The Startup Pyramid

While money and time are typically tight, good startups are optimized to learn and move quickly, and there's normally very little bureaucracy to slow them down. Yet the very high failure rate of technology startups is no secret. The few that succeed are usually those that are really good at product discovery, which is a major topic of this book.

Product/market fit enables rapid growth, while the lack of it makes growth expensive and difficult. The concept of product/market fit originates in Marc Andreessen’s seminal blog post “The Only Thing That Matters.” In his essay, Andreessen argues that the most important factor in successful start-ups is the combination of market and product. His de

1. First Round Capital’s PMF framework consists of four levels: nascent, developing, strong, extreme
   
   
   1. Level one: Nascent product-market fit. Likely a pre-seed or seed-stage company. The goal in this stage is to find three to five customers with a problem worth solving, engage with them, deliver a solution, and validate that solution. [examples: Vanta, L

In order to launch and market your product, you need to be able to answer the following questions: Where do I find innovators, early adopters, and potential design partners willing to give us a try? What are the major problems my product solves, and how important are these problems to my potential customers? Is this the right problem, and is ours t