The Uncomfortable Truth About Finding Product-Market Fit That Most Founders Ignore

The myth of that magical moment when everything suddenly “clicks” haunts every founder’s dreams. Venture capitalists preach finding product-market fit is the make-or-break milestone. Growth hackers promise there are hacks to get there faster. But what if chasing after product-market fit is setting founders up for failure from the start?

Let me let you in on an uncomfortable truth the gurus never mention: product-market fit is a misleading concept. An elusive candlelight in the fog that keeps entrepreneurs stumbling in circles instead of building sustainable, scalable products. The difficult reality is that for most startups, there is no definitive inflexion point where “fit” magically appears.

Growth is an incremental grind, not a breakthrough.

I know, I know—everything you’ve heard says otherwise. We've been conditioned to think product-market fit is a clear threshold that startups need to cross before they can scale successfully. But having worked with hundreds of founders on new ventures, I’ve seen firsthand how destructive this mindset can be.

The notion of product-market fit comes from Marc Andreesen’s iconic blog post back in 2007. He defined it as "being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market." On the surface, this seems like sage advice—who wouldn’t want that?

But in practice, the idea of product-market fit became twisted into a formulaic milestone entrepreneurs had to achieve to succeed. Suddenly every founder was trying to manufacture that elusive “a-ha!” moment when everything starts rapid-fire growing.

They thought getting to product-market fit was the real work, and scaling would become easy afterwards.

VCs loved this narrative too. They could simply look for hockey stick growth charts and ask founders when product-market fit happened. It filtered out unpromising investments.

Growth gurus peddled “get fit quick” frameworks to hungry founders who treated finding product-market fit like a quest in a video game level. Reach the magic threshold, and the treasure is yours.

There was just one problem—for most, the treasure never came.

Founders burned endless cycles trying to manufacture virality to get to that mythic inflection point. But artificial growth without depth never lasts. Reality is organic growth takes time. Product-market fit is not a moment, but a process of incremental progress. There is no shortcut.

Few startups explode overnight. Hits like Uber or Airbnb are the outliers, not the norm. In truth, there were likely many small product pivots and gradual refinements under the hood before they hit their "overnight success."

But nobody saw the long days and late nights spent grinding away early on. They only saw the hockey stick at the end. This fuels unrealistic expectations of instant product-market fit for other founders, sabotaging them from the start.

In reality, finding fit is a gradual slog of learning and fine-tuning. It requires methodical testing and iterating until a startup finds a sustainable groove in a market. No sudden breakthrough or viral loop hack can replace good old tenacity and resilience.

Part of the issue is that product-market fit compresses the messy complexity of growth into one sexy-sounding milestone. It triggered a collective delusion that acceleration should be fast once you achieve lift-off.

But company-building has many interconnected parts that need to sync—product features, positioning, distribution partnerships, team, funding. There are a thousand micro-fits that together enable scale, not one magical moment where the stars align. Sustainable growth comes from patiently smoothing out friction across all company facets, not pouring rocket fuel on untested assumptions.

Product-market fit created a false dichotomy between pre-fit “sluggish” startups and post-fit “hockey stick” startups. It normalised the idea that speed should accelerate suddenly after hitting the milestone.

But business is not linear. Progress comes in incremental improvements as founders meticulously iron out kinks in strategy. Their job is not to find a mythic inflexion point. It is to gradually sculpt a great company from an unfinished lump of clay.

Focus on Continuous Learning, Not Chasing a Moment

So if product-market fit is an illusion, what mindset should founders adopt instead?

The key is viewing growth as an incremental curve of continuous learning and improvement, not a breakpoint between stagnation and hypergrowth. Each day presents new customer insights to integrate and constraints to navigate. Founders must embrace this uncertainty, not whitewash it by clinging to the myth of an inflection point.

Rather than obsessing over when product-market fit will magically appear, founders should focus on validating learning through measured growth week-over-week. Meeting tangible process goals matters more than extrapolating hockey sticks from early traction spikes.

This means slowing down to understand what is driving repeat customer behaviour. What specific pain points does the product address?

How are people using it differently from expected?

What messages resonate?

There are no shortcuts here—just systematically testing and iterating.

But this discovery process creates the knowledge foundation needed for startup endurance. Establishing thoughtful pricing, positioning, marketing, and distribution takes time. The companies that understand this will fare better than those trying to manufacture virality overnight to false signals.

It may not be as sexy as chasing a magic moment. But taking an incremental approach to growth built on continuous learning is what separates startups that fizzle out from those built to last.

Time to Rethink Product-Market Fit

Nearly every founder sets out dreaming of finding that perfect product-market fit inflection. But it’s time to wake up from this delusion. Lasting business success is built step-by-step, not suddenly stumbled upon after hitting an imaginary milestone.

Founders should stop thinking about product-market fit as a definitive breakpoint. Focus instead on incrementally testing and learning until enough micro-fits come together into a working business model. Expect gradual progress through ongoing discovery, not hockey stick trajectories materializing overnight.

Yes, it means embracing uncertainty instead of chasing an elusive moment. But that’s the sober truth needed to build something engineered for the long haul rather than chasing temporary vanity metrics.

Rather than getting distracted by mythical inflexion points, founders should direct energy into continuous incremental testing and improvement. Progress compounds over time far more than explosions.

The uncomfortable truth is that product-market fit is a dangerous illusion. But once founders embrace growth as a gradual grind rather than a sudden jackpot, they free themselves to do the patient work required to build something great. The hockey stick comes later.