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> First hand lessons
> over eighty failed startups
I dunno... if you've got first hand experience in 80 startups then maybe their failures are because you didn't spend enough time in any single one of them.
Then I read the article:
> We've analyzed why +80 startups have failed
If you've analyzed the startups then I really don't think that counts as "first hand".
Where should the primary responsibility for product market fit lie within a startup? E.g. product owner, CTO, CEO, .. ?
In short - CMO, CEO, COO AND CFO set the overarching strategic objectives (2 or 3 generally), then that gets turned into a framework for strategy and decision making to enable actions to be evaluated, enacted and measured.
At the highest level, the framework consists of:
1. Strategic aspirations - what are you aiming to do, and how will you judge the success or failure of those things? Goals, KPIs and success/failure criteria.
2. Where to compete (product category areas, pricing, distribution methods, experiential factors, communications and branding)
3. How to win - what will preferentially differentiate the offering, and how will it be distinctive against the market competitors.
4. Capabilities audit - what needs to be changed about what the organisation has/does in order to enable that, and how will the effects of that play out throughout the rest of the organisation?
5. Change management - how are those things going to be introduced/amended/reduced/removed and where does the responsibility lay for those changes?
Everything the organisation does should be in support of the strategic objectives, and thought about in relation to that framework.
As a result, the product-market fit comes as a result of product decisions, and how's it's positioned to the market is a result of the decisions for 2 and 3.
Note that product-market fit isn't just about what the product does, but how what it does is communicated to the market. Both of those are vitally important, bit people tend to forget the comms part.
If the org isn't big enough to have a CMO yet, then generally it devolves to the CEO.
It's why start-ups tend to have crappy product-market fit - CEOs tend not to be great at understanding marketing.
My initial thoughts: > First hand lessons > over eighty failed startups I dunno... if you've got first hand experience in 80 startups then maybe their failures are because you didn't spend enough time in any single one of them. Then I read the article: > We've analyzed why +80 startups have failed If you've analyzed the startups then I really don't think that counts as "first hand".
This was a surprisingly good read and data-driven. I found it surprising that the top reason for failure was product-market fit followed by team. I would have thought finance (#3) and tech (#4) would rank higher.
My initial thoughts: > First hand lessons > over eighty failed startups I dunno... if you've got first hand experience in 80 startups then maybe their failures are because you didn't spend enough time in any single one of them. Then I read the article: > We've analyzed why +80 startups have failed If you've analyzed the startups then I really don't think that counts as "first hand".
first hand means you got the info from the first or original source.
Here's Merriam-Webster's:
> obtained by, coming from, or being direct personal observation or experience
These lessons are not from the OP's direct personal observation or experience.
This was a surprisingly good read and data-driven. I found it surprising that the top reason for failure was product-market fit followed by team. I would have thought finance (#3) and tech (#4) would rank higher.
> Disclaimer: the interviews are qualitative, even though the founders were asked similar questions, they weren’t asked to fill out a survey, so to gather the “data” I had to interpret their words and put them into boxes.
Points for being up-front about that, though.
This was a surprisingly good read and data-driven. I found it surprising that the top reason for failure was product-market fit followed by team. I would have thought finance (#3) and tech (#4) would rank higher.
Where should the primary responsibility for product market fit lie within a startup? E.g. product owner, CTO, CEO, .. ?
weird usage of the term "Marketing" to mean business related(product market fit, competition etc).
Yep, that's what marketing is (having studied several subjects in it as part of my business degree back in the 90s). Marketing is not just a synonym for advertising and promotions, etc. Marketing is about finding/building/reaching a market for a product. It involves both identifying/creating a market, and identifying/creating a product for that market. Advertising/promotions is just a small (though expensive) part of…