Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Achieving Product-Market Fit (PMF) is one of the hardest milestones for any company. While many startups seek it (and some say they’ve found it), PMF remains rare and challenging to achieve, especially in the early days.

In this episode, we sit down with Rob Snyder, an expert in guiding B2B startups to reach PMF. Rob spent two years in what he calls the “pre-PMF pain cave”—a place many founders find themselves in before achieving real traction. After his own startup went from $0 to $4 million ARR, he developed the frameworks he wished he’d had from day one. Exclusively for our newsletter subscribers, Rob has shared additional insights below.

🎧 Tune in now on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and share your thoughts! Who should be our next guest?

In the meantime: Follow the Gradient and stay tuned!

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How to find real Product-Market Fit

What you will get out of this episode

In our conversation, Rob shares:

• The essential criteria for achieving Product Market Fit

• A mental model for developing PMF that you can apply directly to your startup

• What finding PMF means for your sales and discovery activities

• Which metrics to use to measure PMF

• and much more!

Our main take away’s

1. PMF is felt in pre-sales and post-sales: Rob describes it as the shift from worrying about customer acquisition to back-to-back client meetings driven by demand. PMF extends from initial Sales touchpoints to Customer Success, with customers eager to extract every bit of value from your product.

   • Tip: Monitor for signs like increased demo requests, unprompted referrals, or strong Customer Success engagement. These indicators show customers are “pulling” your product rather than you pushing it.

2. Sell the conversation, not the product: Early on, prioritize genuine conversations with customers over polished presentations. Instead of endless discovery questions, identify the critical path your customers face and how your product can guide them through it.

   • Tip: Start each sales interaction by presenting a case study of a similar customer challenge. Invite feedback on how their path differs, and follow up with relevant, tailored questions. This builds trust and helps you better understand true needs.

3. Acknowledge the tolerance of people to endure pain: Just because a customer reports a problem doesn’t mean they urgently need a solution. Gauge urgency by asking how long the problem has persisted and what solutions they’ve tried in the past.

   • Tip: Ask open-ended questions like, “What’s kept you from addressing this sooner?” This helps reveal their priority level for a solution and their readiness to buy.

Additional material on the topic

• Science of Scaling by Rob Roberge that Rob was mentioning in the conversation

• B2B Product-Market Fit: The Playbook for $0-$1M+ ARR- This viral 91-slide deck (we also reference in our conversation) by Rob was initially created for Harvard Innovation Labs, offering a detailed guide on B2B PMF. Rob walks through the slides in this webinar recording, a resource we highly recommend.

How to reach out to Rob

• LinkedIn

• Rob’s newsletter: How to grow

• Email Rob

Exclusive from Rob

What are the top signals you look for to confirm early PMF in the first 10 customers?

Honestly, probably wouldn’t expect to have any semblance of PMF in your first 10 customers. What I’d be looking for are 1 or 2 anecdotes of “hell yes” customers, people who bought fast AND are really satisfied (aka: will renew / expand) post-purchase. Those anecdotes are hints of where the path to PMF is.

What messaging techniques work best in early outreach for B2B founders? Any scripts or opening lines you’d recommend?

Here’s what doesn’t work: “Hi %name%, thanks for connecting! At CoolAI, we help organizations 10x their ROI with our industry-defining platform.” AKA: Most founders do outreach that sounds like we’re a real company with PMF, and I’m just a BDR, because we believe we need to “validate” our business through cold outreach. Until we’ve nailed a repeatable case study, this only works if we get very lucky. Usually what I’ve seen is “sell the meeting with me, not the product.” AKA: Don’t sound like a salesperson, sound like a founder. Ask: “What’s in it for them.” For me - that would be reaching out saying, “Hey I’m launching my 3rd company, think you could be a potential customer eventually, and thought you could rip our product to shreds. Open to chat?” But for every founder, it’s going to be different - because the question is, what’s the message only you can send?

When initial feedback from early customers is inconsistent, how do you know whether to adjust your product or change your target customer?

I’ve noticed that most problems like these are solved by a higher volume of conversations with potential customers, and figuring out where there’s real pull & why. Hard to know this just by trying to analyze / theorize.

How should founders approach pricing during the pre-PMF phase? Is there a strategy to avoid underpricing or overpricing too early?

Pricing itself doesn’t matter, but payment does. The “real” pricing emerges from the case study – what value do they perceive you drive, and what are their alternatives. Early on, you just don’t know this and care more about getting real product feedback vs. optimizing pricing. You don’t want pricing to prevent deals from going through. So I’ve seen that early on, price so that price isn’t really an objection, and then steadily raise pricing until it is an objection.

In your experience, what should founders focus on during the first 6-12 months post-PMF to ensure sustainable growth?

Answering two questions:

(1) how do we systematize our sales -> success process so our process can consistently work and be handed off from founder-led to not-founder-led, and

(2) how do we scale pipeline?

While focusing on these two questions, typically you get a ton of product feedback that helps drive the roadmap too.

Talk to you next week! Until then, let’s continue the conversation on LinkedIn, X, Instagram and YouTube!

🫶 Melanie & Christian

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