Product/Market Fit 101

Product/market fit is the most critical aspect for any startup/early growth stage company. However, defining product/market fit can be challenging for some, as it takes time and requires a deep understanding of your target market.

From my experience over the past six years of working with product startups and early growth stage companies, one thing was for sure that we had to develop several variations of the product in hope of mastering the perfect product/market fit. It was challenging at times, as we continually found ourselves exhaustively explaining how the product worked.

We finally decided instead of having all these bells and whistles, we should focus on the sole feature that provided the most value and utility to the target market. With this strategy, we were able to approach the product/market fit questions a bit differently. 

“When people who know they want your product are happy with what you are happy with what you are offering….then you are ready to shift your focus from product to distribution and win the market.” – Andrew Chen, advisor/investor

Product/market fit is actually easy to get. Take the example of a coffee cup. There are not too many variables in designing a cup, so it is easy to achieve a product/market fit for it. However, digital products are complex and exposes people to take too much market and product risk

The best way I’ve found to measure product market fit is with a survey that Sean Ellis, founder at Growth Hackers & Qualaroo, developed, which asks a number of questions, with the most important one being “How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use this product?” The choices are “Very disappointed”, “Somewhat disappointed” or “Not disappointed (It really isn’t that useful)”. If at least 40% of survey respondents make this choice, there’s product/market fit.

Sean recommends surveying the following people to get the best possible results:

• People that have experienced the core of your product offering
• People that have used your product at least twice
• People that have used your product in the last two weeks

I have built a short survey using Sean’s approach to find out why LinkedIn is so addictive. Will share the results of the survey in a subsequent post. Go ahead and complete the survey at https://bit.ly/linkpmfit which consists of 8 questions and should not take more than 5 minutes to complete.

To summarize, you’ll create the best product if you know more about customers than your competitors.

P.S. Will appreciate if you can spread a word around for this survey in order to achieve a better sense of the results.

(Sajid is a consultant & advisor to SMEs & Startups. He tweets @sajidkhetani)

The article was originally published here