This article would be really relevant after we get atleast 50-100 customers as then the data will start making sense.
2 years into building superhuman and still prelaunch Rahul started thinking if one could engineer a process for getting to PMF. 4 steps in this process -
1) ANCHORING AROUND A METRIC: A LEADING INDICATOR FOR PRODUCT/MARKET FIT - Sean Ellis once said- just ask users “how would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.” After benchmarking nearly a hundred startups with his customer development survey, Ellis found that the magic number was 40%. Rahul sent out these surveys to users who used the product atleast twice in past 2 weeks.
2) FROM BENCHMARK TO ENGINE: THE FOUR-STEP MANUAL FOR OPTIMIZING PRODUCT/MARKET FIT
a) Segment to find your supporters and paint a picture of your high-expectation customers. Make a high expectation-customer framework - https://review.firstround.com/what-i-learned-from-developing-branding-for-airbnb-dropbox-and-thumbtack
With this in mind Rahul only took users who voted very disappointed if superhuman goes away and analyzed their responses to the second question in our survey: “What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?” This is a very powerful question, as happy users will almost always describe themselves, not other people, using the words that matter most to them. This lets you know who the product is working for and the language that resonates with them (providing valuable kernels of insight for your marketing copy as well). Rahul thinks it’s a commonly held view that tailoring the product too narrowly to a smaller target market means that growth will hit a ceiling — but he doesn't think that’s the case. Paul Graham explains why by saying - “In theory this sort of hill-climbing could get a startup into trouble. They could end up on a local maximum. But in practice that never happens. … The maxima in the space of startup ideas are not spiky and isolated. Most fairly good ideas are adjacent to even better ones.”
b) Analyze feedback to convert on-the-fence users into fanatics. Completely ignore the ones who would not be disappointed at all in case your product was pulled out.
c) Build your roadmap by doubling down on what users love and addressing what holds others back.
d) Repeat the process and make the product/market fit score the most important metric.