INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Having customers love the product is just part of product-market fit
Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC
A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she earned a PhD in math modeling of
In 2008, I co-founded Floodgate, one of the first seed-stage VC funds in Silicon Valley
Unlike most funds, we invest exclusively in seed, making us experts in finding product-market fit and building a minimum viable company
Each of our partners sees thousands of companies every year before electing to invest in only the top three or four.For the past 11 years,
When I reflect on the failures, the root cause inevitably stems from misconceptions around the nature of product-market fit.The magic of
product-market fitMost successful entrepreneurs and VCs agree that product-market fit is the defining quality of an early-stage startup
At Floodgate, we forensically analyzed companies that died and concluded this conceptualization is wrong
Many failing companies had features that customers loved
Some of these companies even had multiple beloved features! We discovered that having customers love the product is merely a part of
product-market fit, not the entire thing
This raises the question: What were they lacking?
