Product Market Fit — The way to create successful products

This a topic that I wanted to write here for a long time, this is one of the most important goal when you launch a product or a company.

Why did I decide to talk about this subject?
One month ago, I got married and we decided to spent some weeks on a trip around 5 cities in Europe, We use some apps and websites for planning the trip and support us there.

Another reason is — when I travel I love using the local services and visit “locals places” like, supermarkets, pharmacies, subways etc… — maybe, I’m a little weird. All process can be a good inspiration for us.

I could count with amazing products to help me choose my daily activities, what and where I should eat in every city and select the best option for my case (eg. good and cheap place to dinner).

Today, I selected 1 good example of product with MarketFit that I saw in my trip, if you don’t live in Brazil you probably have seen this service in your city, but for me that was a good example to share here — I love seeing how technology can facilitate the user life and solve some of the city problems. In another post I will talk about the other great examples — but first…

What does the Market Fit mean?

Create the products that solve real users needs in the right time for some market. The user is able to pay for your service? Or spent some time there? Your sales are increasing? Probably you achieved the product market fit moment. [congrats]

Another definition of product Market fit (source: wikipedia)
Product/market fit is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand.

Product/market fit has been identified as a first step to building a successful venture in which the company meets early adopters, gathers feedback and gauges interest in its product(s).

Example

If you live in a big city, probably you share the same feeling that me — moving around the city is a trap.

In my city we are famous per have a crazy traffic jam and we don’t have many and good public transportation options and this is the reason why I decided to use this example here.

User needs:

Big cities need to offer transportation for citizens — Pains — current options are expensive and not scale anymore — the cities need to think about the environment.

Market:

741, 4m people in Europe

Bike rentals — Mobike, Lime, Ofo (I saw only this options, probably it has more brands in this Market)

User Experience

To use this service in most of the apps the user needs do the download, make a registration in the app and add a payment option — to rent a bike it’s necessary to scan the QRCode reader to unlock a bike and start to use. — To find a bike nearby (the user can leave the bike anywhere) — use the GPSs to see wich bike is closer to you.

In 3 years the Chinese company Mobike was evaluated per $2.7 billion and lanched in more than 100 cities — achieved or Not the product Market fit in your opinion?

I hope it helped you!

Cheers,
Fernanda