Hey y’all - In the early days of building, founders often get stuck crafting the “perfect” customer persona. But here’s the truth: legendary products weren’t born from focus group fantasies, they were forged through sharp utility.

Think Dropbox, Notion, or Calendly. None of them waited for personas to be polished. They built something undeniably useful, and people found a way to make it their own.

When you're in the zero-to-one stage, don’t over-index on avatars or user archetypes. Build the tool that solves a real, painful problem. If it's that good, your users will self-select.

Let your product speak first. The personas will follow.

Here’s today at a glance:

PS - Become a member to get access to my founder membership including an engaged community, fundraising support, fireside chats and more.

🔗 Mohit’s Picks

My favourite finds of the week 

• Elon Musk’s Mother Shares His Computer Aptitude Test Results From When He Was 17 [Link]

• Why cloud-Native AI is the future of enterprises [Link]

• The Success Story of No Broker [Link]

• Don't Let the Gig Economy Ruin Your Business [Link]

• 5 Ways To Land Sales Calls With Your Dream Customers [Link]

• How Indian Startups Are Adopting AI And Real-Time Data To Drive Rapid Decisions [Link]

• The AI race has just begun, and India is bang on track [Link]

💡Opportunity: Local Events Marketplace for Skill-Based Workshops

There’s a quiet revolution happening across India, from pottery workshops in Pune to calligraphy sessions in Lucknow. These informal, skill-based weekend events are becoming the go-to choice for urban dwellers craving hands-on experiences. But the infrastructure around them? Still messy.

👉 Opportunity: Build a clean, user-friendly B2C marketplace for discovering and hosting in-person workshops across Tier 1 and Tier 2 Indian cities.

Key platform features:

• Event listings with UPI/Razorpay integration

• One-tap WhatsApp reminders for attendees

• Templates for instructors, certificates, promo banners, and pre-filled FAQs

• Hyperlocal discovery with pincode-based filtering

🎯 Why now?

• Urban audiences are seeking “offline novelty”, something screen-free and social

• Creators want to teach live but lack structured platforms beyond noisy WhatsApp groups and Instagram DMs

• There’s no mainstream app that makes these events as easy to list and book as ordering dinner

This isn’t just about hobbies. It’s about reimagining hyperlocal learning, helping creators earn from in-person expertise, and giving users meaningful ways to connect and grow, beyond the screen.

🧠 Framework: The Market-Product Match Matrix

Before you even start chasing Product-Market Fit (PMF), take a breath and ask: Do I have a Market-Product Match? This is your essential pre-PMF reality check, because PMF isn’t just about user retention; it’s about relevance from Day 1.

Here’s the checklist that matters:

✅ Large + Growing Market: You’re not building in a tiny niche. There’s clear headroom for scale.
✅ Known Pain or Desire: The problem is obvious to your audience. No education required.
✅ Low-switching-cost Incumbents: Your competitors aren’t irreplaceable. There’s room to stand out.
✅ One-Session Prototype Value: Can someone feel the core value in just one session?

If you check these four boxes, you're not just building for potential-you’re aligning your product with real, visible momentum. Most founders burn cycles iterating on features when what they need is sharper relevance.

PMF doesn’t come from just shipping more. It starts with understanding what your market actually cares about, and proving your solution clicks from the first touchpoint.

🛠️ Tool: Trickle

Trickle.so is an underrated tool that lets you curate, organize, and share content flows from Twitter, YouTube, Substack, and PDFs, all in one clean stream.

Great for:

• Founder knowledge capture

• Sharing curated learnings with your team

• Turning content into micro-courses

Use case:
👉 Create a “GTM Learning Track” for new hires
👉 Or a “Fundraising Prep” track for co-founders

📈 Trend: “Text-to-Task” Interfaces Are the Next UX Leap

We’re entering a new phase of UX, where typing a natural sentence triggers full workflows. AI is moving beyond chat and into action, seamlessly integrating with the tools we already use.

Early adopters are already seeing it:

✉️ Email: “Summarize this thread & draft a reply” → Done.
📞 CRM: “Show me 3 leads who haven’t replied in 5 days” → Sorted.
📄 Docs: “Create an investor brief from this Notion board” → Generated.

Why this shift matters:

✅ Founders and teams skip clunky UIs - no clicks, just outcomes.
✅ Focus shifts to intent, not navigation - your words become the new control panel.
✅ Mobile-first India gets a UX upgrade - perfect for tight screens and fast actions.

This trend is about more than convenience, it’s the beginning of interfaces where AI becomes invisible yet indispensable. Just like search boxes changed the internet, “text-to-task” commands will change how we build, delegate, and execute.

💬 Quote: Marc Andreessen 

It’s tempting to obsess over branding, social media strategy, or the perfect positioning statement, but Marc Andreessen reminds us: none of it matters until the product is undeniably great.

When your product solves a sharp pain or unlocks real joy, everything else falls into place.
Your deck becomes obvious.
Your tweets become magnetic.
Your messaging becomes effortless.

Because you’re not spinning a story, you’re simply reflecting the truth users already feel.

In early stages, don’t waste cycles polishing the narrative.
Polish the product. Let it do the talking.

Get to something users can’t shut up about, and the rest will echo naturally.