Launching Product Market Misfits

5 min readNov 18, 2020

The first time I wrote about startups on Medium was 2015, and then I joined the Army. But now I’m back, and covering startups feverishly!

I’ve launched Product Market Misfits! It’s a podcast + newsletter.

PMMisfits interviews early stage (no later than Series A) venture-backed founders to give you access to info & advice on topics like picking ideas, building teams, product management, acquiring first paying customers, and fundraising.

1.) Read prior posts & subscribe to the newsletter here

It’s a 10-minute email. You get podcast episode highlights and access to a resource called Secret Weapons, the tools/trick/tips that give the founders I interview an unfair advantage in their work & life.

For example, here’s Cody Barbo, Founder/CEO of Trust&Will’s Secret Weapons:

Productivity — Getting a good night’s sleep. Easy as that, right?
Team culture- Treat everyone like family. When it comes to celebrating wins, personal and corporate wins should be treated equally. Personal & professional life used to be two different things, but that’s gone now. You can’t expect your team to want to celebrate company wins if you’re not willing to celebrate their personal wins as well.
T&W’s Tech Stack — Carta, which helps companies and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. Life is way easier with an organized and compliant cap table.

2.) Listen to prior episodes & subscribe to the podcast:

Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts, & Others Can Be Found Here!

If you don’t care why I launched PMMisfits, and you just want to hear from some amazing founders, then no need to keep reading!

[TL/DR] Why Does PMMisfits Exist?

I’m starting this from scratch with <500 Twitter followers & 8 subscribers, none of whom really know why they subscribed (yet!). I’ve never really written publicly before, and I don’t know if anyone will value the info PMMisfits provides.

So, essentially, PMMisfits has zero indications of PMF, and that’s uncomfortable for me. And this was exactly the same way I felt starting my first company.

My point is it’s okay to acknowledge that you haven’t figured it all out yet! I think the youths are calling this “building in the open”.

I’m also an angel investor, and too often I listen to founders try to convince me that they’ve found PMF, when it’s clear that they haven’t yet…almost as if being pre-PMF is some sort of shameful weakness.

But it’s not a weakness. It’s a normal stage! Is it fun? Sometimes not. For most, the road from founding to PMF is a difficult, traumatic, sleepless, “white-knuckle” experience that you want to forget about as soon as you arrive at PMF.

Product Market Misfits is about embracing the pre-PMF stage, studying it together & being comfortable saying, “our startup doesn’t have PMF yet, and that’s fine bc I’m here to learn.”

My hope is that we can all talk about this crazy roller coaster of a journey a little more openly, and learn more quickly from each other, ultimately building more companies that make it to PMF.

Some content promises:
1.) I will only interview founders who are [Friends & Family → Series A] stage.
2.) I will only interview the investors who actually have a track record of investing at this early stage.

Launching Product Market Misfits

Written by khela-baba-production