Product Market Fit – the ONLY magic you need

After years of hard work you have created your software product!  To tweak your Minimum Viable Product (MVP), you need to get people to start using your software. You start by making some basic assumptions about the Product Market Fit (PMF). When there is a true fit, you will find that your product sales are growing effortlessly.  When there is none, you struggle to find customers.  Until then, you will need to tweak both your Market and your Product

To get started,  make some assumptions to figure out which types of companies will most benefit from your product and why.

Start with these basic questions, around the Market and your Product

•  Which types of companies , in which industries would benefit from your product?
  • Is it an enterprise product ? Is there a minimum number of users that need to use the product to gain value?
  • What about the number of employees ? Should they be in multiple offices ? constantly traveling ? What would your ideal user be like ?
  • Brainstorm some possible use cases, validate them by talking to people in your ideal market.
• Will your product solve THE one problem or need, you have heard almost everyone in “your” target industry talk about ?
  • If not, can your product solve the second highest need ? Can your product be tweaked to solve the problem?
• Who will be making the purchasing decision? the CXO? IT? HR? Who are the influencers? Who are the actual users?
• What are the list of “Must have” features of your product to serve the market ? Check out the competition.
• Do you have something unique ? either in terms of simpler design, or a  feature that sets you apart ?
• What kind of language should you use to communicate your value? Which words will resonate with your Market?
• Is the Market large enough in terms of numbers of potential users ? What is the growth rate ?

 Achieving the Product Market Fit

How will you know when you have achieved the FIT? You will know immediately. It is when your customers find so much value using your product that they start talking about it to their friends!

When your customers become your salespeople.

In surveys,  they say they will be unhappy if they cannot use your product tomorrow.

Who is responsible ? 

Everyone in the company has a stake, people building the product, people interacting with potential customers, but especially marketing. Not only will marketing need to look at potential customers and how they will find value, but also provide direction to the Product team for future product iterations.

This could be a long journey or you may get lucky and find the fit quickly. More than anything else , money, team quality, technology , you name it, the Product Market Fit is the only driver you will need to succeed.

You may need to revisit and validate your assumptions often or change them as you go on this journey!

Stay tuned, to know more about our journey to achieve the perfect Product Market Fit.

References

Original post from Marc Andreesen on the Product Market Fit. http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html

12 things about Product Market Fit – https://a16z.com/2017/02/18/12-things-about-product-market-fit/

When has a consumer startup hit Product Market fit – http://andrewchen.co/when-has-a-consumer-startup-hit-productmarket-fit/

https://medium.com/evergreen-business-weekly/product-market-fit-what-it-really-means-how-to-measure-it-and-where-to-find-it-70e746be907b