Startup 101-Product/Market Fit

Cody Gaskin
Nov 5 · 4 min read

The startup industry has many lessons to teach young entrepreneurs or any industry focused on building out software products. I want to raise with you, probably one of the most significant concepts that have ever come out of the startup industry, Product/Market Fit.

The old adage rings true! Generally, 9 out of 10 startups fail. There have been many white papers published and tonnes of research done on this very topic with varying answers. Depending on where you look, as to the reason why startups and their products fail.

With so many startups failing, there is bound to be many lessons learnt.

Most of what will be discussed in this article are not profoundly new, but what I hope to achieve is to plant the seed of interest. To allow you to discover for yourself, just as I have, what every product builder needs to know about getting a successful product to scale.

Why do startups fail?

According to CB Insights, 42% of Startups fail due to their failure to find a market for their product. These figures are based purely on Startups, and we can see that finding a sweet-spot between your product and your customer market is challenging to achieve.

What is product/market fit?

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” — Marc Andreesen

Could you be a little more specific…

Let’s say you have a product that meets a specific need of your customer. If your customer is happy to use your product (and willing to pay for it) to satisfy their need, then you may have a great product.

But if you don’t have enough customers who want to use your product to make your product sustainable, then you may be in a lousy market.

What you need is to find a problem that enough people have that can be solved by your product in a way that is better than any alternative they currently have available.

Why then is it so challenging to attain product/market fit? We often go about it the wrong way. We usually start with the idea, create the product and try to find a market that fits it — This is a very traditional way of building new products.

Start with the customer problem.

Understanding the customer and the problems they encounter should be your primary goal as a product builder. If you know this, then trying to solve their problems with a product becomes easier.

From my experience and research, these few questions (the 5Ds) are a good start of setting you in the right direction when attempting to get to product/market fit.

  1. Do I understand the customer problem?
  2. Does the customer have a problem worth solving?
  3. Do I have a solution better than current alternatives?
  4. Do I have a product people enjoy using?
  5. Do I have a market big enough to sustain my business model?

How do you get to product/market fit?

“Those who have product/market fit — know they have it. Those who don’t know — don’t have it.”

Once you have a firm grasp of the problem you want to solve for, the audience who experience that problem and the size and market this problem reaches, then you can move onto solving for it.

Get your MVP out asap — It doesn’t matter at this stage how efficiently you solve their problem or how pretty your UI looks. What you need to focus on is learning more about how your solution solves their problem, how willing your customer is to pay for your solution, and whether or not you are solving a problem worth solving.

It’s easier said than done, but with enough feedback through your iterations of solutions, you should get to a point where you have a solution to a real problem that many customers are lining up to pay for. That’s when you have product/market fit, when the demand for your product starts outweighing your supply — that’s when it’s time to scale.

So, to wrap it all up…

Product/market fit is difficult to achieve — but the answer to it lies with our customer and the problems they face. We need to be aware of the pitfalls of falling in love with our idea or solution. So much that we are too attached to it when we need to pivot — which often leads to pivoting our solution away from our customer and onto a different customer, we think it could fit. What we need to do is focus all our energy and attention to solving a particular problem. Regardless of how our solution changes along the way, we still pivot in the direction of the customer and the issues they face.

Some bonus content to help figure this all out…

YouTube Videos

How to Find Product Market Fit — Peter Reinhardt

How To Find Product Market Fit — David Rusenko

10 Steps to Product-Market Fit — Ash Maurya

A Playbook for Achieving Product Market — Dan Olsen

Sarah Chou on Finding Product-Market Fit in the Education Industry — at YC Edtech Night

Online Reading

The PMARC Guide to Startups — Marc Andreesen

How To Achieve Product-Market Fit — Hayley Leibson

Product/Market Fit: What it really means, How to Measure It, and Where to find it — Eric Jorgenson

12 Things about Product-Market Fit — Tren Griffin

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade