The Real Product Market Fit • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#61

Post by axrd » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

mwseibel wrote: post #16

jonnathanson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be really valuable to a lot of founders (myself included).

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#62

Post by gmarx » Tue, Jun 28, 2016, 6:08 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #60

gmarx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Cool analogy. However don't some startups actually open up things that we didn't even know were painful? E.g I was happy staying in hotels. I wasn't on fire looking to stay at someone's house. I'm guessing the hosts weren't on fire either having random strangers over. Facebook, Google, Amazon. I was very happy with the alternatives. They just did somethings better. Although Facebook is kind of dead to me. Haven't ope…

If you didn't know you were in pain, you weren't in pain. If you didn't know your hair was on fire, your hair wasn't on fire. I suppose if you squint hard enough you can make any of these support the authors contention.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#63

Post by btcboss » Wed, Jun 29, 2016, 3:27 AM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #54

btcboss wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you handed them a brick they would still grab it and try to hit themselves on the head to put out the fire. You need to find problems so dire that users are willing try half-baked, v1, imperfect solutions." this kind of falls into line with Reid Hoffman's famous quote: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late." I think these statements paint a wide brush and fail…

"If your product's core value prop is UI/UX/ease of use" then you're obviously not entering/creating a new market, nor you are attempting to find a product/market fit, are you? It pretty much implies that you're attempting to overtake existing competitors who have found product/market fit, where people have options to fill their need but do so grudgingly because of their UX quality. Doing that can be a solid business…

"then you're obviously not entering/creating a new market, nor you are attempting to find a product/market fit, are you?"

Yeah, and if you were entering/creating a new market, usually people do not understand why they need the product you are creating and thus the original analogy still does not work.

Overall I just feel the brick analogy is not great because there are no low hanging fruits anymore. If a problem is so painful, there must exist a competitor OR a home made solution.

Agree with the rest of your statements.

Re: The Real Product Market Fit

#64

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Jun 30, 2016, 11:29 AM UTC

btcboss wrote: post #63

PeterisP wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If your product's core value prop is UI/UX/ease of use" then you're obviously not entering/creating a new market, nor you are attempting to find a product/market fit, are you? It pretty much implies that you're attempting to overtake existing competitors who have found product/market fit, where people have options to fill their need but do so grudgingly because of their UX quality. Doing that can be a solid business…

"then you're obviously not entering/creating a new market, nor you are attempting to find a product/market fit, are you?" Yeah, and if you were entering/creating a new market, usually people do not understand why they need the product you are creating and thus the original analogy still does not work. Overall I just feel the brick analogy is not great because there are no low hanging fruits anymore. If a problem is s…

Actually, if I think about this more, then the brick analogy is very useful - if you see someone (or better yet, some whole industry/niche) beating themselves on the head with a metaphorical brick, then this means that they have a very, very important problem and most likely if anyone came to them and told that they have a solution that's simply unpolished but solves most of the problem without hitting your head with the home made brick-solution then the expected response to this description would be "shut up and take my money!".