I've experienced true "founder/market fit" twice in a 30-year career, and those have been the best ten years of my life. I know it sounds like a BS abstract VC concept, but founder/market fit is a critical predictor of startup success.
The first time I felt it was in late 1993, when I read Issue 5 of WIRED magazine and jumped from DJing to working on the early web. I switched majors so that I could join UF's Interactive Media Lab, then pretty much stopped going to class altogether. I started a (disastrous) media consulting company and ended up dropping out of college and moving to the west coast to put some gaming magazines online.
I remember in early 1996, a website called Dogpile came online and it was suddenly the new hotness. A few months later, Gamespot launched. In both cases, there was a momentary feeling of existential dread, followed by a simple "we have to do better." And we did. We launched IGN and that turned out all right.
The second time was when I became a coach full time during the early months of COVID. I didn't have enough clients to cover alimony, let alone my own expenses, and I just put my head down and said to myself over and over, "I've got to get clients, I've got to get clients." In practice, that looked a lot like giving away free consulting, but I picked up 19 paid clients by the end of 2020.
More recently, the sudden retrenchment in venture funding made me briefly question whether or not I could continue coaching full-time. For one brief moment, I considered that maybe I should do something else. Then I realized I just had to do better and be more creative, because there's nothing in the world I'd rather do than help early-stage founders. And I will do better and I will continue coaching.
When building a company or startup, you will be faced with your own existential challenges. Your initial solution falls flat, your market isn't interested, you lose a co-founder, you get sued... so many things can go wrong. The dilettante walks away, because the switching cost is non-existent. There was never any true passion in the first place, so it's on to the next idea or opportunity.
The missionary, the founder with true founder/market fit, simply starts walking forward again, with renewed resolve to level up their game and serve their market even better. You pick yourself up off the floor enough times and you will win, if only because everyone else got tired, or bored, of fighting.
2023 is closing out as a year of extreme change and challenge for so many people. It will wash out the folks who never really had any commitment to their business (and I hope they find what they're looking for). To those of you who are sticking it out, because whatever you are doing is what you were truly meant to do, I say a hearty, "fuck yes!"
Keep at it. Take the punches. Give even better than you get. Win.
I am rooting for you.
#startups #founders #foundermarketfit