This video discusses goals for startups before Product-Market Fit, or PMF. The hosts emphasize making 100 real users genuinely love the product before obsessing over weekly growth charts or fundraising. The aim is not to embellish numbers, but to deliver real value and an experience customers would find painful to lose.

1. The Impatient Starting Point of "7% Growth Every Week"

The conversation opens with a familiar question: "If we've launched but aren't growing 7% a week, aren't we failing?" It reflects YC's widely circulated 7% weekly growth advice, but Dalton warns against applying it mechanically to an early startup.

Founders from companies such as Google or Meta, with huge user bases and datasets, may want to present graphs, A/B tests, and analytics immediately after launch. Yet with only three users, that analysis means almost nothing.

"How many users do you have?"
"Three."
"Then never show me this graph again. Without users, graphs are a waste of time."

If all three leave, there are effectively zero users. Discussing weekly growth then may be a way to avoid reality.

"We had three, but they all left."
"Then you have zero users. Let's not talk about weekly growth."

Dalton sees running a large company after PMF and running a startup before PMF as entirely different. Meta-style analytics or A/B tests in small geographic regions do not help a team with almost no customers. College founders unfamiliar with analytics may even do better because they do not have to unlearn established-company thinking.

2. What Matters Is How You Produce the 7%

Michael says the advice itself is not inherently wrong. For a small startup, 7% growth may require relatively few new users in absolute terms. The difficulty is often less acquiring users than keeping existing users from leaving.

"Growing 7% every week is hard because you cannot grow if all your users leave every week."

The problem is founders reinterpreting the target by choosing flattering metrics. They may use cumulative signups, counting everyone who ever registered, instead of active users or return rates. The numbers look good without showing whether people use or value the product.

"Founders find ways to manipulate metrics to meet the goal. Ultimately, they're fooling themselves."

This resembles Goodhart's Law: once a measure becomes a target, people optimize the measure instead of solving the underlying problem. Weekly growth should result from a working product, but founders begin treating it as the cause of success.

"Seven percent weekly growth is an outcome of doing many things right. Founders think it's what causes the company to succeed."

3. Start With User Behavior and Actual Value

Michael describes questions he asks founders. If a founder claims the product is essential to a customer's core workflow, he asks how much time users must spend with it to get value. The typical answer is about an hour a day.

He then asks whether users actually spend that time. Founders often have not measured it, or discover usage below even an hour a week.

"You said they need an hour a day to get value. If they actually spend only an hour a week, are they really getting value?"

The more fundamental question is whether the product helps customers' businesses, lives, or goals. Michael jokes that founders sometimes look surprised to learn this was the product's purpose.

"Do you think your product helps their business or goals in any way?"
"Is that what products are supposed to do? We thought we had to grow 7% a week."

Following the discussion through often reveals that effectively nobody uses and loves the product. Their advice is not to worry about graphs first. If the product helps nobody, the task is making even a few people think it is amazing, not steepening a chart.

"Don't worry about graphs when you have zero users."
"First make something a few people think is really great."

4. Aim for People Who Love It, Not Merely Like It

Dalton's initial goal is simple: temporarily forget graphs, charts, and weekly growth, and make someone love the product. Three people, then five, is enough to start.

"Do three people love your product? Five? I think this is always where to begin."

He stresses the difference between liking and loving. A customer who considers the product optional is not a true early fan. Someone who loves it integrates it deeply into life or work and would be seriously inconvenienced if it disappeared.

He says a product loved by 100 people almost never shows no growth. If there is none, founders may be exaggerating the love or failing to observe growth correctly.

"In my experience, having 100 people love a product with absolutely no growth is almost impossible."
"Either you're lying about the love, or you're not seeing the growth."

This takes time. Customers may need time to love a product, and founders may need extensive trial and error to discover what deserves that love. Taking time to find the right product can matter more than producing an attractive chart quickly.

5. Why Gmail Was Built Slowly

They cite Gmail creator Paul Buchheit. He did not initially aim for a huge public launch or a steep growth chart. He was its first user, then distributed it very gradually within Google.

He added only one or two users a week and asked what features they needed. Gmail stayed below 100 users for months because he wanted an email product people genuinely loved, not merely a higher user count.

"He added just one or two people a week and asked what else Gmail needed."
"For months it had fewer than 100 users, but he wanted to make a product people loved."

By beta, hundreds of people did more than like Gmail: they depended on it in their lives.

"They didn't think, 'I'll use it if it's there, but I'm fine without it.' They were running their lives on Gmail."

Dalton emphasizes that one of today's most widely used consumer products did not begin with an immediate hockey-stick launch. It grew from a foundation of people who trusted and loved it enough to rely on it.

"He put time and care into a product a small number of people could love and entrust their lives to. That's how great products are built."

6. Do Not Build a Product for Investors

Michael voices a common pressure: fundraising is only months away, investors like graphs, and slowly building something customers love takes too long.

Dalton calls this self-destructive thinking. Once a founder builds for investors rather than users, investors become the startup's real customer.

"You're saying you'll build something for investors rather than users."
"If you treat the entire startup as a product for persuading investors, you cannot win."

Michael acknowledges that this can work briefly. Smart, capable founders may raise a seed round with a convincing story and metrics. But raising seed funding does not guarantee eventual success; it may merely postpone failure.

"You might win the seed round. Getting seed funding doesn't mean you're more likely to win in the end."

Meeting customers, learning what they want, and improving their lives or businesses is better in the long run. Many founders who raised poorly at Demo Day survived on YC funding, solved customer problems, and eventually succeeded greatly. Teams focused from the beginning on investor narratives can instead become trapped in a valuation competition.

Investor-centered thinking also becomes habitual. A culture of "We'll focus on customers after this round" keeps postponing that future.

"You don't want a culture of caring only about investors now and talking to users after getting money. That becomes a bad habit."

7. Stripe and the Power of Customer Obsession

Stripe is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but it did not start by launching widely and showing off weekly growth. The hosts say it remained unlaunched publicly for more than roughly two years, adding customers slowly through invitations and beta access.

"Stripe wasn't growing 7% a week during the batch. It was invite-only, beta-only, and added customers very slowly."

Its problem was complex. A system for accepting payments from users worldwide could not be solved with a hastily built MVP. Michael recalls declining Stripe's offer during the Justin.tv years because the product was not good enough yet. Reaching customers' expectations took time.

A famous early strategy was the "Collison install." Cofounders Patrick and John Collison sat at customers' computers, installed Stripe, and integrated it into actual payment flows.

"They sat at customers' computers and connected Stripe to the payment flow themselves. They were that obsessed with customers."

Michael was also an early Stripe customer. He remembers Patrick frequently messaging on Google Talk to ask how things were going. Having the payments company's CEO personally check his satisfaction was remarkable.

"As an early customer, I talked to Patrick almost every day."
"If something went wrong, I could message him directly. It was special to feel a payment provider cared that much."

Such close customer relationships are a powerful advantage available to early founders. A small user base is not something to be ashamed of; it is an opportunity to engage deeply and fix problems quickly for each customer.

8. Investigate Successful Companies' Actual Early Histories

Dalton recommends researching how favorite companies actually grew at the beginning. Learning early Stripe's story once required lengthy searches through articles and podcasts. In 2026, AI tools have greatly reduced that research cost.

"AI has made research easier. You can learn what companies you admire looked like when they were small."

Compare assumptions about early startups with the actual histories of ten favorite companies. Ask:

• How long did they take from founding to actual launch?
• How long did they take to reach 100 users?
• How long did they take to reach $1 million in annual revenue?
• How did they meet early customers, and what problems did they solve?
• Which narrow group loved them before broad success?

"The real story will differ from what you imagine. You'll probably be shocked."

Charts of companies reaching $100 million in revenue fastest may be interesting, but that need not be your race. The goal is to help customers and create durable value, not merely attract attention quickly.

"Is that the race we're running? No."
"We're trying to help customers, create lasting value, and build enduring companies."

They are not presenting customer service solely as idealism. Whether one enjoys helping people or cares only about success odds and economic rewards, focusing on customer value is the better choice.

"Do it because you like helping people, or because helping people makes you more likely to get rich. Either way, the answer is the same."

9. The Goal: 100 Loving Customers and Measurable Value

Returning to the opening question, what precisely should a pre-PMF startup aim for?

Dalton proposes stages. Start with one genuine user, without qualifications: not a friend doing a favor or someone politely signing up through an investor introduction, but a customer voluntarily using the product because it is valuable. Then progress to ten, 50, and 100.

"Do you have one real user? A genuine user without asterisks or caveats?"
"Then go to ten, 50, and 100."

Having 100 customers or users who love the product is an excellent early goal. That is when a more serious discussion of graphs and growth becomes appropriate.

"If you can get 100 users or customers who love you, that's a fantastic goal."
"Around then, you can start talking about graphs."

Michael adds that "love" must be defined rigorously or it becomes another way to fool oneself. Try to measure the tangible benefits customers receive.

On live-commerce platform Whatnot, sellers' earnings revealed clear value when their incomes changed their lives. If DoorDash accounts for one-third of a restaurant's revenue, its usefulness is evident. If a Twitch streamer can quit a job thanks to streaming income, that is stronger evidence than time spent or satisfaction alone.

"Looking at what sellers earned on Whatnot, you could see they were making an extraordinary living on the platform."
"If DoorDash brings in a third of a restaurant's revenue, the value is obvious."
"At Twitch, streamers could quit their jobs."

Early startups should examine not simply how long customers stay in a product, but whether it helps them earn more, save substantial time, work better, or change their lives. Where possible, express the benefit in money or concrete outcomes.

"If you can express the customer's actual benefit in dollars, now you're really getting started."

10. Closing: Look at Customers' Lives Before the Graph

Before PMF, prioritize adding genuine customers who love the product rather than targeting 7% weekly growth. Graphs matter, but should follow accumulated customer value and strong satisfaction.

Founders must honestly ask:

"Do I actually have users who love my product?"
"If not, what must change to make them love it?"

Reducing users to numbers and staring only at graphs can dehumanize customers. Especially when there are few users, talking with each person and checking whether their life or business has improved is the most important goal. 🚀