Increase your odds of finding extreme product-market fit

Join a free, intensive 4-day experience designed for exceptional B2B founders early in building the next generation of enterprise.

Apply now

Sonoma, CA
September 27 - 30, 2026

AI makes building easier. Choosing what to build has never been harder.

It doesn’t matter how fast you ship if you’re moving in the wrong direction. After two decades of pre-product-market fit investments, we've created a series of tactical sessions over a hundred founders have used to take a straighter path to PMF.

PMF Method Alumni

From pre-idea to over $750M raised in their first 18 months.

Shachar Hirshberg

Artemis

Imagine if security teams could battle AI with AI.

artemissecurity.com

“The highest return on time invested any early-stage founder can take. PMF Method is truly differentiated in the quality of prescriptive guidance it provides."

$70M Raised

Felicis

First Round

Paul Klein IV

Browserbase

Imagine if agents could browse and interact with the web.

browserbase.com

“If you want to save yourself years of wandering the startup desert, follow the PMF Method."

$67.5M Raised

Notable

Kleiner Perkins

Anne Brandes

Conway

Imagine if fraud detection adapted to threats in real time.

conway.ai

“Definitely go if you have never sold into an enterprise before — it’s not all intuitive, and First Round definitely knows how it’s done."

$7.5M Raised

Kleiner Perkins

First Round

Rune Kvist

AIUC

Imagine if every AI agent came with an insurance policy.

aiuc.com

"The single best way to spend 3 days if you're building a SaaS company."

$55M Raised

Nat Friedman

Daniel Gross

Ribbit Capital

Jean-Denis Greze

Town

Imagine if everyone has an AI assistant that actually worked the way they do.

town.com

"A+, if you are pre-seed to seed, or thinking about starting a company. I feel much better prepared, especially when it comes to founder-led sales and partnership conversations."

$75.7M Raised

a16z

First Round

Andrew Redd

Endurance Energy

Imagine if we could tap into the infinite power potential at the center of the earth.

enduranceenergy.com

"It is the perfect balance of fun, engaging, informative, and directly helpful. It is one of the highest ROI experiences I've ever had."

$62M Raised

Founders Fund

First Round

Snir Kodesh

Petual

Imagine if SOX compliance ran itself.

petual.ai

"If you're looking to learn from the best, augment your early-day discovery process, and build confidence in your market selection (the most important thing), this one's for you."

$40M Raised

a16z

First Round

Yogi Goel

Maxima

Imagine if your accounting team could close the books in a day.

maxima.ai

"Unlike most startup platforms, PMF tells you HOW to find PMF, not just WHAT to do. Highly recommend to every founder. This improves your odds of success materially."

$41M Raised

Redpoint

Kleiner Perkins

Steve El-Hage

Neon Blue

Imagine if every ad you ran was your best one yet.

neonblue.ai

"I feel like I shaved 12 months off the time it would take us to get to product-market fit."

$10M Raised

First Round

Sami Senapathy

Endeavor

Imagine if every factory ran with the precision of software.

endeavor.ai

"I highly recommend PMF Method. Todd is fantastic, and I still use Emery's techniques on founder-led sales. I've told several founder friends they need to do it!"

$40M Raised

AltCap

Craft Ventures

Alex Modon

Unlimited Industries

Imagine if energy scaled as fast as compute.

unlimitedindustries.com

"Really novel frameworks that are actionable as opposed to generic advice you've heard recirculated a million times. It makes finding PMF feel more like a playbook than magic."

$12M Raised

a16z

Michelle Lim

Flint

Imagine if every keyword had its own perfect landing page.

flint.com

"The content was incredibly tactical. The community is also A++: not only are the people extraordinary but they are also very humble."

$5M Raised

Accel

Kabir Nagrecha

Tessera

Imagine if ERP migrations took weeks, not years.

tesseralabs.ai

“Great opportunity to meet founders going through the same questions and challenges you are, and learn the concrete details of navigating the PMF journey.”

$66.7M Raised

a16z

David Graunke

SafetyKit

Imagine if AI agents could do big tech’s dirty work.

safetykit.com

“We're more focused and disciplined in messaging on sales calls and in collateral like our website as a result of PMF Method.”

$27M Raised

Ribbit Capital

First Round

Fall 2026

Your idea is next.

Join the next cohort of AI-native B2B founders on a straighter path to PMF.

Apply now

Uncover what customers need

Learn proven techniques to get to the truth of what customers are truly willing to pay for.

Build the right v1 product

Validate that your product insight can become a big business and figure out where to start.

Land your first enterprise contracts

Sign initial design partners and begin to build a repeatable go-to-market approach.

The Sessions

Session 1: Levels of PMF

Build a foundational understanding of our product-market fit framework including the four levels of PMF, from nascent to extreme — with detailed examples of companies that worked and those that didn’t.

Session 2: Discovery & The 4Ps

Everyone says talk to customers, but most founders just listen for what they want to hear. Learn proven techniques for “dollar driven discovery” and develop your “4Ps” hypothesis: persona, problem, promise, product.

Session 3: Market Selection

Too many founders focus on the house they’re building — not the neighborhood it’s in. Determine whether your chosen market can support a viable venture-scale business with a credible path to at least $100M in ARR.

Session 4: Founder-Led Sales

Many technical founders are great at building a product but less great at selling it. We’ll dive into outreach tactics to feed the top of your funnel and show you how to move customers through it. Land your first design partners and begin to build repeatable revenue.

Session 5: Positioning

Gain clarity on how to talk about your product in plain English: who it’s for, what it is, and what makes it unique and desirable relative to what your target persona already knows.

Session 6: Product Iteration & Pivots

Learn how to think about early product iteration to build a successful MVP. We’ll go over specific success metrics to look for, how to know when the product is “good enough,” and what signs point to a pivot.

Beyond the retreat

Customer discovery feedback
Go-to-market AMA: pricing and renewals
Reunion dinners and demos

Learn from the First Round team

We take 0% of your company.

Over the years, we’ve created a number of programs — from Angel Track to The Review — to freely share what we’ve learned with the broader startup community. Despite all the talk about product-market fit, it didn’t seem like anyone was meaningfully helping founders increase their odds of finding it. So we created PMF Method. We get an inside look at some of tomorrow’s great companies — and you get an inside look at First Round. There are absolutely no financial strings attached, but we’re hoping some of us just might like each other.

Apply now

Everything you need to know about PMF Method.

Apply now

Who should apply?

Any early founder working on a new B2B SaaS company is welcome to apply. Maybe you've been working on an early idea for the past year. Or perhaps you’re still dreaming at your day job, a few months away from taking the leap to found your company. We're also open to founders from all around the world — as long as you've raised less than $2M and can make it to Sonoma for the experience, you're in the running.