TikTok Is the New PMF Test

Before you write code or raise money, update your messaging or plan a new product line, you should know if your story lands with your audience. Right now, there’s one place that tells you—fast.

TL;DR: TikTok is your fastest way to test if a story lands. If it doesn’t earn attention, your product won’t either. Use it to find Narrative-Market Fit before you write code, raise capital, or build GTM. A 30-second video today could save six months of guessing later.

So I have this theory.

Most start-ups still get product-market fit backwards. 99% of the time, they have an idea, build initially in “stealth mode” like some kind of military cosplay, raise on conviction, then hope their GTM team can brute-force pull.

This has always seemed a bit silly to me. Because if your initial positioning and messaging on ‘launch day’ don’t resonate, your product may well never get the chance. You’ve spent all this time, effort and capital to lose out to other (better or worse) competitors, because your audience didn’t quite get it - or more accurately, you didn’t quite get them.

We keep treating PMF as if it’s discovered post-launch, in user metrics or retention curves. But the truth is simpler: if no one wants what you’re doing, or can’t understand it in the first place, those metrics never materialise. You don’t have to go viral. But you do need a signal. And the earlier you get it, the cheaper the course correction.

For my money, in 2025, the real zero-to-one milestone is not MVP launch or early revenue. It’s whether your idea can earn attention, spark curiosity, and make someone want to learn more. Call it (forgive me) Narrative-Market Fit—and TikTok, improbably, might be the best way to find it.

TikTok is the ultimate testing ground

There was a time when proper quantitative and qualitative research was expensive - and thus why start-ups had to rely on their gut, or a few focus groups cobbled together from friends and a few begged interviews with someone who you thought was your buyer persona (ah, simpler times).

But it’s simply not the case today. This year (and it makes me feel old just typing it) TikTok is becoming a fantastic place to do all the testing a start-up could want. As Business Insider reported recently, startups like Hedra and Cluely are producing cinematic launch videos and racking up millions of views (of… AI-generated babies hosting podcasts, but who am I to judge).

The results are real: traffic spikes, hiring surges, investor outreach. When done right this isn’t vanity, it’s strategy. You’re testing in public whether your idea matters enough for anyone to care.

The value isn’t, I think, in the virality itself but in it’s purity. TikTok works because it strips away legacy advantages. No press list, no network, no follower count? Doesn’t matter. The algorithm rewards clarity, intrigue, and emotional resonance. If your idea connects, it spreads. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There’s no system to game, no price you can pay to fix it in your favour.

In a world where traditional GTM signals are lagging (and so many platforms are pay-to-play) that’s gold. TikTok is, functionally, a high-speed narrative filter. A brutally honest, fast-moving proxy for demand. And that matters, because attention is now the gating function for everything else. You don’t get 10 minutes for a demo or $1M for a round unless you can earn 10 seconds of interest (and when I say it like that, it doesn’t seem unreasonable, does it?).

The MLG Lens: Sensing Before Building

In the Market-Led Growth model I’ve written about elsewhere, everything starts with sensing—the act of putting ideas into the world and watching what comes back. TikTok compresses that sensing loop from months into hours. It lets you test multiple narratives at once, spot unexpected resonance, gather real objections, and evolve your positioning, all before you’ve sunk time and capital into a product no one wants. It's not a substitute for deeper validation. But it’s an unbeatable start.

If I were launching something today - whether it was a new company or a new product line, I wouldn’t spend six weeks writing an internal whitepaper or ten grand on paid ads. I certainly wouldn’t start by building anything (except perhaps a Lovable or Replit-based prototype). I’d start by telling the story out loud, on camera, on TikTok, and watching what happens. Which parts make people lean in? Which parts get ignored? Then I’d clip the 15 seconds that work and embed it directly into my pitch. Not as a gimmick, but as proof: this is what made the market pay attention, and now I’m building it.

The game continues to change.

None of this is about TikTok as a platform. It’s about using the fastest available tool to answer the only question that matters early on: does this story land? If not, fix it before you hire a team or scale infrastructure. If yes, you’ve got momentum worth building on.

The bar has shifted. Today, if your narrative can’t earn attention, your product won’t earn usage. TikTok is not the only tool, but right now, I think it’s the sharpest signal we’ve got. Use it accordingly.

Good luck testing,

Felix

P.S. In Market-Led Growth, every serious build starts with market-sensing. This is a new model for growth in the AI era - drop me a line or visit the site to learn more.