The High-Bar Sean Ellis PMF Test
by Jag Duggal • Chief Product Officer (CPO) at Nubank
Jag Duggal is the Chief Product Officer at Nubank, leading product strategy for one of the world's largest digital banking platforms. Previously, he served as Director of Product Management at Facebook (Meta) and held senior strategy and product roles at Quantcast and Google.
🎙️ Episode Context
Jag Duggal discusses how Nubank grew to be larger than major US fintechs combined through word-of-mouth and a fanatical focus on customer love. He details their strict criteria for scaling products based on modified Sean Ellis scores, the importance of being "fundamentally different" rather than incrementally better, and how to execute hypothesis-driven customer research.
Problem It Solves
Prevents teams from scaling mediocre products that result in high churn and wasted marketing budget.
Framework Overview
Nubank utilizes the Sean Ellis survey ('How disappointed would you be if this product went away?') as a strict gate. They adjust the standard 40% threshold up to 50% to account for cultural politeness in Latin America, ensuring true 'fanatical love' before growth investment.
🧠 Framework Structure
Survey customers asking if they would...
Set a strict threshold (e.g., 50%)—if...
If the aggregate score is low, analyz...
Iterate features specifically for tha...
When to Use
During the Alpha/Beta phase before allocating significant marketing budget or engineering resources for scaling.
Common Mistakes
Accepting 'somewhat disappointed' as validation or scaling due to organizational pressure despite low scores.
Real World Example
For their 'Payments Assistant' feature, the initial score was ~40%. They found a specific cohort (users with 4+ bills on 2+ rails) who scored 70%. They refocused the product on multi-rail automation for these users before scaling to 10M+ actives.
We rarely scale a project until we know the Sean Ellis score hit a threshold that we find really compelling.
— Jag Duggal