Why Winners Misread Their Own Success

Here's the ironic coda. Once a startup succeeds, founders and press tell stories about why: the visionary CEO, the brilliant engineering culture, the clever go-to-market. Andreessen's claim is that these are usually not the cause. The cause was reaching product/market fit, and most of the rest followed from it.

This matters for you as a reader of startup advice. Lessons drawn from post-PMF companies (hire slow, polish the product, build the brand) can be actively harmful pre-PMF, where speed and market search are everything.

It also matters for morale. If you're pre-PMF and everything feels broken, that's not proof you're failing. It's the normal state of BPMF life. The only diagnosis worth running is: are we getting closer to fit?