The One Question That Exposes Fake Product-Market Fit (opens in new tab)

"Angels confuse founder quality with product quality and often fund the wrong thing.

A strong founder who is personally closing customers, personally managing relationships, and personally rescuing churn is demonstrating something real. Their ability to sell, their commitment to the company and their capacity to hold things together in early chaos. These are not small things as they matter for survival.

But survival is not the same as scalability. And angel returns do not come from survival."

"The uncomfortable conclusion most angels do not say out loud: a large percentage of seed-funded PMF is not PMF but FMF (founder-market fit) combined with enough early customer goodwill to produce metrics that clear the bar. The product may be fine, the founder is exceptional but the pull is not there.

This could still be fundable at seed. The bet is that the product catches up to the founder before the founder burns out carrying it."

"The question: What percentage of your paying customers came back and paid again without any further involvement from you?"