20VC: How To Scientifically Measure Product-Market Fit, How To Efficiently and Accurately Segment Users Into Cohorts, Why Investors Analysing CAC's at Pre-Seed Is Not Useful & How To Determine Between Customer Feedback to Accept vs Reject with Daniel Eric
Daniel Erickson, Founder and CEO of Viable Fit, shares his journey from Portland consultancy to startup success. He emphasizes the critical importance of product-market fit (PMF) as the key metric for startups and explains how to measure it using structured user feedback. Daniel discusses effective customer segmentation and the importance of differentiating valuable feedback from noise. He also critiques investors who focus heavily on unit economics at early stages and unveils strategies to ensure ongoing relevance through user insights.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
From Agency to Yammer
Daniel Erickson and his twin brother co-founded an app development agency and later worked at Yammer.
Yammer's success taught Daniel about the importance of metrics and user-centric design in enterprise products.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Gettable and Ease Experiences
After Yammer, Daniel joined Gettable as CTO, seeking product-market fit but not finding it.
He then moved to Ease, a cannabis delivery app, which had strong initial product-market fit.
insights INSIGHT
Transient PMF
Product-market fit is often seen as a static achievement, but it's actually transient.
It changes as your product, market, and even external factors evolve.
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Daniel Erickson is the Founder & CEO @ Viable Fit, the startup that allows you to find product-market fit faster than ever by collecting structured user feedback to measure PMF on an ongoing basis. Daniel has raised funding from the likes of David Sacks @ Craft Ventures, Todd Goldberg and Superhuman Founder, Rahul Vohra and then also Brianne Kimmel @ Worklife Ventures. Prior to founding Viable Fit, Daniel was VP Engineering @ Eaze and before that spent time as CTO @ Getable and then also had a front-row seat for the hyper-growth of Yammer with a 3-year stint there.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Daniel made his way into the valley and startups from setting up a consultancy in Portland and how that led to founding Viable Fit?
2.) How does Daniel define product-market fit today? Why does Daniel believe it is the single most important metric for startups? What happens if you do not have product-market fit? How does Daniel feel about investors spending so much time analysing unit economics at seed?
3.) What is the single most important question one can ask to determine whether you have PMF? How does customer segmentation play a role in revealing the true PMF number? How do you productise this and put it in a process? What does Daniel make of the rise of closed betas?
4.) Once they have the customer data, what elements of the data should founders double down on to determine PMF? How do they determine between feedback to adopt vs discard? Why does Daniel believe PMF is transient and you always have to measure it?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 