PMF - It's a Lot Like a Mixtape
Product Market Fit from a DJ's Perspective
When I was 16, I used to make Jazz Hop. It’s a bit like the secret love child of Jazz and Hip Hop. Think Nujabes’ Aruarian Dance. Most of the tracks I made were fun and fine but not particularly good.
However, like all good art, once in a while, you craft a banger. It’s the song you keep listening to long after mixing and mastering it.
When your song is that good, you just want to share it. You go to Reddit, social media, playlists, YouTubers, and anyone with ears.
Jazz Hop is pretty niche, so posting to r/MetalHeads will be met with silence, or worse, passionate and righteous fury. But the people who get it will really get it. They’ll put it in their playlists, share it with their friends, play it on aux, and at some point, they’ll help you improve. Someone with a music degree comments on your composition arrangement. Thus, you look up what musical arrangement is and watch a few YouTube videos at 2 in the morning.
I didn’t realize it then, but this is the exact same experience with launching an app.
(I promise, I’m not a LinkedIn Maxxer)
The Itch - Why Did I Make Setto?
February 14, 2026. Palo Alto, CA. I spent my Valentine’s weekend at TreeHacks, Stanford’s premier hackathon, rubbing shoulders with people selling startups over summer break, writing proposals for data centers in space, or making the next big AI workflow. Some of the smartest and youngest folks in the game, all in one room.
Yet, no one was talking about music.
No one I spoke to wanted to build something that my friends at radio stations would use, or talk about. No one else listened to Paris Texas or Jazz Fusion, let alone thought about or shipped a product for that community.
In the moment, I felt just as capable as those folks. Hence, after I returned to Kansas, I had a lingering thought. If they can do it, why can’t I?
So I built Setto. An on-device personal DJ. You pick a few artists, start swiping, and the DJ learns your taste in real time. The problem it solves is pretty straightforward:
“I can’t discover new music.”
I pay for Apple Music but open Spotify weekly for its Discovery playlists, keep a second YouTube account for DJ mixes, underground artists and music commentary. Yet with all these options, I don’t really have any agency over what I’m shown and I don’t want to pay for an extra platform just for one feature.
That frustration had been sitting with me for years. I never acted on it. Setto was me finally acting on it.
When To Share (Launch)?
The founders I met at TreeHacks all said the same thing: launch as soon as possible. In the olden days, a public TestFlight would be the best way to test your app idea and core flow. But after talking with some successful founders, I’d tweak that advice for app developers specifically. Launch as soon as:
Your app solves a problem.
Your app has a story.
It works on another person’s device and solves their problem.
The UI is easy enough for your mom to use.
It doesn’t crash while solving the problem.
If your app doesn’t solve a problem, why would someone download it? The problem doesn’t have to be altruistic or revolutionary. It just has to be real.
The best example might be the Flashlight app. Fun fact, there was no way to turn on the flashlight on old iPhones independently from the Camera app’s flash. One of the most popular apps at the time added this feature before Apple added it to iOS. Real problem. Simple solution.
With Setto, having a problem that’s very close to your heart is a magical thing. And being able to execute well on it is even better. It can be intoxicating at times, especially when it works.
The reason I push against having a TestFlight is because every bit of friction that stands between the user and your app is friction between you and feedback to make the app better. If your app’s pitch isn’t breath taking enough for a user to overcome these hurdles, then they simply won’t. Thus, it’s in your best interest to minimize the distance between your friends (users) and the app.
The People Who Get It
Once the app reached a state of cool I felt comfortable with, the inner producer in me came out and I wanted to show it to everyone and their friends and their grandparents. I shared it with folks in person, Discord servers and Slack. However, the people who really got it were on r/AppleMusic.
They had the same frustrations I had. They liked the vision. Even when the app wasn’t perfect, the fact that someone was taking the time to build something for their community was really well received. About a thousand downloads the day I shared it and tons of valuable feedback. I talk about the details in Building Setto 1.
Anyways, this is the mixtape dynamic from earlier. You don’t post Jazz Hop to r/MetalHeads. You find the room where people already care about the thing you care about and you show them what you made. If it’s good, they’ll tell you. If it’s not, they’ll tell you that too.
Finding a community of passionate friends who understand and relate with your project is tonnes of fun. Being able to recuperate their enthusiasm strengthens that dynamic. “Product-Market Fit” honestly seems like finding community for your music.
A nice metric I found for how good the app is doing isn’t downloads or star ratings. It’s the energy of the comments. Version 1.0 got tons of comments with feature requests and easy wins. The next patch got complaints about the algorithm. The version after that got a pretty tame and quiet reaction but maintained solid upvotes. The vibe of the room tells you more than the numbers.
When All’s Said & Done
If you have a great mixtape and share it with the right people, it will go places. Otherwise, they’ll give it a listen, some kind words, and let it gather dust in their glovebox.
Setto was supposed to be an experiment. A way to see if I can do it, and if so, what I can learn about making music apps such that the next passionate friend can pick up where I left off. That might be me in a few weeks or you, dear reader.
Special shoutout to my friends for testing the early versions of Setto! Thanks Joel A. Adejola for the constant UI/UX critiques and discussions about the core product’s goal. Thanks NealRigg for grilling the DJ’s recommendations when they were buns. Thanks Gage for helping me polish the ML and making me listen to the Frank Ocean discography.
Some Good Music I Listened To While Writing
Found with Setto.
I crafted a Set with Sheena Ringo, Ego Wrappin and Soil & Pimp Sessions.
Thus guiding me to UA and Hikaru which are a really fascinating side of the J Pop industry. Hikaru grew up in New York and brought East Coast R&B to J Pop in the 90s and UA is just really interesting. Her stage name actually comes from the Swahili word for flower and in WAKEUP, she collaborates with MFS who’s a rapper from Osaka. I thought these 2 artists bring a really unique edge to J Pop.
Setto on the App Store and the super pretty Setto website.
In case I don’t see you again, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.