Product Market Fit Collapse w/ Casey Winters

“My main takeaway…everything feels like quicksand right now.” - Fareed Mosavat

“I’m oscillating between extreme excitement and existential crisis.” - Me

“Depending on the day, I’m either utterly confused or probably wrong but not confused.” - Casey Winters

The Unsolicited Feedback podcast is back for a season 3. We kicked off episode 1 with Casey Winters going deeper on Product Market Fit Collapse.

Those quotes were us reflecting on how we felt day to day after discussing everything that is changing.

“It’s tricky for everyone. Pre-product market fit founders, companies with tens of millions in revenue, even public founders prob feel this way.”

Just a few of the things we discussed:

• Unlike previous tech shifts (mobile, internet), AI is causing exponential rather than linear increases in customer expectations

• The speed of both capability advancement and consumer adoption is unprecedented

• Competition is coming from all directions simultaneously. Incumbents are heavily invested and moving quickly. New startups are emerging. Foundation model companies are expanding rapidly

• Infrastructure and tooling are evolving weekly, making it hard to pick the right stack

And as a result of these things:

• Traditional "disruption playbooks" may not work - this isn't classic low-end disruption

• Companies need to consider more radical self-disruption rather than gradual evolution

• The error rate on predicting winners is extremely high, even among experts

• M&A strategies are shifting where companies are acquiring AI-native leadership (e.g., Grammarly/Coda, Snowflake/Neva). Focus on acquiring both capabilities and adjacent use cases. More product-capability acquisitions vs. pure talent acquisitions

In the end, even successful companies with strong product-market fit are vulnerable of getting sideswiped.

Things discussed in this episode:

• Reforge Insight Analytics

• Product Market Fit Collapse: The AI Tipping Point

• AI Native Product Teams