Rob — this is a useful visualization. I attempted a similar exercise recently and I think some of the charts I drew up in this post will help founders as well in thinking about growth (I know they are useful to me in thinking about my own venture). Specifically, product/market fit happens when either of the below two occurs (see the charts in the attached post):
- The product has virality co-efficient > 1.0 kicking in — people are deriving enough value that they are referring others, and a decent percent of the referees are converting as well.
- Week-over-week growth is consistently 8% and over.
Less than 8%, and without virality — the startup fails to be a high-growth venture and is on a different path altogether and lowering its definition for what it means to hit product/market fit.
Paid user acquisition, unless it drives either of the above two, is meaningless. Sharp spikes due to fabricated events (launches, press stories, etc) are also meaningless.
>= 8% week-over-week growth or viral co-efficient >= 1.0 are the key yardsticks which lead to a graph like that.
Compound growth, simplistically, the law of small numbers adding up over a period of time is what leads to it. I can’t think of any other way for a graph to shoot up like that after an inflection point. Can anybody else ? What am I missing ?
