Good questions:

1. Before product-market fit, the only long-term alignment — I believe — should be, precisely, fail fast, fail often.
2. As many as it takes. Ideally, you make them short (two-week cycles or so), but it's difficult to predict how many cycles it will take. With Voice123, it took us one cycle. With Bunny Inc., over 10. With Torre, we have done over 20 and we haven't reached product-market fit yet.