#productcohort-diana

Ahead of the April Executive Workshop: Achieving Product Market Fit tomorrow, attached is a nice product-market fit example from First Round Capital on https://reducto.ai/ . Main points being...

1. Stay Close to Customers (Really Close) • Direct access to users even via Slack, text, etc. provides constant real-time feedback • Starting with founder-led sales can build deep trust (even more than features) • Manual onboarding is an excellent way to start, especially as you learn the pain points firsthand
2. Solve a Real, Painful Problem (Not Just a Cool Idea) • Early pivot moved from "interesting" (LLM memory) → to urgent need (PDF parsing bottleneck) • PMF showed up when customers pulled the product, not when founders pushed it.
3. Execute Simply and Quickly • Ugly MVP launched fast - and that's a good thing • Focused on being better at one core thing (reading documents like humans)
4. Be Methodical About Growth, Not Flashy • Tiny, high-leverage team (hit $1M ARR with 4 people) • Priced for serious users, filtered out tire-kickers • Said no to one-off feature and asks that didn’t fit the core vision
5. Founder Energy and Learning Loops Matter • Obsession with customer success was contagious • Failure at the micro level (bad demos, awkward sales calls) was embraced as part of the learning curve. • Big growth came from iterating fast, caring hard, and staying scrappy.