The Real Product Market Fit • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#11

Post by melvinmt » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:10 PM UTC

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

This (and Andreessen's article) is quite insightful of knowing when you're on the right track or not, but it's more like a "you know it when you see it" kind of advice that is not very helpful in terms of how to get there, or how to design a process that allows you to methodically identify and jump into these market opportunities. Maybe a second article could dive more into that.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#12

Post by stevesearer » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

Having taken the long and slow road (9 years now) to building a business and getting to the place where your last paragraph seems to be where I'm at -- reading was definitely an encouragement this morning. Thank you!

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#13

Post by gmarx » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

It's a charming ideal that I think is vanishingly rare in real life. I also can't see how the hair on fire thing fits with any of the top startups and ex startups I know. In fact I dare say the rapidly rising user count is a separate story from the hair on fire story. The hair on fire tends to be a specialty business problem and still, against all reason, tends to require a pretty rigorous sales cycle. The problems I work on, making the medical record discrete data is of this kind. The other kind is more like Google, Facebook, Uber, AirBnB and those were surprises because no one's hari was on fire. We didn;t know we wanted that stuff until we saw it and then we wanted more and more.

In summary, I guess I disagree with the whole thing

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#14

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:47 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #8

Makes me think of something I say occasionally... you need a problem so compelling that customers will pay for a buggy, incomplete solution, because a buggy, incomplete solution is what you're building.

Exactly!

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#15

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

gmarx wrote: post #13

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

It's a charming ideal that I think is vanishingly rare in real life. I also can't see how the hair on fire thing fits with any of the top startups and ex startups I know. In fact I dare say the rapidly rising user count is a separate story from the hair on fire story. The hair on fire tends to be a specialty business problem and still, against all reason, tends to require a pretty rigorous sales cycle. The problems I…

I know about Airbnb personally and it started with a hair on fire problem - a design conference where all the hotel rooms in the city where sold out. Brian and Joe hosted attendees in their apartment on air beds. That sounds like a hair on fire problem and a brick solution :)

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#16

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

jonnathanson wrote: post #5

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

Hey Michael! Great piece. Signs of product/market fit are often strong and unambiguous, and that needs to be emphasized. That said, many startups get v1 wrong. Not necessarily because their MVP is too clunky, but because they fail to frame (or graap) the correct problem in the first place. Or because their solution to that problem just isn't the right one. (As you aptly put it, founders can get hung up on their solut…

Good point - I think there is a good blog post to be written on this topic.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#17

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:51 PM UTC

cehrnrooth wrote: post #10

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

Thanks for writing this, one of your quotes "Founders often hold too tightly onto solutions and too loosely onto problems" really resonated. If someone were evaluating their next opportunity to tackle, would you recommend they focus less on identifying a specific pain point (that they may know how to solve), and instead identify a large market and then search for inefficiencies (even if they have less domain expertis…

I think I'd optimize for a personal pain point or a pain point of family/friends.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#18

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

melvinmt wrote: post #11

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

This (and Andreessen's article) is quite insightful of knowing when you're on the right track or not, but it's more like a "you know it when you see it" kind of advice that is not very helpful in terms of how to get there, or how to design a process that allows you to methodically identify and jump into these market opportunities. Maybe a second article could dive more into that.

I agree with your point 100% - if we could tell you how to get there we would! I think the biggest point is that many companies die because they scale expenses as if they had reached product market fit when they haven't. We are trying to give you more time to find the right problem/solution.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#19

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

andygcook wrote: post #6

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

Good advice and thanks for sharing, Michael. What would be your advice for a team that has clearly reached product-market fit, but the market is inherently small and their growth stalls out because they've put out most of the fires for people's heads in that space? At that point it's tempting to diversify the product and start solving less dire problems for customers by adding new features, but that makes the product…

That's tricky - this sounds like you might have a lifestyle business (successful product in small market). You can try profiling your customers and see if if there are other companies with the same problems that your aren't serving.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#20

Post by mwseibel » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

stevesearer wrote: post #12

mwseibel wrote: post #2

Hey folks - this is Michael from YC - happy to hear your thoughts on the post

Having taken the long and slow road (9 years now) to building a business and getting to the place where your last paragraph seems to be where I'm at -- reading was definitely an encouragement this morning. Thank you!

You're welcome!