When deals slow down, pipeline gets messy, and sales targets keep slipping, most teams start looking at performance. But what if the problem isn’t your GTM execution at all? What if the real issue is that your product-market fit quietly slipped six months ago—and no one noticed?
In this episode, Toni sits down with Chris Tottman, General Partner at Notion Capital and co-founder of MessageLabs (acquired for $700M). Chris shares a blunt, field-tested view: most startups overestimate their PMF, and the cost shows up in sales inefficiency, customer churn, and wasted marketing spend.
We dig into:
Why weak product-market fit hides behind slow deals, rising CAC, and missed sales targets
How pressure to grow fast pushes teams to sign “tomorrow’s churn”
The real job of early GTM isn’t closing logos, it’s finding the seam of gold in your ICP
Why most companies aren’t actually venture-scale (and what happens when they pretend to be)
The shift from VC-case to PE-case—and what it means for your sales and marketing org
How sales leaders can safely challenge founders who are still pitching a PMF that no longer exists
Main takeaways:
PMF is not permanent. It evolves—or erodes—alongside the market, your product, and your buyer. Keep someone in the org responsible for actively revalidating it.
Your sales team can't fix PMF. No matter how strong your closers are, they can’t overcome a bad fit between problem and solution.
Misalignment is expensive. If marketing is scaling volume but the product only resonates with a niche, you're burning through time, budget, and brand.
Not all growth is good growth. If you’re signing low-fit customers just to hit targets, you’re setting up future churn and future blame.
You might not be a VC case anymore. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with building a profitable, PE-style business—just don’t confuse the two.
🎧 Listen here:
Share this post