You Hit PMF—Now What?

What No One Tells You About Scaling After Product/Market Fit

January 15, 2025

Hey — It’s Charlie.

Welcome to the latest edition of Great Startups! Here’s what’s in store:

  • Cold Email Playbook: A handbook every founder needs for outreach success.

  • Resends’ Growth Framework: Lessons from their CEO on scaling smart.

  • Grammarly’s Big Move: Why they just acquired Coda—and what it means.

  • Targeting Made Simple: A step-by-step guide to finding your perfect customer.

  • Hidden Startup Debt: The silent killer that’s slowing growth.

Get ready to dive into these power-packed insights for founders and growth enthusiasts!

Resources

  • The founder GTM Handbook. (LINK)

  • The biggest commonality in $10B+ founders. (LINK)

  • A useful playbook for growing your startup with content. (LINK)

  • 30 startup ideas to build in 2025 (LINK)

  • Personal finance things to know as a founder (LINK)

ICYMI

  • Prosus buys Despegar for $1.7B. (LINK)

  • Emerging startup trends to watch for in 2025 (LINK)

  • Automattic acquires AI startup WPAI. (LINK)

  • The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained. (LINK)

  • OpenAI makes AI video generator Sora available in the US. (LINK)

  • JK Molina reveals how two founders scaled their startup from $0 to $1 million.

  • This guy solved a simple problem, shared how he finds profitable micro SaaS ideas, and offers lessons you can apply in 2025.

  • Lenny Rachitsky and Jen Abel on how to approach founder-led sales.

  • Carta shares 50 slides packed with insights for founders from 45,000 startups.

  • How One AI App Founder Makes $20K+ Monthly—and How You Can Too!

PMF Isn’t the Finish Line, It’s the Starting Gun

Hitting Product/Market Fit (PMF) is like finding the golden ticket in the startup world—it’s exciting, validating, and full of potential. But here’s the deal: once you’ve got PMF, everything changes. Early on, it’s all about experimenting, testing ideas, and figuring out what clicks with your audience. You’re moving fast, trying new things, and probably breaking stuff along the way. But once you hit that sweet spot where customers love what you’re offering, it’s time to shift gears. The hustle that got you here? Yeah, it’s not the same hustle that’s going to take you to the next level.

Now it’s about execution—scaling what works, hiring the right people, and fixing all those quick-and-dirty hacks you made in the early days. This stage needs focus and systems, not endless experiments. The hardest part? Letting go of the chaos you thrived on and embracing a more structured way of growing. It’s not as glamorous, but it’s how startups go from surviving to thriving. Ignore this shift, and you might just end up scaling a mess instead of a business. (LINK)

Ok that’s it for this week, We keep refining our newsletter content, just hit reply to let us know what you think about this issue.