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WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Pre-PMF goal-setting: stop chasing graphs, build something users love
- Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel argue that pre-product-market-fit startups should not manage by weekly growth charts when they have only a few users, because analytics practices from large companies don’t translate to zero-to-one stages.
- They explain that the famous “7% week-over-week growth” idea is only meaningful when it reflects genuine retention and value, and founders often sabotage themselves by gaming metrics instead of improving the product.
- They propose early-stage goals centered on finding a small set of users who truly love the product—scaling from 1 to 10 to 50 to 100—before “graduating” to graph-based optimization.
- They caution that building primarily to raise money trains a company to optimize for investors rather than users, which may win a seed round but reduces long-term success odds.
- They highlight Gmail and Stripe as examples where slow, customer-obsessed iteration and measurable customer benefit preceded breakout growth and durable businesses.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasPre-PMF, “graphs are a waste of time” when you have near-zero users.
At very small scale (e.g., a handful of users), growth charts and A/B tests create false confidence and distract from the real work: learning whether anyone is getting meaningful value.
Healthy growth is the result of doing things right—not the cause.
The “7% WoW” heuristic is useful as an outcome signal of retention and value creation, but founders often treat it as a lever and then game definitions (cumulative signups, vanity metrics) to hit targets.
Set goals around user love first: 1 → 10 → 50 → 100 users who love it.
A practical pre-PMF goal is to get a small number of real users who genuinely “love” the product; once that base exists, traditional metrics become more informative.
Define the value threshold and verify users are actually reaching it.
If you believe users need heavy usage to get value, reconcile that with reality (time spent, retention, outcomes). The mismatch often reveals you effectively have “zero users” getting value.
Don’t turn investors into your real customers.
Building to impress investors can work short-term (e.g., a seed raise) but becomes a damaging habit and lowers the odds of building an enduring business.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesAnd I'm like, "How many users do you have?" And they're like, "Three."
— Michael Seibel
And I'm like, "Okay, never show me these graphs again." Like, graphs are a waste of time.
— Michael Seibel
Whereas they think it is the cause of the company... working, and it's just like, th- ah. Like, when you mix those things up, you really screw up.
— Michael Seibel
And nothing good will come of that.
— Dalton Caldwell
And if you could get 100 users or customers that love you, that is an awesome goal, and that's when I would start to graduate to graphs.
— Dalton Caldwell
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SPEAKERS
Dalton Caldwell
hostStartup accelerator partner and podcast co-host focused on early-stage product and growth advice.
Michael Seibel
hostStartup accelerator partner and podcast co-host with founding/operating experience (e.g., Justin.tv/Twitch) advising early-stage startups.
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
