PMF or BMF?

Get it? If you don't get PMF but you continue with your product, you'll just BMF... 🙈

#27 (Longish post)

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Glossary:

PMF: Product Market Fit

BMF: Blow Money Fast

I think I spend about 3 hours of my day reading, same as my buddy, Warren. He spends 5-6 hours reading as well, because we don’t have anything better to do with our lives abi? The way I have articles and e-books always opened, you’d proper think I don’t have actual work. It’s called balance. And focus (remember deep work?). But mostly balance.

Today, it’s almost as if First Round is sponsoring this post. But it’s not (I wish). I just really got into one of their articles and everything spiraled from there. First Round has some of the most thought-provoking pieces on startups. Subscribe here. 

So we’ve talked about what it takes to be an entrepreneur here, and how you need to be solving a problem. Now, assuming you’ve got your business going and everything is fine. Now what’s next? this little thing called PMF is going to give you a little headache. because if you don’t find it, sorry, but your business won’t go far. PMF is that sweet spot you want to get to before you think about scaling and taking over the world and whatnot. 

Very simple: you do this by talking to your customers. You need to understand why your customers use the product. 

Send them a quick survey: 

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use this product? Disappointed, somewhat disappointed, not at all disappointed. 

2. What are the main benefits of this product?

3. What type of people do you see benefit most from this? 

4. How can we make it better for you? 

If 40% or more would be disappointed that this product won’t ever exist, then you have PMF. 

And shoutout to Ash for recommending I start writing down my thoughts. This has been really helpful to me, as I hope it’s been to everyone who’s subscribed. 

Article List— What I’m reading (10 articles a day x 7 days x 4 weeks x 12 months = 3,360 articles a year).  

Ogaship and Oganomics: “It was never wise for a ruler to eschew the trappings of power, for power itself flows in no small measure from such trappings.” — Melisandre, Game of Thrones. Who’s your daddy?

How human curation came back to clean up AI’s messes: Human beings have something AI and machines would never have. Emotion and empathy. Among other things, but these are two key ones. So, the narrative about machines coming to take over all our jobs is kind of misguided, unless I’m seeing the future wrongly? Discuss.

Black Tech Founder Details Journey from Extreme Poverty to Closing $1.6 Million Funding for App: Honestly, I expect more from these journalists. Full disclosure, I know Wemimo very well and he’s done extremely well for himself. But this looks like a clickbait title. And this is why the continued narrative about Africa is about war, hunger and poverty. I almost didn’t comment on this but here we are.

FairMoney Raises 10 Million Euros to reshape mobile banking in Nigeria and beyond: I think Flourish backed the wrong company, looking at the alternatives they had on the table. But hey, what do I know? Anyone used FairMoney before?

How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit: At first, I didn’t understand Superhuman. Who pays $30 a month for email service? But I realized I’m definitely not the target market. I do get to inbox zero, but that may be because I have too much time on my hands. People I’ve talked to who use Superhuman love it. They usually get 500 emails a day. Can’t be me.

When It Comes to Market Leadership, be the Gorilla: Simple, be first to PMF (not first to market), own 40% of the total market and continuously innovate. Next thing you know, you’re Apple.

This Is How You Get People to Trust Your Product: Self-explanatory. Learn some lessons here from a marketplace that connects families to baby sitters online. If this isn’t the prime example of how to build trust, I don’t know what is.

No more milestones, I mean it: Very crucial information for my board meetings. Last one we had at this company advise was not the best. I didn’t particularly gain anything out of it. Hope this helps you too. 

From Zero to IPO: How Growth Needs to Evolve at Every Startup Stage: Adding this to the list again because….well, because I can. But also because there are some gems in here I missed the first time. If you don’t read any of these articles at all, read this one and take notes.

Why Qualitative Market Research Belongs in Your Startup Toolkit — and How to Wield it Effectively: A lot of people don’t do market research before jumping headfirst into this startup business. Validate your idea with your market (and stop staying your market is xx billion so even if you get 1%, you’re making 100m$ a year. It doesn’t work like that.)

Podcast— What I’m listening to (1 podcast episode a day x 7 days x 4 weeks x 12 months = 336 podcast episodes). Broadening my experiences through others’ stories. 

The Pitch: Helping me refine the kinds of questions I ask investors and founders. Plus visualizing myself in the room with the featured investors helps a lot. I think about whether or not I’d invest or not. Pretty solid exercise for me every time an episode comes out. 

Book— 1 Chapter a day  x 7 days x 4 weeks x 12 months = 336 chapters. Most books have 10-12 chapters, so 1 year = 28 to 33 books. And my book list is nearing 1000 books. Send help 🌚

Kind of embarrassing that I’m still on Elon’s book. Favorite part from yesterday’s reading: 

“He (Elon) tends to care less about whether or not the person gets the answer than about how they describe the problem and their approach to solving it.”

I talk about optimizing the process, rather than the outcome. Focusing on input metrics, rather than output metrics. The approach and little tweaks here and there would make the outcome better. Example: Most of us say “I want to read 50 books a year” and set that as the goal. Okay sure, so you buy 50 books and expect to read that by December 31? No, most definitely won’t happen. I learnt about input metrics months ago and it’s helped change my thinking. So here’s what I’ve done: 1 Chapter a day  x 7 days x 4 weeks x 12 months = 336 chapters. Most books have 10-12 chapters, so 1 year = 28 to 33 books. Break it down. 1 chapter a day is nothing. Honestly, you sit down for 1 hour undistracted every day, you’d hit your (in this case, my) goal of 33 books a year, easily. 33 is the minimum number too, because sometimes, I’m actually reading 3 chapters a day. Do the math. Stay disciplined and consistent and you’ll be fine.

Remember folks: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”