Another common question we get during Office Hours is how do I know if I have product-market fit (PMF)? I meet entrepreneurs doing customer discovery who tell me they have PMF, and companies with several million dollars in revenue who tell me they don’t have PMF. This is a topic I have written on before, but what do you look for with PMF?

Not just users or paying customers

Just because a customer buys my solution doesn’t mean PMF. How do they use it, what value do they get, will they renew? A great question out there to ask is “how would you feel if you could no longer use [product x]? Essentially, how disappointed would they be if the product went away. Obviously the more disappointed, the better sign of PMF.

Consistency

The above may be for one customer, but do you see the same thing across multiple customers? Do those customers have the same problem, the same profile, the same use case, and get the same value? When you start seeing consistency in the problem, ideal customer, use case, and value proposition that is a good sign of PMF.

Other dimensions

Now that you have some consistency above, how does your go-to-market strategy work and are there signs of a repeatable process? Can you find your ideal customers, bring them into the funnel, get consideration, close the deal, onboard them, and deliver the value? The more repeatable the process, the more likely you will be to achieve PMF and capitalize on the growth opportunities ahead.

The PMF term gets thrown around very easily. Make sure you have consistency with your customers first before really trying to scale up. Also, know that PMF changes over time so just because you have PMF today doesn’t mean you don’t need to adjust in the future.