This is why companies have product managers for different markets or solutions. Different contexts require different features.
The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
21–30 of 68 posts
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#22Some but not all of what the author says is true. PMF is a continuum, but also a threshold phenomenon below which it is better called wishful thinking. PMF is dynamic and can be lost, but that is more a question of the M in which it occurs, and the competitive forces there. PMF and defensibility are two quite different things.
PMF is the sine qua non of startups. You should obsess over getting there. Once you have it, you hold a ticket to the arena. Then you have to fight to survive.
The idea of PMF is explored much more helpfully here:
I wrote about it here:
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#23I think this article misunderstands the concept of product-market fit. Many mediocre products sell and with enough sales effort you can create a big business that only sells mediocre products. This shouldn't surprise anybody because most products aren't that great and most businesses make plenty of money regardless.
Product-market fit is not about that. It's not about whether you can find somebody who wants to buy your product. It's not even about whether you have very satisfied customers.
Product-market fit is about having a product that fills such a deep need in the market that you get pulled into an exponential growth trajectory. Instead of growing because of your own marketing efforts you grow because you can't keep the customers/users away. It can be a viral app where every user on average invites more than one other user. It can be an app that every college student wants to be on. It can be anything. But it's always about having some kind of self-reinforcing loop. It's about push versus pull. Peter Thiel referred to Twitter as a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Twitter had such strong PMF that all their operational mistakes just didn't matter.
Users make content. Content makes the platform better. Which results in more users. See step 1.
This is fundamentally different from doubling your signups after you double your adspend. Most businesses don't have product-market fit in this way. Most startups don't. That includes most unicorns. But those that do end up getting huge, and that's why startup investors talk about product-market fit and network effects and viral growth all the time.
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#24Some but not all of what the author says is true. PMF is a continuum, but also a threshold phenomenon below which it is better called wishful thinking. PMF is dynamic and can be lost, but that is more a question of the M in which it occurs, and the competitive forces there. PMF and defensibility are two quite different things. PMF is the sine qua non of startups. You should obsess over getting there. Once you have it…
[deleted]
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#25Some but not all of what the author says is true. PMF is a continuum, but also a threshold phenomenon below which it is better called wishful thinking. PMF is dynamic and can be lost, but that is more a question of the M in which it occurs, and the competitive forces there. PMF and defensibility are two quite different things. PMF is the sine qua non of startups. You should obsess over getting there. Once you have it…
Nice premise but unsatisfactory conclusion.
Experimentation in these contexts is difficult to make good inferences from. I'd like to have read more about how experiments are designed to work well with uncontrolled environments, how to make inference for short-term prediction, and how to plan multiple small experiments to usefully exhaust a search space.
Still, thank you for writing. I enjoyed it. I'd love recommendations for more procedural knowledge if you have any.
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#26"That product doesn't fit this market" seems originally just a polite way of saying "we don't believe you will ever succeed" without explicitly criticising the product or the people.
From an investor's perspective, it might be a condition for investing.
As a model, it's not particularly useful in that it only predicts possible success if a condition for success (PMF) has been demonstrated. And PMF itself is defined in terms of success ... so it's tautological.
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#27"That product doesn't fit this market" seems originally just a polite way of saying "we don't believe you will ever succeed" without explicitly criticising the product or the people. From an investor's perspective, it might be a condition for investing. As a model, it's not particularly useful in that it only predicts possible success if a condition for success (PMF) has been demonstrated. And PMF itself is defined i…
I think the usefulness of it is in articulating that there’s no such thing as a good product in a bad market. A product’s goodness is defined in terms of its fitness to a particular market.
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#28Periodically I read articles or listen to podcasts where people assert that Product Market Fit isn't real, or is wrong, or is somehow broken.
I wonder why? Maybe its part of establishing your own cleverness, "debunking" some popular concept.
For my money, PMF is alive and well. Marc Andreessen is often quoted as saying that product-market fit is when "the market pulls the product out of your hands." and that make sense to me and I don't see its wrong or out of date. It's just very very hard to attain.
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#29This article argues that PMF doesn't exist. Oh and if it does exist, it's not clear when it is achieved. And if you have it, you can lose it. Oh and even if you don't lose it, it doesn't guarantee success.
Whenever I hear arguments for or against something structured like this, I'm immediately skeptical. You see this with people promoting vegan diets. It's better for the environment, and healthier, and meat is gross and gives you ED, and... Sure maybe all those things are true, but what are the odds the author doesn't just have a point of view that he's trying to sell desperately.
Product market fit obviously exists. In my experience, I was at a startup and we had pretty much no sales or usage for about 9 months. Then we pivoted and pretty much overnight we had a few users and 100k ARR within a month or two. Does this mean it would succeed or we couldn't fumble and lose it? Of course not, but that's obvious.
PMF a useful framework to think about your product and question the value proposition you're offering. Take feedback from the market. If no one is using the product, its possible the market has no need for your product.
Re: The Myth of the Product-Market Fit (2013)
#30I think there is some merit behind the idea of Product-Market Fit but my main critique of it is that it neglects the importance of social connections in achieving business success.
It makes it sound like entrepreneurship is some kind of science whereby the entrepreneur interfaces directly with 'the markets' in search of optimum efficiency... It masks the reality that, in fact, entrepreneurship is a far more primal pursuit. Success in it has little to do with efficiency.
Entrepreneurs will often claim that success in business is achieved via clear logical thinking that is free of emotions. But in reality, entrepreneurship is all about emotions and relationships. Entrepreneurs are often highly emotional and think emotionally, not rationally - Yet they think of themselves as rational; they call their social games 'strategy' instead of acknowledging that, underneath the surface, the game is far more primal.