StartupMetrics

In many mentoring, coaching, and startup evaluation sessions at KisStartup, we often hear this statement:

“Our product already has PMF because customers are paying for it.”

It sounds reasonable, but in reality, this is one of the most dangerous misunderstandings about Product–Market Fit (PMF).

PMF is not about:

• having a few trial customers,
• generating your first revenue,
• or signing one large contract.

PMF answers a much harder question:

Is this product solving a sufficiently large and important problem, for a clearly defined group of users, in a way that makes them come back and willingly pay again and again?

What is PMF? (A concise explanation)

Product–Market Fit (PMF) is the state where:

• you have a specific customer segment,
• they face a real and meaningful problem,
• your product solves that problem, and their behavior repeats over time (reuse, repurchase, and referrals).

Key insight: PMF is revealed through behavior, not compliments.

Three core metrics to “read” PMF

To avoid relying on gut feelings, PMF is usually assessed through three metric groups: Activation – Retention – Willingness to Pay (WTP).

1. Activation – Do users actually start using the product?

What is Activation?
Activation measures whether users reach the moment when they first experience the product’s core value.

Examples:

• For a sales platform: listing a product and getting the first order
• For management software: completing the first report or workflow
• For an agri-tech startup: completing one real usage cycle (e.g. data input → tracking → decision-making)

Common misunderstanding
Many startups count sign-ups but never measure whether users reach the core value of the product.

KisStartup’s perspective:
We have seen startups with hundreds of accounts, but only 10–15% of users actually use the product correctly. The rest “sign up just in case.”

If activation is low, PMF cannot exist.

2. Retention – Do customers come back over time?

What is Retention?
Retention measures:

• after 1 week, 1 month, or 3 months,
• how many customers continue using or repurchasing the product.
• This is the most important metric for validating PMF.

Why KisStartup calls retention “the reality check”
From our experience working with startups and SMEs:

• many customers buy once out of curiosity,
• because of discounts, personal relationships, or project-based support,
• but never return afterward.

In these cases:

• there is revenue,
• but there is no PMF.

Common mistakes

• Reporting total customers without tracking them over time
• Not analyzing customer cohorts
• Failing to distinguish first-time buyers from repeat customers

A good product should not require you to constantly beg customers to come back.

© Copyright KisStartup. Any reproduction, quotation, or reuse must clearly credit KisStartup.

A synthesis and analysis by KisStartup

Very few startups collapse because of a single dramatic shock.
Most die quietly—without scandal, without a loud bankruptcy, without a clear “breaking moment.” One day, founders stop talking about the product, team members slowly leave, cash runs out, and the startup… disappears.

The danger is this: when startups die in silence, founders often don’t realize they are failing. They are still busy, still in meetings, still improving the product, still believing that “a little more time” will fix everything.

The problem is not lack of effort.
The problem is that the startup is moving in the wrong direction—without warning signals strong enough to force a stop.

Silent because there are no “distress metrics”

One of the most common reasons is the absence of learning and survival metrics from the beginning. Without clear measurement points, everything feels like it is “not that bad yet.”

• There are users, but no retention tracking.
• There is revenue, but no understanding of unit economics.
• Customers give compliments, but no one knows if they will pay again.

In this state, startups are not losing—they are simply not progressing. And prolonged stagnation is the most common way startups die.

Silent because founders are too close to the product

Founders understand the product better than anyone—and because of that, they are often the most blind. When emotionally attached to the original idea, founders tend to reinterpret every signal positively: churn is “temporary,” low revenue is “market conditions,” weak traction is “insufficient marketing.”

This silence does not come from outside—it comes from self-justification. No one steps in to say: “Stop. We need to re-examine our core assumptions.”

Silent because financial reality is avoided

Many startups avoid looking directly at cash flow—not because they don’t understand numbers, but because numbers force hard decisions: cutting costs, shrinking the team, narrowing ambition, or pivoting.

When burn rate increases slowly but steadily, and runway shortens without being discussed, startups enter the most dangerous zone: there is still money, but very few options left. By the time the cash truly runs out, it is already too late to fix the model.

Silent because there is no mechanism for dissent

A healthy startup needs honest feedback systems—from customers, from data, from mentors, from the team. Yet many operate inside an “echo chamber,” where everyone tries to stay positive, avoid conflict, and no one wants to deliver bad news.

This is especially common in small, close-knit teams, where a culture of “harmony” unintentionally suppresses critical thinking. Without hard questions, startups repeat the same mistakes—just at a larger scale.

Silent because busyness is mistaken for progress

There is a familiar paradox: the busier a startup looks, the higher its risk of dying silently. Meetings follow meetings, features follow features, events follow events—yet no central question is answered:
“What did we actually learn this week?”

When activity replaces learning, startups appear energetic from the outside, but remain stagnant inside. And in a competitive environment, stagnation is a slow form of failure.

How to escape a silent death

Startups don’t need tragedy to change. They need small but honest signals, deliberately designed:

• Each stage must have clear hypotheses and explicit stop/continue criteria.
• Every month must answer: what has been validated, and what has been disproven?
• Every major decision must be tied to data, not just intuition.

At KisStartup, we believe that seeing small failures early is the condition for avoiding big failures later. Startups don’t die because they are wrong—they die because they don’t know where they are wrong.

 A question for you:
In the past week, what has your startup truly learned—new insight, or just more execution of old habits?

The next article in this series will dive into the most common blind spot behind silent deaths:
“Thinking you understand your customers.”

References

This article draws on research and writings by Paul Graham, Steve Blank, Eric Ries, First Round Capital Review, Harvard Business Review, and KisStartup’s hands-on startup mentoring practice.

© Copyright KisStartup. Any reproduction, citation, or reuse must clearly credit KisStartup as the source.