TL;DR

You can feel when product/market fit (PMF) is happening. Customers are buying the product faster than you can make it. Former definitions of PMF were unactionable, lagging indicators, and for companies post-launch. Finding a quantifiable metric to measure and track led us to being able to systematically increase PMF over time.

Playbook on finding product/market fit →

1. PMF takes time
2. Quantify PMF via a single, North Star metric
3. Structure & execute the user survey process well
4. Create a highly detailed user persona of the High-Expectation Customer
5. Focus on delighting a small number of users first
6. To convert users that are “one-the-fence”, focus on what your fanatic users love the most about your product
7. Two-pronged product planning approach to move towards PMF — focus on core strengths + address core concerns
8. For feature prioritization, stack-rank to get to “lowest cost, highest impact” features
9. Rinse, and repeat…

Simple questionnaire for finding PMF using a leading indicator:

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?

   A) Very disappointed

   B) Somewhat disappointed

   C) Not disappointed

2. What type of person do you think would most benefit from [product]?

3. What is the main benefit you receive from [product]?

4. How can we improve [product] for you?

THE MAGIC NUMBER → 40% of responses to Q1 are "Very Disappointed"

100-200 surveyed users is a good target but as little as 40 will give meaningful results.