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1/ It has been over 18 months since we started building @AtlanHQ in stealth – going back to day zero, iterating and finding Product Market Fit.

Last quarter, our usage graph started going 📈🚀!

Here are our learnings from 2019 on the road to PMF 👇
2/ A great framework to break PMF journey is into 3 stages:
1⃣Problem- Value Fit: Are the problems you're solving important?
2⃣Problem - Solution Fit: Can your envisaged solution solve the problem?
3⃣ Product - Market Fit: Find a set of similar buyers - "beach-head" market
3/ We tried many experiments to find problem-value-solution fit quickly (launch landing pages, A/B test ads, secondary research etc) and finally found directly reaching out to target customers on LinkedIn (at least for B2B) as the best way!
4/ Main reasons behind finding email/ linkedIn as best channels:
- Response rates are not too bad (over 10% for CXO level roles)
- Reduces variability on execution challenges e.g ad copy/ keyword optimisation etc which could result in false positive/ negatives
5/ Doing customer interviews right is a science that should aim to reduce false positives. Asking the right question in the right way is key.

Highly recommend the book The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick: momtestbook.com
6/ The best framework I've found on problem-value-solution fit to product-market-fit journey is the book Disciplined Entrepreneurship: d-eship.com

Breaks the entire journey into 24 stages with clear outcomes.

Here are my rough notes: docs.google.com/document/d/1zH…
7/ Everyone knows that market ALWAYS wins but the hard part is putting it in practice.

🧐 Market size reports are not useful in fast evolving + nascent markets and as an entrepreneur optimism vs. realism about the future is a tough balance to find
8/ Big problem is that in initial days, you can follow all signs of customer discovery and yet end up with a small market! You get customer 1, they love the Product, you get to next 5. Then you discover 6th customer is not mature enough for your product.
9/ 👆Now that's exactly what you want to avoid! Candid conversations with industry experts – esp. entrepreneurs who have sold similar solutions to the industry you are targeting can be extremely helpful + save 3-4 months of effort. Reach out, share notes!
10/ Measuring Product Market Fit is hard!
- This talk by @reinpk, @segment is a great description of what PMF should *feel* like:
- This article by @rahulvohra @Superhuman on measuring PMF is a nugget: firstround.com/review/how-sup…
11/ Still haven’t found perfect way to measure PMF leading indicators in B2B/ Enterprise (longer sales cycles + complex decision making processes). Some proxies in acquisition phase - demo to trial/POC conversions are interesting to measure. Ideas welcome!
12/ Staying close to your users is key through out the journey, no matter how sophisticated your users may seem in giving you feedback.

No interview/ feedback session can give you the insights that seeing your users use the product.
13/ We purposely focused on creating ways for our team – especially engineering & product to work out of our customer offices by embracing a distributed culture.

Some of our team members ended up getting ID cards to enter our customer offices in 2019! 🤩
14/ And your users end up becoming your biggest north star and their stories push you to do more and better each day....

We once had a downtime and a group of our users ended up taking a chai break cos' they couldn't get anything done without Atlan.
15/ All the emotions!

A reminder of how core we can be to our users' daily lives, their core business workflows and what that responsibility means.

...A little bit of happiness that we'd managed to be so core to their daily workflows 🙂

Still a long way to go 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️
16/ At the end of the day, don't forget that the PMF journey is hard.... surrounding yourself with people who push you forward really helps – a team of people you trust, want to win or die trying with pushes you forward everyday.
P.S: We're hiring for Go-To-Market folks to work directly with us as we enter GTM phase – former entrepreneurs, future entrepreneurs – this is the role for you! Please RT/ refer ♥️

atlan.com/careers/busine…
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More from @prukalpa see all

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Prukalpa
@prukalpa
So excited to share the launch of @atlanHQ today after 18 months of working under the hood. #HumansofData, Welcome Home!
@AtlanHQ 2/ Also excited to announce our pre-series A fundraise of INR 18 crores and welcome @WaterbridgeVentures! They've been working with us in our stealth journey for the past 15 months and been great partners! cc @mkheterpal

livemint.com/companies/star…
3/ We are living in the world of the "consumerisation of enterprise".. In 2019, Slack, Github, Zoom, Quip, Superhuman are all amazing examples of why human experience matters more than ever.
Read 13 tweets
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Prukalpa
@prukalpa
1/ Recently been speaking to some early stage founders and realised that most folks go through same hiring & talent challenges. Here are some reflections and learnings:
2/ Before we started hiring at SocialCops, every book we read said "hire people better than you" - and we took it at face value. So we called all the smart ppl we know and convinced them to join us. ALL of them said NO!
3/ This is when it got tempting to compromise and easy to become desperate. We thought - we have so much work to do & this person interviewing with us might not be perfect but isn't THAT bad!
Read 18 tweets
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Prukalpa
@prukalpa
My reflections and learnings from 2017: Surround yourself with people smarter than you- I only really understood the meaning of this in 2017. Reach out to people whom you respect, and have a list of questions for them. It will give you perspectives you never dreamt of. (1/n)
Don't undervalue the time you need to think, learn and grow - it is probably the most imp time you'll spend. As a founder/leader - it is easy to book your day in meetings and feel “busy” - frankly, if someone else can handle that important meeting, let them! (2/n)
You don’t need to have a “brand” of leadership - Lead the way someone wants to be led, not the way you want to lead. Your only role as a leader is to bring out the best in the other person. (3/n)
Read 17 tweets

Related threads

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Tren Griffin
@trengriffin
"If the customer doesn’t scream, you don’t have product-market fit.” Andy Rachlef.

Mike Maples interviews Andy Rachleff is self recommending. google.com/amp/s/tim.blog…
The product/market fit (PMF) concept was developed and named by Andy Rachleff. The core of Rachleff’s idea for PMF was based on his analysis of the investing style of the pioneering venture capitalist and Sequoia founder Don Valentine. google.com/amp/s/25iq.com…
A value hypothesis articulates the key assumption underlying why a customer is likely to use a product. Identifying a compelling value hypothesis is finding product/market fit. A value hypothesis addresses both features and business model. Paraphrasing AR: google.com/amp/s/25iq.com…
Read 4 tweets
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Abhishek Tiwari
@abhishektiwari
As a startup founder, I find AWS and GCP quite distracting particularly in early stages. Too many bells and whistle (Lambda, DynamoDB, API Gateway, PubSub, Auth0, etc.). Probably focus should be on finding product market fit and not worry about infrastructure.
To build a decent SaaS product without any lock-in or scalability challenges, you generally need a few things - a fully-managed Kubernetes offering, database as a service (Postgres, MySQL, Redis), a load balancer, and blob storage.
You start with the simplest possible technology stack which is not only scalable but also movable from one public cloud to another.
Read 9 tweets
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Hiten Shah
@hnshah
Product/market fit (PMF) is the #1 topic on most startup people’s minds, especially in the early days.

This thread will have as much information about it as possible and will be continuously updated.
First things first...

What is product/market fit (PMF)?

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” @pmarca

This @holloway guide is a good place to start.

holloway.com/s/rvc-fundamen…
How do you measure product/market fit?

- Word of mouth and referrals
- Quantitatively via retention
- Qualitatively via surveys
- Unit economics and profitability
- Other forms of “fit”

Not in any particular order.
Read 15 tweets
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Pietro Invernizzi
@pinverrr
0/ Thread: 11 tips on international expansion for growing startups 🌎 based on last night's conversation with @scott_sage & @daedalium at @_TheFamily
1/ Mindset: Someone from NYC won't think about it twice before taking a 6h flight to the Valley for business. Why do Europeans perceive a 2-hour flight / train ride as such a big deal? Travel more, there's plenty of opportunities around the corner you know nothing about ✈️
2/ If you spent more than a month considering whether to expand abroad or not, just try. What’s the worst that can happen? You can always do a big international launch, fail, try again and communicate it as a big thing every time - no one will care / remember the previous time :)
Read 13 tweets
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Phil Freo
@philfreo
Let's talk ENGINEERING HIRING (especially for startups, and #remote)

I’ve been hiring on small startup eng teams for the past 8 years (most recently grown @Closeio's eng team from 2 to 14, before that at @quizlet).

👇Here's a thread with some mistakes & hard lessons learned...
Hiring is always hard. It does get easier over time, but it's always something you have to work super hard at. If you're not ready to put in really hard work, you won't be successful hiring.

Don't hire too early! Why not?
1. 😩 Hiring is hard & slow. Skip it as long as you can.
2. 💸 People cost $$$
3. ✅ Do the job yourself first. You'll be better at hiring for the role once you have.
4. 🚀 Small team = fast & nimble
Read 29 tweets
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Jensen Harris
@jensenharris
Many people working at startups change jobs frequently, while employees of big companies may toil in the same place for decades. 😢

If you work at a megacorp today, how do you know if you’re ready to make the big leap to the startup world?

Here are 5 questions to ask yourself:
1) Are you capable of working in an unstructured environment?

Here’s the thing, even in well-run startups, there’s nothing like the command structure, hierarchy, and clear roles of a huge megacorp.

Big companies thrive on deep layers of people and titles and information.
Startups require you to make progress despite ambiguity. Often times deep ambiguity.

Features aren’t in planning for months. There’s no internal handbook describing exactly how your role works. Every “first” has to be invented.

You kind of have to figure it out on your own.
Read 22 tweets

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