The first step to product-market fit

It was 2006. We pushed our product to production for the world to see, and world returned with: crickets. So we did the next sensible growth hack — we emailed our friends and family and then asked to them to email their friends and family.

A few days went by, crickets. We were barely growing. We began to double down on marketing, finding a head of marketing to help us scour blogs to run constests as well as other ways to reach potential audiences. Still weeks went by — crickets.

We then went back and iterated on the product. We probably did 3 different product directions but all in the same space — each one feeling more lackluster than the next.

Suffice to say we did not have product-market fit. In fact product and market began to feel like the north and south poles of a magnet — in constant repulsion of each other.

When it came time to assess if we wanted to continue down this route, Facebook had launched its Developer Platform in May 2007. For those who were not around, this was a birth of many new companies: Slide, Zynga, RockYou, etc.. — and a birth of a whole new era.When we got feedback from the board about our possible new direction of going onto Facebook, she said:

Yes, go where the users are!

There were many reasons for the failure of our first product (and company) launch. The bottom line is:

We didn’t build something people wanted.

Looking closer, why we didn’t do this is not only because it is hard, but also because we approached product and market as two separate entities that worked in serially and sometimes against one another:

When something was wrong we looked at it this way:

But we should have looked at it this way from the beginning:

If you think product > market you end up with Google Glass. Well conceived product but no clear reason for me and many others to want it. If you think that market > product then you end of up with many startups that you never heard of that died on the vine thinking they could just spend their way into traction or use pure marketing buzz for traction like Color or Clinkle — Either way it is failure.

As a startup you have two levers to pull: product and market. While, oftentimes people think that product is the one that you are in full control and market has its own whim. That is true — partially. You are 100% in charge of product and market is something you have to work with, but do not see it as a different entity. If you do you will be in danger of seeing them as separate and never will there ever be a fit.

The first step to product-market fit is to see them as equal entities that should continually be in balance.

If you do that right, you are on your way to see this:

A small note: If you are entering into a mature market, such as mobile — the cost of marketing is so high that it is prohibitive. This means that the emphasis on product and a core innovation should be taken into account. Examples of this include: Google, SpaceX, Snapchat, etc…

In other words in mature markets your product has to be so damn good and at the core innovative, that it can overcome the marketing barriers just so product can be seen as equal plane to the market.

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I am the co-founder and Chief Development Officer of Kabam, these perspectives are my own and do not necessarily represent Kabam.