I like the idea of asking for payment during prototype demonstration, and watching how the surprise plays out (an idea I saw somewhere in one of the links in this article), but I could see it being fairly risky. Are there downsides to trying this that folks have experienced?
Product-market fit for a B2B company
11–20 of 38 posts
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#12> Enterprises buy what other enterprises have already approved. I understand why vendors believe this. But I had my share of purchasing discussions when I worked in Enterprise IT, and this was a factor in our decision-making literally zero times. But we never told the sale guys that when they put a bunch of logos into a presentation. We smiled and nodded at all the crap they threw at us, and then promptly ignored 80%…
When I worked in Enterprise IT evaluating new products for a Fortune 50 company it was pretty much the same way. The three biggest things that we looked at were functionality, support and the stability of the company.
We needed to know that it could do what we needed it to do and that there were enough support resources that we could get someone on the phone if we had an emergency. It is not cheap to integrate new software into the systems and processes of a large company so we also needed to know that we weren't going to put in that effort and then have the company go under a year later.
Support and stability were the two biggest issues that limited adoption for early stage startups. We didn't care if you had any big name customers. We just needed to know that your product did what we needed and you'd be able to support us for the long term.
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#13At my startup [0] it's still early days, but we're trying to use the Superhuman "engine" [1] for testing PMF. Basically this is a survey where you ask your users how disappointed they'd be if they couldn't use your product anymore, and if enough say "very disappointed", then you're on to something. By no means is it the only/best measure of PMF, but it's a data point. 0: https://kitemaker.co 1: https://firstround.com…
A company I worked for used this measure and customers were consistently confused by the wording. Happy customers would respond Not Disappointed At All and we'd have to followup and double check if that's what they actually meant (it wasn't).
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#14> Enterprises buy what other enterprises have already approved. I understand why vendors believe this. But I had my share of purchasing discussions when I worked in Enterprise IT, and this was a factor in our decision-making literally zero times. But we never told the sale guys that when they put a bunch of logos into a presentation. We smiled and nodded at all the crap they threw at us, and then promptly ignored 80%…
Not necessarily the logos in the presentation, but I saw a lot of purchases where knowing someone who used the product in other similar companies was a decisive factor in the purchase. These meetings that you mention would almost always involve something in the lines of ”I will ping a friend on company X using this and check what they think of it” . Or the product was being considered in the first place because someo…
OP here. Agree with this. Lack of logos means that you need to do a lot more due diligence so the buyer has to really sneak their head out and put a stake on the ground to buy the product. References & logos make it far easier to justify that the product is well respected and make the process easier. It helps avoid the question: "am I the sucker?"
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#15At my startup [0] it's still early days, but we're trying to use the Superhuman "engine" [1] for testing PMF. Basically this is a survey where you ask your users how disappointed they'd be if they couldn't use your product anymore, and if enough say "very disappointed", then you're on to something. By no means is it the only/best measure of PMF, but it's a data point. 0: https://kitemaker.co 1: https://firstround.com…
OP here. Superhuman's framework is great, but in many enterprises the buyer and decision maker is different - most times you have to build a stronger justification for the exec sponsor to pull the trigger using the value/RoI framework unless the product is cheap enough to flow below the radar. You also need to justify why it makes sense to yank out what you have right now and replace with something else causing a lot of disruption.
Superhuman is not a b2b purchase but more of a prosumer purchase, so the framework works really well for them.
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#16Help me understand what strategies you used to get response from potential customers? I can't even get people respond to me. Reddit and forum bans surveys. Folks joining communities rarely respond to PM. How can I see product-market fit then?
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#17I like the idea of asking for payment during prototype demonstration, and watching how the surprise plays out (an idea I saw somewhere in one of the links in this article), but I could see it being fairly risky. Are there downsides to trying this that folks have experienced?
OP here. This was in the original tweetstorm that got me thinking: https://twitter.com/ibringtraffic/status/1319732207410237440
Strongly believe that you should ask for payment - until then everybody gives nice feedback. But the proof of the putting is in pulling your card/checkbook/Purchase Order out and eating the pudding.
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#18> Enterprises buy what other enterprises have already approved. I understand why vendors believe this. But I had my share of purchasing discussions when I worked in Enterprise IT, and this was a factor in our decision-making literally zero times. But we never told the sale guys that when they put a bunch of logos into a presentation. We smiled and nodded at all the crap they threw at us, and then promptly ignored 80%…
When I worked in Enterprise IT evaluating new products for a Fortune 50 company it was pretty much the same way. The three biggest things that we looked at were functionality, support and the stability of the company. We needed to know that it could do what we needed it to do and that there were enough support resources that we could get someone on the phone if we had an emergency. It is not cheap to integrate new so…
Good traction is a useful proxy for stability no? Not necessarily “big names”, but being the first customer of startup would probably be an automatic no according to your criteria, no?
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#19At my startup [0] it's still early days, but we're trying to use the Superhuman "engine" [1] for testing PMF. Basically this is a survey where you ask your users how disappointed they'd be if they couldn't use your product anymore, and if enough say "very disappointed", then you're on to something. By no means is it the only/best measure of PMF, but it's a data point. 0: https://kitemaker.co 1: https://firstround.com…
In your experience, how does that compare to measuring continual "use" of your product, like churn, cohort tracking, and others? From the linked article, I'd say the "what's missing" question is perhaps the best signal, if customers list tons of missing things yet continue using the product despite those shortcomings, as measured by usage stats for instance, then you know you not only have PMF but also the beginnings…
OP here. Always a good place to be in. Hard numbers is more valuable but you need to think about how to address the concerns else you will hit a glass ceiling, or the moment they find an alternative they will jump. Thinking about lock-in is very important.
Re: Product-market fit for a B2B company
#20At my startup [0] it's still early days, but we're trying to use the Superhuman "engine" [1] for testing PMF. Basically this is a survey where you ask your users how disappointed they'd be if they couldn't use your product anymore, and if enough say "very disappointed", then you're on to something. By no means is it the only/best measure of PMF, but it's a data point. 0: https://kitemaker.co 1: https://firstround.com…
OP here. Superhuman's framework is great, but in many enterprises the buyer and decision maker is different - most times you have to build a stronger justification for the exec sponsor to pull the trigger using the value/RoI framework unless the product is cheap enough to flow below the radar. You also need to justify why it makes sense to yank out what you have right now and replace with something else causing a lot…
This definitely resonates. We’re building a product management/issue tracker and it sometimes happy that we have very satisfied users who are then forced into using Jira or something else because of company-wide mandates.