Comment by ahaucnx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ahaucnx | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact. We at AirGradient never had to find PMF.

Why was that?

Because the first 9 months it was a volunteer project fixing the air quality problem of the school our kids go to. During the so called "burning season" the school did not know if the air purifiers in the classrooms can keep up.

So we developed a solution tackling exactly this problem spending many many days on campus and talking to teachers, administration, parents and operations.

So instead of starting with an IDEA of a product/service, we started focusing 100% on fixing an existing massive PROBLEM on the ground.

Another thing that worked for us was to early on offer an open-source version of our air quality monitor [1] that allowed us to see what adjustments the community came up with - as in many cases these adjustments made the monitor fit better to problems we might not have been aware of. So basically a kind of community driven market fit.

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/kits/

Sounds like textbook talk to the customer, solve a real problem, product market fit stuff.

Your comment seems orthogonal to the point made in the article.

PMF is when your customers push or pull you along, helping accelerate your product into a market. Lack of PMF is when you are trying to push your customers - no acceleration - no help from customers.

I would really like to understand your comment but I am not sure what you mean with "orthogonal" in this context. Could you please explain more?

Our customer which was the school having this problem we tried to fix pulled us in and then along and we had constant interaction with them until our Product fit that Market (the school).

Sorry. On rereading your comment I think you are saying you have PMF, and just giving your own example? Maybe I misread you, but it is not clear that you are saying you have PMF. Or are you just saying you have a little? Having customers is not necessarily PMF.

My misreading was mostly that your comment began on the topic of your first customer. One customer would not usually be called a market? Oddly, you then did a similar thing in your reply “our customer” and “that Market (the school)”.

I mostly wanted to play with the metaphor: “PMF is when your product is pushed by a crowd of customers, a herd, almost uncontrollable. Sometimes going with the crowd is surprising and productive, and sometimes you have to try your hardest to go your own desired direction against the flow”.

“Orthogonal” meant going off on a tangent to the core topic - maybe “peripheral” as a synonym (odd that my chosen words also have STEM meanings). Your comment feels a bit like a self-promotion. To reply to the core topic of the article would be to discuss “chasing the boulder”. This comment has also drifted along another different dimension, sorry.

Thanks for clarifying.

Yes, we believe we have PMF and I wanted to illustrate with an example that we did not have any issues with 'finding' it because we had the problem to solve - even before we decided that this could be a product/startup.

Too often I see people asking "give me an idea for a startup" but in reality it should be the opposite way "give me a problem to solve".

Yes, one customer is not necessarily a market but in most cases the problem that one customers faces is not isolated and if it is faced by a multitude of customers I believe you can call it a 'market'.

you're describing how most startups are founded: find a problem, build a solution, find users. from what you're describing you're doing an excellent job at it.

PMF is only needed when you're trying to build a certain type of company. if your goal is to build the next AirBnB or Coinbase, then you absolutely need it. if not, then you might not need it. you can build a "successful" company (in quotes because I learned that ppl define success wildly differently, sometimes) and wealth without needing PMF

Reply on news.ycombinator.com