In October 2026 I posted a LinkedIn thread that distills a decade of product‑market fit (PMF) thinking into a concrete, three‑step checklist tied to funding milestones. The framework separates PMF into (1) love & willingness to pay, (2) unit‑economics work, and (3) repeatable, profitable acquisition at scale, and maps each stage to the expectations of Seed/Pre‑A, Series A, and Series B+ rounds.
- Requirement #1: Build something people love and are willing to pay for.
For a Series A round the expectation is: "being able to get customers that fit the unit economics".
For Series B and beyond the expectation is: "getting all three figured out".
The holy grail is to find repeatable, profitable customer acquisition channels that can scale to over $100m per year (as a VC‑backed business, and perhaps even closer to $1b).
- Requirement #2: Make sure the unit economics work.
- Requirement #3: Get those customers repeatedly, at scale.