They told me I’d know product-market fit when I found it.
“You’ll feel the pull”, successful startup founders said
What they didn’t tell me? The pull comes from the wrong direction first.
I built videotoolkit.app as a clip finder. Simple premise: type what you’re looking for — “subtle smirk during that heated argument” or “people celebrating on stage” — and find it instantly in hours of footage.
“Professional video editors will love this,” I thought. The ones drowning in 50+ hours of footage. The ones who bill $500/hour.
Instead, I got crickets from them. Then I stopped talking to the ICP, I thought I was building for. Instead, opened my doors to talk to any and every editor out there.
Not exactly the enterprise clients I could pitch to VCs.
The PMF Fairy Tale vs Reality
Here’s the product-market fit story everyone sells:
Find a painful problem
Build the perfect solution
Watch grateful customers throw money at you
Update your LinkedIn to “Founder | We’re Hiring”
Here’s what actually happened:
Found what I thought was a painful problem
Built a solution I’d personally use
Watched my “perfect customers” treat me like spam
Desperately DMed anyone who’d ever touched a video file
That fourth step? That’s where the magic happened.
Your First Customers Will Confuse You
A gaming YouTuber messaged me: “Can this find rage moments in my streams?”
My brain: “This is for professionals to increase productivity”
My bank account: “Say yes, idiot.”
He wasn’t looking for “establishing shot of city skyline.” He wanted “player throws controller” and “epic fail compilation” moments.
Same tool. Completely different universe.
Then came the course creator: “I have 40 hours of workshops. Can it find every time someone asks about pricing?”
The wedding videographer: “First dance reactions from different angles?”
The documentary filmmaker: “Anytime someone says ‘America’ with emotion?”
None of these were on my product roadmap. All of them were talking about real pain points.
The Myth of the “Ideal” Customer
You know what professional editors at production houses told me?
“Interesting.” “We’ll consider it for next quarter.” “Send me more information.”
And the reason is they have hired an assistant to that boring, mundane job, because they can throw money at problems like that.
And they have to get approvals to use a tool like this.
Product-Market Fit Is Just Pattern Recognition
After three months of “wrong” customers, patterns emerged:
They all had the same core problem: Too much footage, not enough time.
But different triggers:
Vlogger: “I know there’s gold in this pile of footage”
Podcast Editor: “The guest revealed absolute gems in this 3 hour long podcast, can you help me create a teaser for this.”
Wedding videographers: “Need all the emotional moments for the highlight reel”
Same feature, different value:
I didn’t know who I was selling to because I didn’t cast a wider net.
The Drift Is the Strategy
Week 1: “Search your videos like ChatGPT”
Week 6: “Find any moment in your videos”
Week 10: “Never miss a viral clip again”
Week 16: “Rough Cut Assistant that turns raw footage to assembly”
Notice the drift? From professional tool to universal search.
Each iteration came from actual usage:
Gamers searching “clutch play”
Podcasters finding “quotable moments”
Educators locating “student breakthrough”
The product didn’t change. The positioning did.
What PMF Actually Feels Like
It’s not a hockey stick moment. It’s more like:
Someone pays without asking for a discount.
Then they tell someone else.
Support emails shift from “How do I…?” to “Can it also…?”
You stop explaining what it does. People just get it.
A random tweet about your tool gets 50 replies of “I need this.”
You realize you haven’t pitched anyone in weeks.
The Metrics That Matter (And the Ones That Don’t)
Vanity metrics I tracked:
Total users
Website visits
Feature adoption rates
Metrics that actually predicted PMF:
Time from signup to first export
Number of searches per session
“Holy shit this is magic” comments
Unsolicited Twitter mentions
Credit cards entered without free trial
The last one? That’s when you know you’re onto something.
ECP → ICP: The Journey Nobody Maps
Here’s what startup advice gets backwards:
They tell you to find your ICP first. Ideal Customer Profile. The perfect user who desperately needs your solution.
But you can’t find your ICP without first finding your ECP — Early Customer Profile.
And ECPs are messy.
My ECPs:
But here’s the thing: ECPs teach you who your ICP actually is.
The Wide Net Strategy
Most founders are terrified of the wide net.
“You’ll dilute your message!” “You’ll build the wrong features!” “You’ll attract bad customers!”
You know what’s worse than bad customers? No customers.
The wide net isn’t about being everything to everyone. It’s about learning who everyone actually is.
My net caught:
Each “wrong” customer refined my understanding of the right one.
Currently building videotoolkit.app and learning that finding your ICP requires kissing a lot of ECP frogs first. What “wrong” customers taught you the most about your right ones?
