Founder-Product-Market Fit: Aligning Stars For The Holy Grail of Entrepreneurship

The only thing that matters is getting to product-market fit. — Mark Andreesen, a16z

Corollary: The only thing that matters is getting to founder-product-market fit.

In this article, my goal is to first explain what product-market fit is, why it matters, and tell you some quantitative ways to figure out if you have achieved it. My corollary to the broadly accepted theory of product-market fit is that a founder’s fit to that product and to that market is highly important as well.

After that, I am sharing here my own experiences building vChatter, scaling it to millions of users through explosive growth, my mistakes and going through the whole lifecycle of an idea from 0 to 1 and then back to 0.

What is Product-Market Fit?

Product-Market fit is the nectar craved by all the startups. It is that promise land all the entrepreneurs are searching for. Like many great things in life, very few people actually understand what it is, how to determine whether you have achieved it, and how to get there.

My professor from UC Berkeley, Steve Blank, is the pioneer of the customer development process (which morphed into the…