What I’m seeing with SaaS founders and CEOs navigating the GenAI transition — the ones who built something that worked, and are now in the gap between what they were fit for and what comes next. Post 1 of 6

Product market fit doesn’t announce its departure. That’s what makes losing it so dangerous.

The metrics still look right. ARR is up, or close enough. The team is shipping. The board meeting was fine. The AI features are live. And yet — privately — you have a feeling. Not a conclusion. A feeling. That the thing that made this company work has subtly shifted. That the roadmap you’d defend publicly isn’t the one you’d bet on privately.

That feeling is a leading indicator. The churn, the growth slowdown, the board conversation that goes differently — those come later. 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. What you’re feeling now is the beginning of being pre-PMF again, while the company still looks post-PMF from the outside.

See how I’m making sense of the larger pattern: A lens drawn from Carlota Perez