product-market-fit

Run the Sean Ellis survey asking users how they would feel if they could no longer use the product. If 40% or more answer "very disappointed," that signals strong PMF. Segment results by your target customer rather than averaging across all users.

The PMF Pyramid from Dan Olsen's Lean Product Playbook has five layers: target customer, underserved needs, value proposition, feature set, and UX. Each lower layer must be solid before the layers above it matter, so diagnosis starts at the bottom.

List 10-15 customer needs or jobs, then rate each on importance (1-5) and satisfaction with existing solutions (1-5). Needs with high importance and low satisfaction are underserved and represent your best opportunities. Gather scores from real customer surveys, not internal guesses.

Retention problems usually originate in layers 1-3 of the PMF Pyramid, not UX. Low retention suggests needs are not underserved enough, while churn after onboarding indicates the value proposition is not landing. Fix these before investing in UX improvements.

The framework is less useful when importance-satisfaction scores come from internal team guesses rather than real customer research, or when the 40% survey benchmark is averaged across all user types instead of segmented by the core target customer.