The people’s champ must be everything the people can’t be.
On Chance the Rapper, resonance and founder market fit.
Stepping into view in 2013 with unapologetic verses and a label-less irreverence, Chance is a story of resonance. Free music, mass audience. He was (and is) a voice speaking the right language, via the right medium, at the right time. A story of biting content meets new distribution opportunity, birthing much-sought-after-but-seldom-found autonomy. The sound of freedom to many but also (and we can fight on this) one of the purest expressions I’ve seen of founder-market fit.
Founder Market Fit.
Often referenced but seldom explored, founder market fit is the younger sibling, brilliant but quiet, sitting in the shadow of product market fit. Yet you’ll rarely reach the latter without the former. As referenced by a wise First Rounder, founder-market fit is the unique insight a founder holds for the problem that they are going after. At the earliest stages of company formation, it’s the question behind the question when investors ask what you see that others don’t. The secondary, intimate understandings of your customer. The ability to identify and seek out what, to others, is imperceptible. It’s the authenticity from which you build. The urgency with which you move.
Sometimes founders see opportunity from being deeply imbedded in their market. At others, they come from outside, building in. But these insights (and instincts) come long before product market fit. They dictate it.
Chance came from outside, building in — defiant, with a deep understanding of who he was and who he was speaking to, breaking from the long seated norms of a label dominated industry. It is the authenticity and urgency with which he writes, moves, builds that mirror some of the most compelling founders I’ve had the opportunity (or chance) to work with.
I don’t make songs for free I make them for freedom.
Run it back.
Authenticity? Wedged between the ubiquity of Youtube, early froth of Soundcloud and birth of Black Lives Matter, Chance captured the imagination of the weird, at times carefree (but often painfully aware) Black kids. Those who understood Paranoia but also saw themselves in Juice. Those who wanted to support, hear, partake, but didn’t always (or ever) have subscription or CD money. Those scattered somewhere between a new found ability to inform and shape culture, but within a country that still insisted on negating this influence (and existence). Remaining independent, in an industry known for pushing authenticity into a secondary seat, he tangibly told his customer that this here was for them — and met them where they were time and time again.
In founders, these semi-obsessive instincts often appear in those who doggedly pursue their customer, spend time with them, may even live with them. Those deep in their field who’ll have person after person vouch for them, speak wildly about them. Those who know steps two and three before taking step one. Those with a weird(ish), counterintuitive insight about a gap and an end user that they’re fixated by.
Mixtape on mixtape, releasing free music and betting on distribution over immediate dollars — believing that freedom of expression could bring financial freedom — it is this type of fundamental, seemingly crazy decision, that demonstrates the innate understanding of an audience, and hints at founder market fit.
Don’t believe in signing, I seen dollar signs.
But isn’t Chance also the product of perfect timing? Of a very specific opportune moment in the industry? We can ask whether there could have been a Chance at another time, pre-Soundcloud or post-online-artist-saturation, but part of the delicacy of founder market fit is the timing at which this founder sees their market and the urgency with which they move to meet it.
We can ask whether independence was intentional, a calculated bet or happenstance, but it isn’t important — the ability to identify and lean into resonance is more so. The instinct to move quickly, to optimize for velocity of learning by building, releasing and testing with a hunger for feedback, communicates why now is so critical — and why now is when you’re building. Urgently.
In Chance’s case, a 10-day 2011 suspension led to a 10-Day Mixtape released on YouTube & Soundcloud, begot a 2013 Acid Rap drop on Dat Piff raking up 1.5M downloads, brought about a 2015 tinkering with Surf that clocked 618k iTunes downloads in Week 1, seeded an appearance as the first ever independent artist on the SNL stage, brought about the distinct Coloring Book released with a $500k exclusive partnership with Apple Music, and 3 Grammy wins (plus a 4 further nominations). All with full ownership of his craft. A hockey stick of resonance, if you will.
I’mma make sure that they go where they can’t go.
But for me, perhaps the core of this founder market fit are the ways in which Chance’s obsession with his customer bleeds into other aspects of his art and community. Whether supporting education in Chicago, funding youth library programs in his city, acquiring news publications, endorsing young, progressive political candidates, Chance traverses industries, intentionally. Bringing his audience with him into places that, otherwise, they may not be.
With an ongoing hunger to seed change (the same change he sought to push in the music industry), it is his authenticity and obsession with his people that makes resonance transferable across boundaries — speaking (or selling) to the same person in different categories. For Chance, a voice in music mapped most strongly into a voice in politics. For others, moving people mapped into moving food. Or selling books mapped into selling cloud services (and everything). In each case, it is this fervor and unwavering targeting of their customer that pushes the best founders to expand unabashedly.
Made a way, out of no way.
Running it all the way back, my own obsession with Chancelor Bennett started (relatively) early. It was before I Might Need Security first hit tethered headphones on a first week of work (still no AirPods, sorry not sorry) and before my cousin exhaled hearing Blessings under Nairobi rain. Before the truth spoken on Ultralight Beam (although good God that verse is brilliant) or the sobering sounds of Vic Mensa infused Lord Release. Instead, Chance and I met somewhere circa 2013 — Acid Rap layered onto acid washed summer days on Shattuck Ave, dazed in the days of post graduation reckoning.
It was the sound of someone willing to speak and seek the impossible, until it would become inevitable. And it is seeing this in founders, when they meet their market, that is the most inspiring, and obsession-inducing, thing.
If you think this is off the mark or right on it @ me. OR you’re building something weird & wonderful with the first signs of founder-market fit @ me. OR you just think a cup of tea is in order, @ me and @ First Round. I’m right here nash[at]firstround[dot]com.
