I am glad to continue the discussion and narrow it as much as possible:
Please forget the "novel" meaning for a while, and let's continue with the CRM example. I am a Hubspot customer now. As most companies we have used spreadsheets, vTiger [1], SugarCRM [2], among other apps. My main point was that if they are not/were succesful by the HN startup definition is because they had issues in the GTM not in PMF and this is a common confusion. There was always PMF for CRMs the problem is marketing/selling them. That market is so huge and known that thinking in PMF is deviating the attention from just selling! That is what my "middle east business side" says.
Please forget the "novel" meaning for a while, and let's continue with the CRM example. I am a Hubspot customer now. As most companies we have used spreadsheets, vTiger [1], SugarCRM [2], among other apps. My main point was that if they are not/were succesful by the HN startup definition is because they had issues in the GTM not in PMF and this is a common confusion. There was always PMF for CRMs the problem is marketing/selling them. That market is so huge and known that thinking in PMF is deviating the attention from just selling! That is what my "middle east business side" says.
[1] https://www.vtiger.com/
[2] https://www.sugarcrm.com/