At Stitcher, we never had PMF but raised money like we did. That’s a recipe for disaster.

We had momentum, users, and press, but we didn’t have that deep pull from the market—the kind that makes everything else start to work. It took me years, and a lot of painful lessons, to really understand what product-market fit feels like.

Before PMF, everything is a push. You’re convincing people to care. You’re explaining the problem, pitching the value, chasing deals, tweaking prices. After PMF, it flips. You start feeling pull. Customers come to you. They tell friends. They email asking when you’ll release the next feature. You don’t have to force it anymore—the market drags you forward.

Most founders confuse growth with pull. They think because revenue is going up, they must have PMF. But revenue or users can rise from hustle (in our case, I kept getting us featured by the App Stores and convincing podcasters to talk about us). Product-market fit happens when demand starts to do the work for you.

The cleanest signal is retention. When you have PMF, people don’t just try your product—they keep using it. Even when it’s buggy or ugly. If you stop sending reminders and they still come back, that’s real fit. If you stop hustling for a week and the metrics collapse, you’re still faking it.

When you hit PMF, it feels like chaos—but the right kind. The roadmap explodes, support tickets pile up, the team is stretched thin. But under the chaos there’s clarity. You know what to build next because users won’t stop telling you. It’s like catching a wave after months of paddling.

A few things look like PMF but aren’t. A handful of big customers who love you but no repeatable way to find more. Growth driven by discounts or your personal network (or getting featured in the App Store). Press buzz. Early revenue that isn’t recurring. Those are motion, not fit. Motion feels good, but it’s deceptive. It makes you think you’re scaling when you’re just accelerating toward a wall.

You can feel PMF before you can measure it. When you have it, the company energy changes. You stop begging for validation. The market keeps you busy. Investors sense it. Recruiting gets easier. You stop pretending to be confident- you actually are.

If you don’t have it yet, that’s fine. Most companies don’t for a long time. The worst thing you can do is raise money like you do. Without PMF, every dollar you raise increases burn and deepens the illusion of success. You hire too early, scale too fast, and lose the sharpness that got you started. I made that mistake at Stitcher.

When you don’t have it, stay close to customers. Ship faster. Cut scope. Focus on the few people who love what you’re building, not the many who kind of like it.

You’ll know you have product-market fit when customers start doing your selling for you. Until then, your only job is to find the handful of people who care enough to pull you there.

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