Swipe Right
We talk about Product–Market Fit like it’s a passport stamp. Founders chase it, investors demand it, decks worship it. “We’ve got PMF,” someone says, because three customers renewed. That’s like saying you’ve mastered relationships because you went on three dates.
Early on in London, I am embarrassed to admit that I ran a small game that made me my first £1 Million: write a £5k–£10k cheque at idea stage, wait for the seed round, take the markup, move on. On paper, it worked. In real life, most of those companies - like that first million that I made, didn’t. That’s when it clicked: the way we claim PMF rarely lines up with long-term survival.
Real PMF feels different. When Spotify arrived, people saw “streaming again” and missed the system: listeners got unlimited, personalised music; artists got a legal revenue path; labels got a way off piracy. That isn’t just fit - it’s alignment across everyone who matters. Compare that with Juicero, where a human hand outperformed the gadget and the buzz collapsed. That was enthusiasm, not endurance.
Here’s how I test PMF without kidding myself:
Pull over push. Do customers turn up uninvited, hack your product to do more, complain loudly when you’re down? That’s pull.
Ripples, not ripples-in-a-teacup. Do adjacent players= creators, suppliers, partners - change behaviour because you exist? Think Shopify enabling bedroom entrepreneurship at scale.
Compounding value. Does each new user, dataset, or workflow make the product better for the next, without your costs exploding?
If that still sounds abstract, picture a dating app. “Swipe right” is attention. A match is activation. A first coffee is onboarding. A second and third date is early retention. Meeting their friends is distribution. Making plans a month out is predictability. Real PMF is when the market keeps texting first, introduces you to its circle, and rearranges its week to see you.
Impermanence matters here. Markets shift. Tastes change. Competitors copy. Treating PMF as a one-time trophy is how you get blindsided. The sturdier mindset is antifragility: build so you benefit from change- ship, learn, improve, repeat - so your fit deepens over time instead of decaying.
A few brutal checks I ask founders (and myself):
If we vanished tomorrow, who would feel actual pain this week?
Are we fixing a symptom, or the root that keeps producing the symptom?
Can this scale without turning into bespoke work for every new customer?
Where’s the pull we didn’t pay for?
The point isn’t to hit PMF once and throw a party. It’s to earn it continuously - to keep earning the right for the market to choose you again next month, next year. So ignore the vanity metrics dressed up as milestones. Write down what you believe the fit is - so your own scope stays honest. Build for endurance: value that’s obvious, behaviour that sticks, economics that get better with size.
Do that, and the market doesn’t just swipe right. It stays.