Is there one right way to build a successful startup?

There’s certainly a lot of advice out there on the best way to do it…

(I’m often one of those folks giving advice 😉)

And though I do have strong opinions on what increases the likelihood of success for early stage founders, the truth is...

👉 There is more than one way to find Product Market Fit.

I attribute this to 2 things:

1 - PMF involves 1000s of variables

There is no step-by-step cookbook to find fit.

2 - Founders are humans

And humans have their own unique skillsets and experiences that drive their decision-making.

Pair these two together and you get unique founder paths for finding fit.

Different founders will start with different questions, and make different decisions on their journey to balancing these 1000s of variables.

And while there are near infinite "journeys" — I've attempted to wrangle them into 8 discrete variations. (See image)

And I think each of these paths fall into 2 main buckets of startup journeys.

1️⃣ Those who have found a market problem

↳ And are seeking the right solution. 🔎

2️⃣ Those who have built a cool solution

↳ And are seeking a market to buy it. 💸

____

I’ve highlighted some well known startup successes that I believe fit into a specific journey.

(Canva, Procore Technologies, Loom, Calendly, Uber, OpenAI, Jasper, Tesla)

But keep in mind, this is an oversimplification.

Anyone who has ever worked on a startup knows that this journey is anything but linear.