Plural Energy’s “Religion Test”: The Product-Market Fit Signal Every Platform Founder Needs

Plural Energy’s “Religion Test”: The Product-Market Fit Signal Every Platform Founder Needs

Most founders mistake polite interest for product-market fit. They get positive customer calls, encouraging feedback, even verbal commitments—and think they’ve found it. Then they scale, and nothing happens. The disconnect? They never found religion.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Adam Silver, CEO and Co-Founder of Plural Energy, shared a surprisingly metaphorical but deeply practical test for knowing when you’ve truly found product-market fit. He calls it “finding religion”—the moment when your core insight becomes accepted, obvious truth to your customers. Here’s what that actually means and how to know when you’ve found it.

The False Positives of Early Customer Discovery

Adam spent weeks talking to large renewable energy developers about market inefficiencies in clean energy financing. He was following all the startup playbook rules. The result? “I was like the most demoralized entrepreneur ever. I just kept hearing like, oh, nothing to solve here, kid,” Adam recalls.

This is the danger zone most founders find themselves in. You’re getting feedback, people are taking your calls, but something fundamental is missing. The problem you’re describing doesn’t resonate as urgent or even real.

Adam was stuck here until he made a critical pivot: he stopped talking to large players and started talking to smaller developers.

What “Finding Religion” Actually Means

“There’s a point in your process, where you start to feel like you found some, like, I guess, religion,” Adam explains. “Where when you’re talking to your customers or your users that you can say something that it just seems to be like a accepted, believed truth about the world.”

This isn’t about getting customers to agree after lengthy explanation. It’s about discovering a truth so self-evident to your target segment that mentioning it creates instant recognition. Not “interesting point”—but “yes, exactly, that’s been driving me crazy.”

When Adam talked to smaller developers about the “missing middle”—”projects that are too big for you and my rooftop, but too small to be worth KKR’s time, that are really high quality and absolutely struggle to get financing”—they didn’t need convincing. The problem statement itself was the proof.

The Feeling When You Find It

Adam describes the shift: “Company building is just kind of hits a different stride because, you know, like I’m onto something, I’m building the right thing.”

This isn’t overconfidence—it’s the certainty that comes from customers finishing your sentences, from prospects becoming believers after one conversation, from the problem being so obvious that explaining your solution feels almost unnecessary.

Before religion: customer conversations feel like persuasion. After religion: they feel like commiseration. You’re both acknowledging a shared reality.

The Platform Founder’s Challenge: Multiple Religions

Here’s where it gets harder. “Obviously that gets harder when you’re building a platform because you have to do that twice, three times, four times, however many times it is,” Adam notes.

Plural Energy needed religion with both renewable energy developers (who couldn’t access capital) and investors (frustrated by lack of access to mid-sized deals). Finding religion with developers wasn’t enough.

This is why platform businesses take longer to reach PMF. You’re not looking for one moment of clarity—you’re looking for multiple moments with different stakeholders.

How to Know You Haven’t Found It Yet

The absence of religion has specific symptoms:

Long sales cycles with unclear objections: Prospects keep pushing decisions without clear reasons.

Need for extensive education: You spend more time explaining the problem than the solution.

Positive but passive responses: “This is interesting” means polite rejection. Religion creates active enthusiasm.

High interest, low conversion: Excitement without commitments means intrigue, not necessity.

Constant messaging pivots: If you keep trying new angles, you haven’t found the self-evident one.

The Test: Can You State the Problem in One Sentence?

Can you state your core insight in a single sentence that makes your target customer immediately say “yes, exactly”?

For Plural Energy with developers: “High-quality mid-sized renewable energy projects can’t access capital.” Not “financing could be more efficient”—but a specific, concrete problem the missing middle immediately recognizes.

If your problem statement requires paragraphs of context or explanation, you haven’t found religion yet. Religion is simple, obvious, and self-evident to your target segment.

The Wrong Way to Find Religion

You can’t logic your way into religion. Adam didn’t convince large infrastructure funds they had a problem. He found different customers who already knew they had the problem.

This is critical: finding religion isn’t about better messaging. It’s about finding the segment where your core insight is already their lived experience. You’re not creating belief—you’re discovering existing belief.

Too many founders waste months trying to convince the wrong segment. Your job isn’t to make people see the problem. It’s to find people who already see it so clearly they’re desperate for someone to fix it.

When to Scale

Don’t scale until you’ve found religion. “Company building is just kind of hits a different stride” after you find it—because customer acquisition becomes pattern matching rather than persuasion.

Before religion: every customer conversation is custom, with unique objections and different angles.

After religion: customer conversations follow a pattern. The same problem resonates. Scaling becomes about reaching more believers, not convincing skeptics.

For platform businesses, find religion on all sides before aggressive scaling. One side with religion and one without creates a wobbly foundation.

The Religion Framework

Here’s how to apply this:

Test your current segment: State your core insight to ten target customers. How many immediately resonate versus how many need convincing? If fewer than seven have instant recognition, you’re in the wrong segment.

Pivot the segment, not the pitch: If your problem doesn’t resonate, don’t try new ways to explain it. Try new people to explain it to.

Look for intensity, not interest: Religion creates urgency. Polite interest means no religion yet.

Watch for finish-my-sentences moments: When prospects start describing their pain using your exact framing unprompted, you’re close.

For platforms, map each side separately: Each stakeholder group needs their own religion. Don’t assume one side’s belief transfers to another.

The Unfair Advantage

Once you find religion, you have something competitors can’t easily replicate: a segment that believes. They’re not evaluating alternatives. They’ve found someone who gets it. That emotional connection—born from shared obvious truth—creates switching costs no feature parity can overcome.

Stop trying to create believers. Start finding them.