trez

Hi HNers,

I am the founder of LiNote and we have reached Product-Market Fit. Up to that point, everytime I felt lost about the next step for my company, I found some valuable resources online from smart folks who have been there before. The ones from YC often being the most insightful.

Now than we reached PMF, resources are almost non-existent. I found two good books ("the great ceo within" and "high growth handbook"), 1 post "after PMF", and that's it.

So I am asking if some of you had the same issue, if you known some useful links or if you had to rely on other "resources" like maybe mentors, founder groups, etc. ?

I am Anthony, solo french founder of LiNote. We build a digital assistant for family caregivers.

I am really confused if we do have or not reached product market fit.

Things that makes me thing we do have it: - 360 People love our product and pay monthly. - Our monthly churn is around 3% - Oldest customers have the product for more than 30 months. - Customers talk about it with their GP, nurses, etc. - We grew 3X year over year with 3 people only.

Things that makes me thing we do not have it: - We are growing at 5-10% monthly only - Knowing how much people talk about it, we only sell 25 units a month for a B2C product.

PMF definition is quite fuzzy. Not knowing we have it might slow us down a lot. Thinking we have it might kill us.

So guys, I would love to hear your opinion about it: Is it PMF ?

Hi HNers,

I am a solo startup founder from a small french town.

There is no unicorns here so noone has a real experience on being part of this kind of companies.

Most mentors here either built profitable SMEs, managed big companies they haven't founded or are people with an MBA.

Most advises I get are contradictory to what I read from more "reputable" startup writer as PG.

Any idea how to get a mentor from outside your network ?

Hi HNers,

I am Anthony, solo French founder of LiNote. We build a device so obvious to use really old people ( 75 to 100 ) can use it even with cognitive diseases. Their caregivers can video call them, send them reminders, pictures, etc.

I've been working on it for 5 years now. Our MRR is now over 12kE. We were at 4kE a year ago. Our 350 customers love it and talk about us a lot. Yet we are growing slowly at 5-8% a month.

Our team is 4 people only: 1 dev 1 content marketing my girlfriend at operations and simple customer supports me at tech support and "CEO stuffs".

My girlfriend and I love what we do but we provide support 7 day a week, 24H a day. We have worked every day for the last 18 months.

We are about to get cash positive. We haven't raised money but from family. I am now able to pay my girlfriend and I enough to live decently but far from what I use to earn as a python dev.

We aren't at product market fit yet but our retention is great and we think we are on something but our dev is busy with bug fixes and tiny improvements.

I am getting worse at selling my vision the more operational tasks I do and the more time I struggle with the company. 1000 of customers seems far when you fight for 20 each months.

I've talked with local investors but that didn't work 3 times. I wasn't really committed and feel disconnected to their way of thinking ( hire blindly, build partnerships with big companies). Local investors doesn't seems knowledgeable.

I can't decide between staying bootstrapped which fit us better but the road seems so long before being able to live comfortably and before being able to hire new critical people.

Raising money is a good option to grow faster but not being at product-market fit seems like a non-optimal time to raise. I sometimes feel like I am being stubborn and if anything big should have happen, it would have already happened before.

I am sure the HN crowd would have insightful comments.

Hi Hners,

I work on a French hardware startup called Relink. I would like to speed things up and I feel having a mentor would be a great boost. I am part of my local startup community but that's quite small here as I am not in Paris and nobody has a 'successful' hardware startup. Anyone know how to find someone willing to be part of an advisory board?

You want to learn coding, I (or s.o else on HN) can teach you. What would you pay for it? Anything but money.

Hi Hners,

I've been working on many startup ideas full-time for 14 months now. I've learned a lot during the process, I failed a lot too. I am now working on a great idea (all of them was but this one is greater ;) ) and I would really like to make that one a success. This one deserve it as it would really help people. The idea is about creating a passive internet (no input required) so people with no computer skills and who can't learn anymore could communicate with their over-geeky relatives. Imagine your 80+ year old grandmother receiving Facebook posts, SMS or Skype like calls.

I am solo entrepreneur and I feel like a few good "chirurgical" advices might be sufficient to unlock the first steps to success.

Anthony