unique.
Which leaves me with 3 reflections:
There’s a lot of hand-waiving noise about building a startup, but nothing that’s actually helpful to founders who are “in it.” Most stuff is about how to LARP your way to funding, build a hip product, scale a team, and swing blindly for a lottery-ticket outcome.
The most viral/popular startup advice I see is also the dumbest. At best: “wet streets cause rain.”
It’s not clear that anybody understands product-market fit very well. (Except for, “here’s what it’s like after you have PMF.”)
VCs, accelerators, fucking someone should be helping founders deeply understand the path to product-market fit and their first 10, 50, 100 customers.
So while I am so grateful about the response to PMF Camp — I’m also left feeling that the startup community is failing founders. Maybe I wasn’t crazy when I was trying to figure this out alone as a founder, and felt like nothing out there was actually helpful. If you feel this way… you’re not alone.
Step 1: Open-sourcing PMF Camp materials
I pulled together something like 300 slides for this week’s sessions. See all the materials below:
Day 1: Four core mental models about $0-$1M ARR
Day 2: GTM - building your customer conversation engine
Day 3: GTM - building your v1 sales process
Day 4: Delivery - building your v1 product & CS process
Day 5: Execution to PMF & failure modes
Feel free to share these slides around, and/or reach out with questions, comments, & ideas for what PMF Camp should be!
And if you’d like to get on the waitlist for the next version of PMF Camp - click HERE