VCs, Superhuman Mail founder share red flags about product-market fit

Product-market fit — when a startup’s product sells well — has become even harder to find in this AI era. Despite startups achieving record-fast growth, not all customers are sticky and products can be replicated more easily than ever. Anu Bharadwaj, a partner at Iconiq; Rajeev Dham, a partner at Sapphire Ventures; and Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman Mail, discussed the new rules for product-market fit last week at TechCrunch Disrupt.

在人工智能时代，产品与市场匹配（即初创公司的产品畅销）变得更加难以实现。尽管初创公司实现了创纪录的快速增长，但并非所有客户都具有粘性，且产品比以往任何时候都更容易被复制。Iconiq 合伙人 Anu Bharadwaj、Sapphire Ventures 合伙人 Rajeev Dham 以及 Superhuman Mail 创始人 Rahul Vohra 上周在 TechCrunch Disrupt 大会上讨论了产品与市场匹配的新规则。

“It’s never been easier to gain a bunch of pilots because lots of companies across the board are open to trying new things,” Bharadwaj said to the audience. “But going from pilot to production is really the hard thing.” Right now, she said, a lot of founders pitch revenue metrics to investors without specifying which revenue they are talking about. “Is it true ARR or is it run rate?” she said. “There’s many ways to obfuscate the whole thing.”

“获得大量试点项目从未如此简单，因为各行各业的许多公司都乐于尝试新事物，”Bharadwaj 对观众说，“但从试点转向生产才是真正的难点。”她说，目前许多创始人在向投资者推介收入指标时，并没有明确说明他们指的是哪种收入。“是真实的年度经常性收入（ARR），还是年度化运行率？”她说，“有很多方法可以混淆这一切。”

Lately, much chatter on X has focused on AI founders inflating ARR numbers (which could mean “annualized run rate” or the more solid “annual recurring revenue”) to make it seem like their companies are doing better than they are. A common gimmick is counting pilot customers, who might only use the product for a couple of months, in the annualized run rate revenue number, implying that income is expected to continue for the entire year.

最近，X 平台上的许多讨论集中在人工智能创始人夸大 ARR 数字（可能指“年度化运行率”或更稳健的“年度经常性收入”）上，以使他们的公司看起来比实际情况更好。一种常见的伎俩是将可能只使用产品几个月的试点客户计入年度化运行率收入中，暗示该收入预计将持续全年。

It should be obvious, but Bharadwaj pointed out, “It’s definitely in your long-term interest that you be very honest and upfront about what quality of revenue this is.” She said companies need to separate hype from reality when looking at the quality of their revenue. It’s a red flag, for example, if only a few customers make up much of a company’s revenue or if the customers can easily go to another vendor for a better price.

这本应显而易见，但 Bharadwaj 指出：“诚实并坦率地说明收入的质量，绝对符合你的长期利益。”她说，公司在审视收入质量时，需要将炒作与现实区分开来。例如，如果只有少数客户贡献了公司的大部分收入，或者客户可以轻易转向其他供应商以获得更优惠的价格，这就是一个危险信号。

“Churn rate and retention [are] really dependent on that,” she continued. That’s why Vohra advises startups to track customer engagement and dollar retention, especially for consumer products. “Figure out what benchmark [is] good, great, and excellent for your space,” he said. For example, at Superhuman, he said that the company tracked ARR but also had their own internal metric called “delighted ARR,” which, he said, “was the ARR only from customers who are super engaged with the product.”

“流失率和留存率确实取决于这一点，”她继续说道。这就是为什么 Vohra 建议初创公司跟踪客户参与度和美元留存率，尤其是对于消费类产品而言。“找出适合你所在领域的良好、优秀和卓越的基准，”他说。例如，在 Superhuman，他说公司不仅跟踪 ARR，还有他们自己的内部指标，称为“愉悦 ARR”，他说，“这仅仅是来自那些与产品高度互动的客户的 ARR。”

He said that metric helped them see how sticky the customers were and how long they were likely to stay around. “Those users are now still users, those companies are now still customers,” he continued. “We obsessed over serving that particular category of our user base and our customer base.” The panelists also discussed green flags that indicate a startup has indeed found product-market fit.

他说，该指标帮助他们了解客户的粘性以及他们可能留存的时间。“那些用户现在仍然是用户，那些公司现在仍然是客户，”他继续说道，“我们专注于服务我们用户群和客户群中的那一特定类别。”小组成员还讨论了表明初创公司确实找到了产品与市场匹配的积极信号。

For Vohra, he said talk to customers to understand what value they find in the product and how they would feel if they could no longer use it. Then be honest with yourself when measuring those responses. “If you’re 15%, 14%, 13%, or below, consider a complete pivot. Take the codebase, take the team, build something entirely new. “But if you’re 20%, you can totally optimize your way from 20% to 40%,” Vohra said.

对于 Vohra 来说，他说要与客户交谈，以了解他们在产品中发现了什么价值，以及如果他们无法再使用该产品会有什么感觉。然后在衡量这些反馈时要对自己诚实。“如果你只有 15%、14%、13% 或更低，考虑彻底转型。带着代码库，带着团队，去构建全新的东西。但如果你达到 20%，你完全可以通过优化从 20% 提升到 40%，”Vohra 说。

Actually, Dham said, it’s important for a founder not to confuse having a vision with having a good business. At the seed level especially, Barudvaj said that it’s fine to pivot. She doesn’t even look for product-market fit at that stage, but “does the founder have a thesis that seems plausible and do they have the agility to duck and wave as the situation changes?” she said.

事实上，Dham 说，创始人不要将拥有愿景与拥有良好的业务混为一谈非常重要。特别是在种子轮阶段，Bharadwaj 说转型是可以的。她在那个阶段甚至不寻找产品与市场匹配，而是关注“创始人是否有看似合理的论点，以及他们是否有能力随着情况的变化而灵活应对？”她说。

Dham added that he values founders even more these days who have made numerous pivots because it shows they’ve had to make very hard decisions in this ever-shifting moment. Product-market fit, therefore, is something founders will always have to redefine and re-earn. “Even at a billion in revenue, these companies are re-earning their product-market fit,” he said. “You constantly have to be innovating on products.”

Dham 补充说，如今他更看重那些经历过多次转型的创始人，因为这表明他们在这个不断变化的时刻不得不做出非常艰难的决定。因此，产品与市场匹配是创始人必须不断重新定义和重新赢得的东西。“即使收入达到十亿，这些公司也在重新赢得他们的产品与市场匹配，”他说，“你必须不断地进行产品创新。”