How do you get investors excited without PMF?

How do you get investors excited about your idea without PMF (Product-Market Fit)? Easy. Demonstrate strong FMF (Founder-Market Fit)

We all understand PMF*

And we all know that investors love to see PMF.

But you can only demonstrate PMF if you have a product and customers.

So how can you get investors to fund your MVP so you can get to PMF?

Easy.

Prove you have FMF (Founder-Market Fit).

What is Founder-Market fit and how do you prove it?

FMF convinces investors that you are the ideal person to build your proposed solution for your proposed problem and audience AND that you have done your homework and thoroughly vetted your idea with potential customers before you starting asking for money to build you MVP and achieve early PMF.

There are 2 parts to FMF:

You as a founder have a deep understanding of the problem you solve, the people that have this problem, the current solutions these people use, and the limitations of these solutions.
You have validated your proposed solution to the problem in (1) above with the potential customers in (1) above. That means you have surveyed and/or interviewed dozens if not hundreds of them and the majority agree:

Your definition of the problem and current solution limitations is accurate.
Your proposed solution would address the limitations of current solutions.
They would be highly likely to switch from their current solution to your solution if it works as advertised.

To demonstrate (1) and (2) you need facts (e.g prior work experience) and data (e.g. interview and survey analyses).

* Apples-to-apples PMF

Actually, do we all understand PMF? I think the term is often abused. Why? Because it's easy to claim PMF when you actually have multiple use cases for your product across multiple market segments. That's apples and oranges. True PMF is for a single use case and a singe market segment. Apples to apples.

The same is true for FMF, btw. You must validate for a single use case and a single market segment for your FMF to be credible.

TL/DR

Don't ask investors to fund an untested idea and/or someone (you) with little relevant experience with the problem you aspire to solve.

DM me if you need a fresh pair of eyes on your pitch deck narrative or slides.

All blog posts

Follow me on LinkedIn for more pitch deck and startup tips.