ProductMarketFit

Product–Market Fit is not a moment, but a continuous process of discovery and adjustment. It requires founders to repeatedly test assumptions, observe real behavior, and confront uncomfortable truths.

Customers and the Real Problem

• Are customers actively searching for a solution, or are they only using mine because I introduced it?
• Without explanation, do customers immediately understand the product’s value?
• Is the problem I am solving truly painful, or merely a “nice-to-have” improvement?
• If my product disappeared tomorrow, would customers feel genuine frustration—or simply indifference?

Activation – the Moment of Realized Value

• How long does it take for users to experience the core value of the product?
• How many users sign up but never reach the most important feature?
• Am I measuring real usage behavior, or just accounts and downloads?
• If direct onboarding were removed, how many users could still succeed on their own?

Retention – Returning Over Time

• After one month, how many customers are still active?
• When do customers leave, and for what reasons?
• Do customers return because of habit, genuine value, or lack of alternatives?
• Am I looking at total users instead of tracking cohorts over time?

KisStartup insight:
If you cannot clearly map monthly retention curves, you likely do not yet fully understand your customers.

Willingness To Pay (WTP)

• Are customers paying for the solution itself, or due to relationships, pilots, or incentives?
• If prices increase slightly, how many customers remain?
• How many customers purchase a second or third time?
• When external support disappears, will they continue paying?

Growth and Scaling Decisions

• Am I scaling because the data supports it—or due to fundraising or reporting pressure?
• If marketing stopped today, would the product survive?
• Does growth come from returning customers, or only from new ones?
• Am I using capital to mask the absence of PMF?

The Final Question for Founders

• Do customers recommend the product without being asked?
• If forced to choose, would I prefer:

1. fewer customers who are deeply satisfied, or
2. many customers who use the product once and leave?

• Am I listening to data—or only to compliments?

A question KisStartup often asks during mentoring:
“If tomorrow you could no longer call this a ‘startup,’ would you still want to build it?”

PMF is not a trophy to display.
It is a fragile state that must be measured, examined, and continuously validated.
Great founders are not those who claim they have PMF—but those who relentlessly question whether they are deceiving themselves.

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What is WTP?
Willingness To Pay is not simply about asking:
“Will customers pay?”
but rather:
“Are customers willing to pay the right price, without subsidies or external support, and continue paying repeatedly over time?”

A common and risky misconception
Many startups assume:
“Customers have paid → therefore the product has value.”

However, KisStartup’s practical observations show that customers may pay:

• for a pilot project,
• due to grant or donor funding, or
• because there are no alternatives at the time.

Yet they may not:

• purchase a second time,
• expand usage, or
• recommend the product to others.

In such cases, WTP exists momentarily, but Product–Market Fit (PMF) does not.

WTP alone is not enough – repurchase and continued usage matter
A product with genuine PMF typically shows that:

• customers return for second and third purchases,
• perceived value increases over time rather than declines,
• customers proactively request additional features, service tiers, or expansions.

Conversely, when:

• only a small number of customers pay,
• the observation period is too short, and
• data is not analyzed by cohorts and cycles,

startups are highly prone to false positives about PMF.

KisStartup’s perspective: PMF is a process, not a milestone
Across our incubation and acceleration programs, we emphasize that PMF is not something you “achieve” in a single month.
PMF is an ongoing process of validating assumptions through real behavior and real data.

We therefore advise startups to:

• observe at least 3–6 months before declaring PMF,
• track activation, retention, and WTP simultaneously, and
• avoid premature scaling when evidence is still weak.

Do not celebrate too early
The first paying customer matters.
But PMF only emerges when customers stay, return, and pay repeatedly.

If you are building a startup, ask yourself:

• Do customers come back?
• How long do they continue using the product?
• Do they buy more or upgrade?
• Will they still pay when support or incentives are removed?

Only when these questions are answered with data rather than intuition are you truly approaching PMF.

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Many startups do not fail because of a lack of effort or technical capability.
They fail because they ask the critical questions too late.

The product is already built.
Features are completed.
The website is live.
The pitch deck is ready.

Only then do founders start asking customers:
“What do you think about this product?”

That is the moment a startup enters its riskiest path.

Why is “build first, ask later” so dangerous?

In many founders’ minds, the logic seems reasonable: customers can only give feedback once there is a concrete product. But in entrepreneurship, the learning sequence is completely reversed.

Startups do not lack products.
Startups lack evidence.

When founders ask only after building, the feedback they usually receive sounds like:

• “Looks interesting.”
• “Good idea.”
• “Let me think about it.”

These responses are not wrong—but they are useless for decision-making. They do not answer the survival questions:

• Who is willing to pay?
• Is the problem painful enough?
• If this product did not exist, would customers actively look for alternatives?

The psychological trap: the more you build, the harder it is to stop

Once founders invest time, money, and emotional energy into a product, it becomes extremely difficult to return to the original questions. This phenomenon is well studied in organizational behavior as escalation of commitment: the more people invest, the more they defend their initial decision—even when data suggests it is wrong.

At that point, customer feedback is no longer a learning tool. It becomes a confirmation tool. Founders selectively hear what supports their beliefs and ignore opposing signals.

The mistake is not “building” – it is building too early

Lean startup thinking does not oppose building products.
The problem is the sequence.

Many startups build:

• before clearly defining a customer segment,
• before understanding the buying decision process,
• before knowing which pain point is “painful enough.”

As a result, the MVP stops being a Minimum Viable Product and becomes a “mini full product”—smaller in scale, but still fundamentally wrong.

Customer discovery is not asking for opinions

Another common misunderstanding is treating customer discovery as casual surveys. In reality, discovery is about testing hypotheses, not asking for advice.

The right questions focus on:

• What are customers doing now to solve the problem?
• How frequent and costly is that problem?
• What frustrates or exhausts them most in the current process?

If founders cannot answer these questions with repeated, consistent data, building a product is a blind bet.

How “Build – Measure – Learn” gets misunderstood

Many startups claim they follow lean thinking because they “built an MVP and measured.”
But what they measure is the real issue.

When startups track:

• but do not measure:

a clear hypothesis,

• traffic,
• downloads,
• likes,

but do not measure:

• a clear hypothesis,
• retention rates,
• willingness to pay,
• repeat behavior,

they fall into the trap of vanity metrics—numbers that look good but do not guide the next decision.

At that point, startups believe they are learning, when in reality they are just tracking their own busyness.

How to escape the “build first, ask later” trap

Experience from KisStartup’s mentoring and incubation programs shows that startups learn fastest when they delay heavy building and invest more in asking the right questions.

One simple but powerful rule:
Do not write code or design interfaces without a clear customer hypothesis and explicit criteria for rejecting that hypothesis.

Small experiments—landing pages, pre-orders, paper prototypes, structured interviews—often save up to 80% of the cost compared to fixing a product built on the wrong assumptions.

An open question for founders

If you had to pause all product development for the next two weeks, would your startup have enough customer data to make the next decision?

Or are you continuing to build… simply because you don’t yet know what to ask?

The next article in this series will dive into a blind spot directly connected to this mistake:
“You have customers—but no revenue.”

Key References

This article is synthesized from the above sources and KisStartup’s hands-on startup coaching experience in Vietnam.

© Copyright belongs to KisStartup. Any reproduction, citation, or reuse must clearly credit KisStartup.

• Blank, S. (2013). Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything. Harvard Business Review.
• Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Crown Business.
• Graham, P. (2008). Startup Mistakes.
• CB Insights (2021). The Top Reasons Startups Fail.
• First Round Capital Review – case studies on customer discovery and founder bias.
• Wasserman, N. (2012). The Founder’s Dilemmas. Princeton University Press.

In many mentoring, coaching, and startup evaluation sessions at KisStartup, we often hear this statement:

“Our product already has PMF because customers are paying for it.”

It sounds reasonable, but in reality, this is one of the most dangerous misunderstandings about Product–Market Fit (PMF).

PMF is not about:

• having a few trial customers,
• generating your first revenue,
• or signing one large contract.

PMF answers a much harder question:

Is this product solving a sufficiently large and important problem, for a clearly defined group of users, in a way that makes them come back and willingly pay again and again?

What is PMF? (A concise explanation)

Product–Market Fit (PMF) is the state where:

• you have a specific customer segment,
• they face a real and meaningful problem,
• your product solves that problem, and their behavior repeats over time (reuse, repurchase, and referrals).

Key insight: PMF is revealed through behavior, not compliments.

Three core metrics to “read” PMF

To avoid relying on gut feelings, PMF is usually assessed through three metric groups: Activation – Retention – Willingness to Pay (WTP).

1. Activation – Do users actually start using the product?

What is Activation?
Activation measures whether users reach the moment when they first experience the product’s core value.

Examples:

• For a sales platform: listing a product and getting the first order
• For management software: completing the first report or workflow
• For an agri-tech startup: completing one real usage cycle (e.g. data input → tracking → decision-making)

Common misunderstanding
Many startups count sign-ups but never measure whether users reach the core value of the product.

KisStartup’s perspective:
We have seen startups with hundreds of accounts, but only 10–15% of users actually use the product correctly. The rest “sign up just in case.”

If activation is low, PMF cannot exist.

2. Retention – Do customers come back over time?

What is Retention?
Retention measures:

• after 1 week, 1 month, or 3 months,
• how many customers continue using or repurchasing the product.
• This is the most important metric for validating PMF.

Why KisStartup calls retention “the reality check”
From our experience working with startups and SMEs:

• many customers buy once out of curiosity,
• because of discounts, personal relationships, or project-based support,
• but never return afterward.

In these cases:

• there is revenue,
• but there is no PMF.

Common mistakes

• Reporting total customers without tracking them over time
• Not analyzing customer cohorts
• Failing to distinguish first-time buyers from repeat customers

A good product should not require you to constantly beg customers to come back.

© Copyright KisStartup. Any reproduction, quotation, or reuse must clearly credit KisStartup.

(Based on Steve Blank’s Customer Discovery framework)

Many founders believe they have “talked to customers.” But when reviewing interview notes, KisStartup often sees the same pattern:
questions are asked incorrectly, answers are interpreted emotionally, and decisions are made based on belief—not evidence.

Customer Discovery is not opinion polling, and it is not a product pitch.
It is a process of validating hypotheses about problems, behaviors, and buying decisions—before building at scale.

Below are the 12 core Customer Discovery questions. Get even one of them wrong, and startups easily fall into the trap of “build first, ask later.”

I. The 12 Core Questions (and How to Ask Them Correctly)
Group A — Is the problem real?

1) When was the last time you encountered this problem?
Avoid: “Do you think this is a problem?”
Ask correctly: bring them back to a specific past situation.

2) What were you doing at the time, and what exactly happened?
Goal: understand context and action flow—not opinions.

3) How often does this problem occur?
If it’s “very rare,” it’s likely not startup-worthy.

4) What frustrated or exhausted you the most in that situation?
This is where the real pain point emerges (not what people claim is painful).

Group B — How they solve it today

5) How are you currently solving this problem?
Always assume customers already have a solution—even if it’s manual or inefficient.

6) How much time, money, or effort does this solution cost you?
Quantifying hidden costs is key to understanding willingness to pay.

7) What don’t you like about your current solution?
If the answer is “It’s fine,” that’s a danger signal.

Group C — Buying decisions & stakeholders

8) Who makes the final decision to buy the solution?
Avoid confusing: user ≠ buyer ≠ payer.

9) When was the last time you bought a similar solution?
Look for real buying behavior, not stated intentions.

10) What factors made you decide to spend money?
Compare price, risk, trust, and implementation time.

Group D — Early validation (without pitching)

11) If a solution could reduce X (time/cost/risk), what would you do next?
Don’t ask “Do you like it?”—ask for the next action.

12) Would you be willing to introduce me to others facing the same problem?
This tests genuine interest better than compliments ever can.

II. Five Non-Negotiable Interview Principles

Ask about the past, not hypothetical futures
→ The past reflects real behavior; the future reflects wishes.

Never pitch during interviews
→ Every pitch contaminates your data.

Silence is a tool
→ Pause 3–5 seconds after answers to let customers continue.

Look for repeated evidence, not great stories
→ At least 7–10 interviews per hypothesis.

Record verbatim quotes, don’t interpret immediately
→ Analyze after the interview.

III. Note-Taking That Enables Decisions (Not Just Storage)
KisStartup’s recommended minimal note template:

• Context: Who? Where? When?
• Current behavior: What are they doing? What tools are used?
• Real pain (verbatim quote): write exactly what they say
• Current cost: time / money / risk
• Buying trigger: what would make them switch
• Priority level: high / medium / low

Don’t write: “They like the product.”
Write: “They spend ~2 hours/day on X and previously paid $120/month for Y.”

IV. When Is It Valid to Build the Product?

According to Steve Blank’s Customer Discovery philosophy:
Only build when you have enough evidence to confirm or reject your hypotheses.

Signs you should build:

• Pain repeats across multiple users in the same segment
• Current solutions are clearly costly or frustrating
• There is real purchasing behavior in the past
• There is an action path (introductions, pre-orders, pilots)

Closing Question for Founders

In your last 10 conversations, how many real behaviors did you capture—and how many were just polite compliments?

The next article in this series will explore the next blind spot:
“You have customers—but no revenue.”

© Copyright KisStartup. Any reproduction, citation, or reuse must clearly credit KisStartup as the source.

Key References

Blank, S. (2013). Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything. Harvard Business Review

Blank, S. & Dorf, B. (2012). The Startup Owner’s Manual. K&S Ranch

Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Crown Business

First Round Capital Review – Customer discovery & founder bias case studies

This article is synthesized from the above materials and KisStartup’s hands-on startup coaching practice.

Through coaching startups, KisStartup has observed a recurring reality: most startups do not fail because their ideas are weak, their technology is poor, or their founders lack effort. They fail because of familiar blind spots in founders’ thinking and decision-making.

We call these “founder blind spots.”

Why “blind spots”?

A blind spot is not something founders don’t know.
More dangerously, it is often something founders believe they already understand well enough—so they stop questioning, measuring, or validating it.

In everyday life, a blind spot is an area our eyes cannot see, yet the brain automatically fills in the gap, making us believe we see the whole picture. Entrepreneurship works the same way. When founders are:

• too close to the product,
• too emotionally attached to the original idea, or
• too busy with daily operations,

they can develop misplaced confidence and make decisions based on intuition, past experience, or personal beliefs—rather than real data and market feedback.

Blind spots rarely kill a startup instantly. Instead, they slowly push it off course, draining time, money, and energy until there is no room left to recover.

The most common founder blind spots

This KisStartup series focuses on the blind spots we repeatedly observe in Vietnamese and global startups, especially in early stages and during the transition from “idea” to “scalable model.”

Market and customer blind spots
Many founders believe they understand customers simply because they themselves are users. But “understanding” is not the same as measuring. Lack of systematic customer discovery, confusion between user–buyer–payer, or relying on polite feedback often prevents startups from ever reaching product–market fit.

Financial and cash-flow blind spots
Startups rarely “die suddenly” from running out of cash. More often, founders fail to notice deteriorating cash flow: rising burn rate, shrinking runway, and fixed costs growing faster than sustainable revenue. Avoiding numbers does not remove risk—it only delays and amplifies it.

People and organizational blind spots
“We’re a small, flexible team” often hides deeper issues: unclear roles, blurred accountability, and early hiring mistakes. Founders frequently underestimate the real cost of internal conflict and organizational distraction.

Product and technology blind spots
Some technical founders fall into over-engineering—building too much, too complex, for too long. Others launch too early with products that fail to solve core pain points. Both stem from the absence of clear learning criteria for an MVP.

Failure and pivot blind spots
Perhaps the most dangerous blind spot is psychological: reluctance to admit flawed assumptions, lack of a learning system from failure, and tying personal ego too tightly to the product. Many startups don’t lack pivot opportunities—they lack the courage and structure to pivot at the right time.

Who is this series for?

The “Blind Spots in Entrepreneurship” series is not meant to criticize or lecture founders. It is written for:

• founders building startups or innovation-driven SMEs,
• those who feel “something isn’t right” but can’t yet name it,
• investors, partners, and support organizations seeking deeper insight into why startups fail—and how to reduce that risk.

Each article will explore one blind spot in depth, with analysis, real cases, and practical approaches KisStartup uses in mentoring, training, and ecosystem building.

An open question for you:
If you had to choose the most dangerous blind spot for your startup right now, which one would it be?

© Copyright KisStartup. Any reproduction, quotation, or reuse must clearly credit KisStartup.