3 ms·
Very important talk. Not sure when the phrase was popularized, but my introduction to it was in Marc Andreessen's blog post [1]. This entire series of posts in
by a_d 9y ago
Very important talk. Not sure when the phrase was popularized, but my introduction to it was in Marc Andreessen's blog post [1]. This entire series of posts in his blog are worth reading, by the way. Marc calls this "The only thing that matters", and it is definitely true.
I like this video because of the emphasis on the role our psychology plays in the search for product-market fit. Understanding people/users well - what they mean when they say "this is interesting" is really important. Systematic de-biasing of our own mind is an important idea in this talk.
Richard Feynman's famous conclusion to his report on the shuttle Challenger accident said "Nature cannot be fooled"-similarly, markets/users cannot be fooled. Either a product or service solves their problem or it doesn't. Anything in between needs to questioned carefully and observed (in an unbiased way) closely. Feynman also says "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool". Same idea as Peter's -- and a very important one!
I wish more founders talked about "what product-market fit feels like" (once they found it) - because only with enough samples, new startup founders can better understand whether they have achieved pm-fit. However, I wish video shouldn't be mistaken for thinking: "my Show HN post tanked, so I don't have pm-fit". I think it is worthwhile trying to understand what he means. It is quite clear when you really solve a problem that someone else has. It is also a great feeling.
One of the reasons why finding pm-fit is hard is because there are too many variables. Peter simplifies it to some extent when he says that while searching, one must be clear if you are changing the market or the product. This is correct, but in reality, these adjustments are quite subtle. So paying close attention to these constant/rapid adjustments (stepping back and thinking about them) is quite important.
I like the conclusion of his talk: you will know when you find it.
[1] http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html
- divenorth 9y agoThe video really helped me. I've been working on an idea and have been getting some bites. Is this product-market fit? Nope. What he says just makes sense. There are no real metrics to describe it. I'l know when I find it.
- skewart 9y agoPeople often describe finding pmf as an explosive, overwhelming moment, when customers are pulling the product out of your hands. I wonder if there are any hugely successful companies that experienced in more subtle, gradual way. Instead of that one moment when they were overwhelmed by inquiries from prospective customers, they ground away slowly and steadily with hard-working sales and marketing teams. Instead of one big hockey stick moment, they just grew sales by 70% every year, year after year.
- pilingual 9y agoWeebly was kind of like that: https://youtu.be/F90BRJHXsVI?t=288 https://youtu.be/F90BRJHXsVI?t=288
- zachsnow 9y agoIn my experience building the product for my company, FareHarbor, what you describe -- steady growth driven by ever-improving software and hard-working sales -- is more familiar. (This is in the SaaS / SMB world). We launched with just enough features to serve a single client. For a while, each new client needed something more. After something like a year we were able to onboard some new clients without changing anything about the software -- that's when I felt confident we were onto something. Nevertheless we didn't suddenly experience a deluge of customers, phones ringing off the hook. Perhaps sales got easier, onboarding got easier, people had heard of us already. But even as we were growing by several times each year, we were still "slogging it out", doing the work.
- richardw 9y agoPretty successful. "The long slow SAAS ramp of death": http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...