The Market in Product Market Fit
There are three parts to product market fit (PMF). Yes, you are making a product. Yes, you are trying to make it fit. What you’re trying to make it fit with is the market. Don’t forget that needs work too.
The *Product* must *fit* the *market*. So what market are you going after with your product? Here are some answers I get to this question.
- “Enterprise”
- “Mobile”
- “HR”
- “Startups” (typically the worst answer, have no money and hack)
- “Uni students” (the second worst answer, have less money)
Imagine if you took the same approach to building the product?
Q: “What does it do?”
- “It does productivity”
- “It’s an app”
- “It does HR”
- “It does startup management”
None of those answers would be enough to actually build something. Do provide functional value. They may suit for an intro, but you need a lot more depth. Get specific. Get detailed. Do one function well first.
The same clarity is needed on the market side. Building a product for yourself is hard enough. Building a product for everyone is suicide.
This doesn’t mean you’re building a small business. It’s just starting with a small focus. All big things start small. Nail that small thing and grow.
The hardest thing to comprehend early is that the differences between each market are much bigger than you think. This is particularly true since your product isn’t just the compiled lines of code that produce functions. Your product is everything your customers experience. It’s your website, your brand, your communication, your language, your service, your support, your community. To get it to fit, you have to get a lot of this aligned with the market — so you can see why all of that makes it harder to please different people at once.
Some food for thought:
- Do you have limited resources, lots of uncertainty and should you do whatever you can to maximize your chances of success?
- If you built a product for an super small market segment, would the chances of them loving it (the PMF goal) go up?
- If you got to product market fit in a small segment, are you more likely to be able to expand the product and make more segments love it?
OK, it’s easy to make rational sense in a blog post. But in the stress of the trough of sorrow it’s much harder. It all comes back to the customer. Take a coffee/tea/kombucha break and think about your customer again. Who are they? What do they really need? How do you make their life ridiculously, wonderfully, efficiently better?
- Pick a small market.
- Know that market.
- Nail that market, or move on to another small market.
Easy. :-)
20 Questions on Market: Start Small
Get someone who knows a bit about your business to ask you twenty questions about your the market and be ruthless about who would want your product more. And that is key. Not would they want your product at all. Sure, anyone could probably use it and if they really wanted to get some value out of it. But to begin with you want someone with ‘a triple Advil headache’ sized problem as Gary Swart says. One day you’ll get everyone but start with those that need it the most.
Here is how it might go for a product like Angaza focused on pay-as-you-go Solar.
“Is it for people with zero power or existing solar?”
“Both.”
“No, pick one. Who needs it the most?
“I guess people with zero power. If you have some existing solar it’s less of an issue.”
“OK, is it for young people or old?”
“Middle.”
“What do you mean? Be specific? Give me a single age?”
“30 years of age.”
“Do they have their own home?”
“Yes.”
“Male or female?”
“Both.”
“Pick one.”
“OK, probably female.”
“Do they have kids?”
“Yes.”
“Have they ever used microfinance before?”
“Yes”
“Do they have a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Do they have a TV?”
“No.”
“How much savings do they have?”
- Keep going until you have a microsegment.
- Make them ecstatically happy.
- Grow.
