Hands-on CXX. 30+ year entrepreneur and technologist, blend of consumer and enterprise experience; deep passion for engaging directly with customers and building businesses that solve for multiple bottom-lines (financial, human, social, natural), with a special focus on products, customers, and systemic change; a key role in four exits (Rhithm,
Food on the Table,
Five Runs,
Sapling Learning); work featured in Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Running Lean by Ash Maurya.
Your last PMF is now what's in the way
Your last PMF — the pricing model, the architecture, the go-to-market motion — was built from a series of correct choices, each optimized over years. The problem isn’t that you built something broken; it’s that you built something that worked so precisely for the last regime that it’s now the thing in the way. Pre-PMF again doesn’t mean starting over — it means finding where the current PMF ends and the next one begins, while everything you built is still running.
The normal moves don't work because you're solving the wrong problem
You’ve shipped the AI features and run the strategy sessions — the effort is real, but it’s not moving because you’re applying post-PMF solutions to a pre-PMF problem. Post-PMF problems respond to execution; pre-PMF problems require clarity first — what does the market want now, what does the product need to become. Every cycle spent executing instead of finding clarity, GenAI startups gain ground — they’re pre-PMF too, they just started there, and they’re not carrying what you’re carrying.
What losing PMF looks like when you still have it
Product market fit doesn’t announce its departure — the metrics still look right, the team is shipping, the board meeting was fine, and yet privately there’s a feeling that something has subtly shifted. That feeling is a leading indicator; the churn and growth slowdown come later, and by the time they’re visible the departure already happened. AI shifted the ground under something that was working — that’s not failure, it’s the condition, and what you’re feeling is the beginning of being pre-PMF again while the company still looks post-PMF from the outside.