The quest of owning a business and finding the product-market fit

If you have watched the Pirates of the Caribbean series, you know the sea is merciless even to the heroes. And in the turbulent waters that is the start-up community of India, everyone is trying to find shallow waters which are the sweet spot between the sea and the land, also known as the product-market fit in the start-up language. Initially, as a bootstrapped start-up, your target segment might be small, and your product(s)/service(s) may satisfy a niche market size. To scale, however, your solution should be able to solve a problem much bigger, something that makes your customers your largest sales team. That happens when your existing customers recognize the value of your product and spread the sentiment by word of mouth, and you are able to replicate the experience for new users.

Simply put, your product has reached the place where it was always supposed to be.

How to determine if you have that?

Finding out if you have a market fit raises more questions than it answers. From gathering a customer review to understanding your customer’s background, what their pain points are, and how you are trying to solve them is an exercise for the long haul. Your team members initially can be your sounding board and contribute as they play the role of your front-line customer. It will help you gauge the understanding of how your product works, or not, leading to a definitive marketing strategy.

All feedback is not constructive

Old feedback does not beget new results, nor will the feedback that comes from users who rarely ever use your product. The type of user affects the value of the criticism your business is taking. You must know who to take it from. Record all feedback separately, to have informed priorities.

Underserved needs are your compass

There are two places you may find your customers underserved; when they are in tangible gain or when they are not in tangible gain. On both occasions, your company has the potential to become the gain creator. By taking an existing activity and making it 10x easier and digital, for example what DocuSign did, or by unlocking a new space altogether, (case in point — Airbnb), you can gauge the willingness of your customers to pay for your services even if you are solving a problem.

If you can give people a new or easier way of making a quick buck or reducing the pricing of your offering to nil (WhatsApp), you can leverage mass adoption and monetise on the free usage.

Pleasure is a virtue

When you find something that is addictive, a market forms around your segment. A great example of the same is e-sports. Needs can be created; however, it is hard to have a predictive pulse on them and most often just be a wild guess. On the other hand however, you may create a need that didn’t exist before and now the world is difficult to imagine without it. Think Uber.

Of luxury and fundamentals

Trapezing on the thin line between need and want, there are plenty of products that fall in the overlap of the two segments. Even on a small budget, your start-up can focus on the narrow and deep dive in that section, potentially dominating the vertical with expertise that can stimulate a spread. If at least 40% of your customers will be disappointed in the hypothesis that your product is no longer on the market, you may have hit the market jackpot.

Music streaming services are a great example of a ready market that exploits both free and a nominal fee model.

It is a two-way street

Before you take up the go-to-market strategy, verify if it fits in your plan. New features will always pop up but be the best judge of how you’ll be able to deliver an impact. Having a public roadmap of your developments is a good starting point to alleviate customer disappointments.

How do you know you have found it?

It is simple, but not easy. A hack at thinking in this direction is to use your own life as a template and ask yourself, “will this make my life easier?” Or “will it become difficult if this product didn’t exist?”. Your answer is your strongest metric on the basis of which you can build your business and determine whether it fits the market. At the end of the day, the product that sustains its value lasts longer than the one that doesn’t evolve over time.