Product-market fit, explained:
We've all heard about it, "product-market fit" is a term defining the exact balance between the market demand and the product answering the demand.
It was first popularized by Silicon Valley giant, Marc Andreessen in this article.
The problem with product-market fit:
Some founders come from admirable careers or elite universities and yet, many seem to struggle with the notion of product-market fit.
Why?
Because, unlike anything else where the problem-set is often clearly made explicit and visible, product-market fit is often completely abstract; there is no set and "right" answer.
Business and art are quite analogous in the fact that they are an open-ended act of creating something from nothing. Is your audience responding positively to your creation? With both universes, only this question matters.
Often times, it seems as you read blog articles, that product-market fit requires a bajillion customers to be validated.
Here, as in most things, the question comes down to quality vs quantity.
What is the strongest possible relationship to a product?
- 1.000 users browsing your product once a day?
- 50 users who use your product religiously?
In most cases, product-market fit is indicated by the quality of your users' interactions with your product, not the quantity of users.
If this is true for customers, this is perhaps different however, for other businesses.
The difference in defining Product-Market Fit for B2B and B2C:
As B2B generally involve solving pain points for other businesses, there are essentially three way to synthetize product-market fit.
- Through reducing cost. (Cheaper)
- By increasing efficiency. (Faster)
- By creating new forms of revenue for other businesses. (Smarter)
In B2C however, the two main ways to build product-market fit are often more personal:
- Solving your own problems: If the solution you build works for you, chances are it could also work for people in your situation. This was the case for Brex, as the founders (immigrants from Brazil), had a hard time getting corporate credit cards for their startup. They simply pivoted and provided that service themselves to the people in their situation!
- Looking to the future: By simply building better alternatives in the future to address today's problems. Take Filecoin for instance, 8 years ago, they had guessed the crypto world would require decentralized file storage. Today, they became one of the most important layers of crypto infrastructure.
The obstacles we face can often be turned to become the opportunities we seize ourselves.
It's only a matter of recognizing them when they present themselves to us.
Eyes open, the world is in front of us ;) !
