Product-market fit is binary—you have it or you don't

If you're asking whether you should pivot or not you probably know the answer already. If you have product-market fit you would not have time for this. When it's working there's no time for naval gazing.

"Crossing the chasm" refers to Geoffrey Moore's framework where startups transition from early adopters to mainstream market acceptance.

You know you've crossed the chasm when you say, 'I don't have to raise any more venture capital. Now, I may want to because I have ambitions to be globally dominant.' But you get to raise it on your nickel and on your timeline, not on, 'Oh my God, I'm running out of money.'

To figure out your product market fit and how to distribute it, it's not something that you can outsource to somebody.

Growth team can optimize, growth can maybe lift it by 10, 15%. Maybe that's enough for you. Even that is on the upper end of what growth team will be able to do if there is a slow-down trajectory.

If you have core product and core marketing issues, growth team will not be able to fix them for you. You're going to have to address the big elephant in the room as to why business is slowing down in the first place.

You don't want to focus too much on growth until you have product market fit. If you start growing a product that doesn't have product market fit, you're actually doing more damage than good because you have a product that is now being exposed to the market through growth levers that is giving a bad experience with your product.

Emily Kramer is advising startups on when to hire their first marketing person, where "one" refers to a marketer.

Marketing is really good at accelerating growth and doing that scale one to many. So if you're still in the very well spoke founder led sales, founder led marketing, like I'm doing discovery with each of these potential customers and have to modify my product for them, that kind of thing. You don't need one yet.