Todd Jackson is a Partner at First Round Capital. Before moving into venture capital, he played a crucial role as VP of Product and Design at Dropbox, guiding the company until its IPO in 2018. Prior to Dropbox, Todd led product management for Twitter’s Content and Discovery teams after selling his startup, Cover, to Twitter in 2014. Before Cover, Todd oversaw product development for Facebook’s Newsfeed, Photos, and Groups. He kickstarted his career at Google as an associate product manager and eventually led product for Gmail, witnessing its growth from beta to 200 million users. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Why productmarket fit (PMF) matters
• First Round Capital’s fourpart PMF framework
• Level one: Nascent productmarket fit
• Level two: Developing productmarket fit
• Level three: Strong productmarket fit
• Level four: Extreme productmarket fit
• Examples of companies at each level
• How to know if you’re stuck at a level, and how to get unstuck
• What to change if you’re stuck: persona, problem, promise, and product
• The goals and challenges at each stage

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Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/a...

Where to find Todd Jackson:
• X:   / tjack  
• LinkedIn:   / toddj0  

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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Todd’s background
(06:07) First Round Capital’s PMF framework
(09:07) Why productmarket fit is so important
(11:02) Who can benefit from this framework
(12:55) The productmarket fit method
(16:54) Broad overview of the framework
(21:35) Level one: nascent productmarket fit
(33:16) The four P’s
(39:13) Level two: developing productmarket fit
(49:13) Signs you’re stuck at level two, and what to do
(55:12) Level three: strong productmarket fit
(01:00:17) Signs you’re stuck at level three, and what to do
(01:02:22) Level four: extreme productmarket fit
(01:06:55) Rough timelines for each level
(01:11:18) A quick recap of the framework
(01:12:15) Diving deeper on the four P’s: what to do if you’re stuck
(01:13:56) Dollardriven discovery
(01:25:11) Apply for the productmarketfit method program

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.