Receipts, not titles: what counts as evidence of fit
A practical guide to the proof that actually predicts whether you’ll win a market.
The Founder Market Fit team5 min read
“Ten years in fintech” sounds like fit. So does “passionate about climate.” Neither tells you much. What predicts a head start is narrower and more concrete: things you did that someone else could check.
Strong receipts
- A verifiable result. “Cut invoice disputes 62% in two quarters” beats “owned billing.” Numbers beat adjectives. One is enough.
- Shipped work. A product page, a repo, a case study — something with a URL that existed in the world.
- Repeated behavior. The side project you started twice. The domain you bought and never used. Patterns in what you do when nobody’s paying you.
- Buyer access. Have you sold to, or sat next to, the person who’d pay?
Weak receipts
- Titles and seniority on their own.
- Interest without action (“I’ve always wanted to…”).
- Adjacent exposure: “my company had a billing team.”
Titles are claims. Shipped work is evidence.
Say vs. do
The most useful signal is often a mismatch. You say you want consumer; everything you’ve shipped is B2B infrastructure. That doesn’t mean you can’t go consumer — it means you’d be starting behind, and you should know that before you begin.
In a Fit Report, we flag these tensions and let you choose how to weigh them: trust your record, trust what you want, or show both. We won’t overrule you. We’ll just make the trade-off visible.
How to gather yours in 15 minutes
- Export your LinkedIn as a PDF (More → Save to PDF) or grab your résumé.
- List two or three things you shipped, with links.
- Write one result someone else could verify.
- Note the ideas you keep coming back to — and anything you already paid for.