I'm an operator-grade peer to CEOs of post-PMF software companies when the work cuts across more than one seat at the table - when the standard functional moves keep widening the gap rather than closing it. The problem isn't function-shaped. There's no seat at the table exactly shaped for it.
Across CEO, CPTO, CPO, and CTO seats over six platform shifts, I've watched the same shape arrive: the company that should be moving but isn't.
The work: I diagnose the actual shape, embed alongside the CEO for a bounded window, and transition into the right permanent structure on the other side.
What makes it hard isn't only the technical and operational dimension - it's the human-systems read underneath: what's actually happening between people in the leadership team, not just what's on the whiteboard. Get that read wrong, and the engagement falls apart under stress. Get it right, and you've unlocked the next level.
Four exits. Engagements are bounded, with capability transfer on the back end.
The normal moves don't work because you're solving the wrong problem
You’ve shipped the AI features. You’ve run the strategy sessions. The effort is real. It’s not working because you’re solving a post-PMF problem when you have a pre-PMF problem.
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.
A lens drawn from Carlota Perez
A lens drawn from economic historian Carlota Perez’s work on how technology changes in waves — not all at once. The current information age has already produced five technology systems (personal computers, web, mobile, SaaS/cloud, tech-enabled services); GenAI is the sixth. Each time a new system ascends, companies fit for the prior one find themselves post-PMF in the old system and pre-PMF in the new one simultaneously — which is a recognizable condition, not an unprecedented one.