Most founders think product market fit is something you build toward.
They assume it comes from vision, iteration, and persistence. And while those things matter, they miss something more fundamental.
Product market fit is not created in isolation.
It is discovered.
Alberto Gimeno learned that the hard way, over more than a decade of building companies.
And when he finally found it, everything changed.
The Difference You Can Feel
Before Invofox, Alberto and his co-founders built multiple products. Some were interesting. Some were technically strong. None truly worked at scale.
The experience felt familiar to many founders.
“We had to push a boulder up a hill,” he said. “You can make progress, but it takes immense effort.”
That kind of growth is exhausting. It requires constant force just to maintain momentum. And the moment you ease off, everything slips backward.
Then came Invofox.
Almost immediately, something felt different.
“We could see from very, very early that there was actually a pull from the market.”
That shift from push to pull is the clearest signal of product market fit.
- Customers start reaching out instead of needing to be chased
- Conversations move faster
- Closing deals requires less persuasion
And perhaps most importantly, the business begins to feel easier, even as it grows.
Why Most Founders Get This Wrong
There is a common mistake in early-stage companies.
Founders fall in love with solutions.
They build products they find interesting, elegant, or technically impressive. Then they go looking for a problem that fits.
Alberto took a different path, though not intentionally at first.
“We were not a solution looking for a problem. We stumbled on a problem.”
That distinction matters.
Instead of guessing what the market might want, they listened. Repeatedly. Across different conversations and industries.
Eventually, a pattern emerged.
Companies struggled with unstructured data. PDFs, images, and documents that could not easily be turned into usable information.
Only after hearing that problem again and again did they decide to build.
This is where many CEOs can take a step back and reassess.
If your product requires explanation, persuasion, and heavy selling, you may not have product market fit yet.
If your product solves a problem people already recognize, the dynamic shifts.
The Painful Part No One Talks About
Even when you start with a real problem, finding the right market is not straightforward.
In fact, Alberto’s team made a decision that most founders try to avoid.
They pursued multiple markets at once.
“We had these different hypotheses… and we went out to the market and closed a few clients in each category.”
On paper, that sounds efficient.
In reality, it was messy.
Each segment needed something slightly different. The core idea remained the same, but the product requirements diverged quickly.
“That was very painful because they each needed different things.”
Most teams would see that as a sign to narrow focus immediately.
Alberto’s team did something more deliberate.
They stayed in that uncomfortable phase long enough to learn.
- Which customers valued the product most
- Which use cases created urgency
- Which segment showed the strongest pull
Only after reaching meaningful traction did they commit to one direction.
That decision changed everything.
Focus Comes After Learning, Not Before
There is a strong bias in the startup world toward early focus.
Pick a niche. Define your ICP. Go all in.
That advice is useful, but only after you have enough data to make the right call.
Alberto’s team scaled to meaningful revenue before narrowing their focus.
And when they did, growth accelerated.
They moved fully into serving software companies, where the demand was clearest and the product fit best.
That sequence matters.
- Explore broadly
- Validate demand through real customers
- Then commit fully
Skipping the first two steps often leads to premature focus on the wrong market.
Scaling Yourself As The Company Grows
As the business evolves, the CEO’s role must evolve with it.
For Alberto, that shift was made easier by strong co-founders and clear division of responsibilities.
He moved away from deep technical work and focused on go-to-market execution.
But something interesting happened recently.
He returned to coding.
Not because he needed to, but because new tools made it possible again.
“In the last few months… I’m back to coding thanks to the new tools that we have available now.”
This highlights a broader shift happening across companies today.
AI is not just changing products. It is changing roles.
Technical boundaries are lowering. Non-technical leaders can build. Technical leaders can move faster.
The CEO is no longer forced into a single lane.
Instead, the role becomes more fluid, moving between strategy, execution, and exploration as needed.
AI Changes The Sales Conversation
AI has also changed how customers evaluate products.
A few years ago, Alberto’s team spent significant time convincing prospects that their solution was even possible.
That is no longer the case.
“Before, our sales process was 50 percent convincing people that what we were doing is possible.”
Today, the conversation is different.
Prospects already believe in the solution. Many have even tried to build it themselves.
At first glance, that might seem like a threat.
In reality, it has become an advantage.
When companies attempt to solve complex problems internally, they encounter hidden challenges. Accuracy issues, scaling limitations, edge cases that break simple systems.
Those challenges create a more informed buyer.
Instead of explaining the problem, Alberto’s team now engages in deeper, more technical conversations.
The result is stronger alignment and better outcomes.
AI Inside The Company
Internally, AI is not treated as a single initiative.
It is embedded across workflows.
Some of the highest impact areas include:
- Marketing: AI-assisted content strategy, from topic selection to drafting in individual voices
- Operations: Automating complex billing processes that previously consumed entire days
- Internal tools: Custom-built systems that streamline repetitive work
What stands out is not just the use of AI, but how it is applied.
The focus is on removing friction, not replacing people.
Work that once required long, manual effort is now handled more efficiently, allowing the team to focus on higher-value activities.
What This Means For CEOs
Alberto’s journey reinforces a few important ideas that are easy to overlook:
Product market fit is not about perfection. It is about alignment.
You do not need to start with the right market. You need to be willing to test, learn, and adjust.
And perhaps most importantly, growth becomes easier when the market is pulling you forward.
If everything feels hard, it may not be a scaling problem.
It may be a fit problem.
I see many CEOs trying to optimize systems, teams, and processes before they have true product market fit. That is working on the wrong problem.
The right question is simpler.
Where is the pull?
Once you find it, everything else begins to align.
I am Glenn Gow and I coach CEOs. Get in touch if you want to identify where your real product market fit exists and how to scale into it with clarity.
