If you're a founder dealing with what i learned from struggling to find product-market, stop what you're doing and read this. Seriously.
I spent a long time chasing product-market fit and kept hitting walls. It wasn’t the technology that was the problem—it was how I was thinking about the process. Here’s the shift that helped me turn things around and build better AI products.
The Counterintuitive Truth
Here's what surprised me most about what i learned from struggling to find product-market: the best practitioners do less, not more.
When I was building MovieLaLa, we tried to do everything at once. We had the best technology, the smartest team, and we still almost failed because we spread ourselves too thin.
The lesson I took from that experience, and from watching hundreds of other companies, is that you need to move fast and break things. It sounds simple. It's incredibly hard to execute.
The Reality Nobody Talks About
Most people approach what i learned from struggling to find product-market with assumptions that made sense five years ago. The world has moved on. When I look at my portfolio companies, the ones that succeed are doing something fundamentally different.
The first thing to understand is that customer feedback is the only metric that matters. I've seen this play out across dozens of companies. The pattern is unmistakable.
At RemoteTeam, we learned this the hard way. We spent months going down the wrong path before realizing that most founders overthink this and underspend on execution. Once we made the switch, everything changed.
The Numbers Don't Lie
I've tracked the performance of companies in my portfolio that take what i learned from struggling to find product-market seriously versus those that don't. The difference is stark.
Companies that invest early in what i learned from struggling to find product-market see, on average, 2-3x better outcomes within 18 months. That's not a small edge. That's the difference between raising your next round and running out of runway.
One of my portfolio companies went from struggling to profitable in under a year after they finally got serious about this. The founder told me later that they wished they'd started sooner.
This connects to broader themes around product-market fit, founder advice, lessons learned that I've been thinking about a lot lately.
The Bottom Line
Look, what i learned from struggling to find product-market isn't rocket science. But it does require intentionality, consistency, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: start now, start small, and iterate. The founders who win at what i learned from struggling to find product-market aren't the ones with the best strategy on paper. They're the ones who execute, learn, and adapt faster than everyone else.
I've been doing this for over a decade. The patterns are clear. The companies that take what i learned from struggling to find product-market seriously outperform the ones that don't. Every single time.
If you're working on something interesting in this space, I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a line.
Frequently Asked Questions
What would you do differently looking back?
I'd move faster on the things that were working and cut the things that weren't sooner. Most founders, myself included, hold onto failing strategies too long because of sunk cost. Speed of learning is everything.
What was the biggest challenge in this case?
Almost always, the biggest challenge is people and alignment, not technology or strategy. Getting the right team focused on the right problem is harder than any technical challenge I've encountered.
Can these results be replicated?
The specific numbers will vary, but the underlying patterns and principles are transferable. The key is understanding the context behind the results, not just copying the tactics. Every company has unique constraints that shape what works.