Product Market Fit
If you’ve been around the tech/startup/vc space at all for the past 10 years, then you’ve probably heard the term “product market fit” thrown around quite often.
So what is product market fit? And why should you care?
Per Andrew Chen, who runs growth at Uber,
- Product Market fit is when people who know they want your product are happy with what you’re offering
Once you’ve achieved P/M fit, you can start focusing more on distribution.
There are a few things that I’ve learned here that can be quite confusing/complicated, so here are some thoughts on product market fit:
- It can often be hard to test if you’ve actually achieved P/M fit. There are many vanity metrics that can point you in the wrong direction. Press does not validate you. Your friends enjoying the product does not prove anything. Free users on your eventually paid plan does not show that what you are building is working.
- So what does work? I’d focus on a few things. The most important must be feedback and voice from your customers. If you can, even if it’s not at scale, change the life of even just one person, then perhaps you are on to something. If you can build something people want, then you will inevitably reach that product market fit.
- Growth is what happens after your product finds that niche / footing. And that, to me, is one of the most exciting parts. Of course, your product is subject to change and you are going to make alterations. But at that point, you have a full fledged tool/service/product that actually works (not in prototyping or “I guess” stage). You have customers who depend on you and you can go to potential new ones with something in hand.
I am fascinated and compelled by growth. To me, there is nothing more exciting than getting a product in someone’s hands and getting their feedback. I love *launching* things. That may be one reason I write every single day — because I am able to simulate this feeling at low cost and low risk to myself.
Originally published at Jordan Gonen.
By jordangonen on January 20, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.