4 ms·

“Product market fit” is a silly term for what it wants to describe

5 points by aminozuur 6y ago

notatoad 6y ago
Heh. My first reaction to the headline was "yeah, because it's a euphemism" but apparently my brain went in the opposite direction to the author - not achieving product market fit is a much nicer way of saying "not widely useful". Nobody wants to be told their product is useless, so instead we say it just hasn't found its market yet.
renewiltord 6y ago
This really doesn't have to be this hard. PMF means that your product and a market have found each other. For a VC, a worthwhile market is super big so rampant growth is evidence that you have PMF. And Naval's insight there is a short version of all the things people say: scratch your own itch, dog food your product, etc. etc. A lot of these things people say have insight that you can gather but you have to have some commonality. Their words are lossy compression of an idea, and it will only make sense if you're the right decompressor. In any case, making fun of that stuff gains you very little. To the ones who have the appropriate decompressor you look like a fool. To the other ones who don't have the appropriate decompressor, they think you're being obvious. To the ones who have the compressor appropriate to you, the mockery doesn't signal that. I suppose it does provide personal amusement, though. So there's that.
phunster 6y ago
Agree with sentiment. Also, why is the term PMF restricted for only enormous markets where if team found PMF then that means extreme growth. What if I'm building a product for a niche market?
stevage 6y ago
This writer seems to really struggle with semantics. "Product market fit" clearly means: there is a market that closely fits your product. The consequences of that might be the extreme growth etc. When people make the flippant remarks about product-market fit causing you to want to die, they're just making the logical leap from a market existing, to high demand. It's not that complicated. Nothing needs to change.
- aminozuur 6y ago
  "there is a market that closely fits your product" For there to be PMF, the product and the market must at the very least have found each other. Otherwise it's just a cool product that no one knows about.
aerosmile 6y ago
The OP is suggesting to replace the term PMF with "extreme growth" or something similar. Obviously that would be wrong, because you can certainly have PMF while also not reaching extreme growth because the Market part of the PMF acronym may just turn out to be really small. For that reason, it's always been clear in order to achieve extreme growth, you have to have PMF and a large addressable market. So, no, for me personally, I wouldn't see much value with introducing a new term to describe the confluence of both, market size and PMF, and I certainly wouldn't want that term to be called "extreme growth."
- aminozuur 6y ago
  Insightful comment. I will adjust the article accordingly.
nreece 6y ago
In my opinion, and experience from my own startup journey, a 'product-market fit' is simply being profitable from revenue that's growing quarter on quarter for at-least an year or two.
- aminozuur 6y ago
  By that definition, Uber, Pinterest and Spotify wouldn't have product market fit, as they're not profitable yet.
xiphias2 6y ago
If the side project that the author built went nowhere means exactly that Naval was right: the author tried to build it without any concrete end user to serve perfectly. It didn't even achieve the product-market fit of 1 user (himself)

5 points by aminozuur 6y ago

Heh. My first reaction to the headline was "yeah, because it's a euphemism" but apparently my brain went in the opposite direction to the author - not achieving product market fit is a much nicer way of saying "not widely useful". Nobody wants to be told their product is useless, so instead we say it just hasn't found its market yet.

renewiltord 6y ago

This really doesn't have to be this hard. PMF means that your product and a market have found each other. For a VC, a worthwhile market is super big so rampant growth is evidence that you have PMF. And Naval's insight there is a short version of all the things people say: scratch your own itch, dog food your product, etc. etc. A lot of these things people say have insight that you can gather but you have to have some commonality. Their words are lossy compression of an idea, and it will only make sense if you're the right decompressor. In any case, making fun of that stuff gains you very little. To the ones who have the appropriate decompressor you look like a fool. To the other ones who don't have the appropriate decompressor, they think you're being obvious. To the ones who have the compressor appropriate to you, the mockery doesn't signal that. I suppose it does provide personal amusement, though. So there's that.

phunster 6y ago

Agree with sentiment. Also, why is the term PMF restricted for only enormous markets where if team found PMF then that means extreme growth. What if I'm building a product for a niche market?

stevage 6y ago

This writer seems to really struggle with semantics. "Product market fit" clearly means: there is a market that closely fits your product. The consequences of that might be the extreme growth etc. When people make the flippant remarks about product-market fit causing you to want to die, they're just making the logical leap from a market existing, to high demand. It's not that complicated. Nothing needs to change.

aminozuur 6y ago
"there is a market that closely fits your product" For there to be PMF, the product and the market must at the very least have found each other. Otherwise it's just a cool product that no one knows about.

aerosmile 6y ago

The OP is suggesting to replace the term PMF with "extreme growth" or something similar. Obviously that would be wrong, because you can certainly have PMF while also not reaching extreme growth because the Market part of the PMF acronym may just turn out to be really small. For that reason, it's always been clear in order to achieve extreme growth, you have to have PMF and a large addressable market. So, no, for me personally, I wouldn't see much value with introducing a new term to describe the confluence of both, market size and PMF, and I certainly wouldn't want that term to be called "extreme growth."

aminozuur 6y ago
Insightful comment. I will adjust the article accordingly.

nreece 6y ago

In my opinion, and experience from my own startup journey, a 'product-market fit' is simply being profitable from revenue that's growing quarter on quarter for at-least an year or two.

aminozuur 6y ago
By that definition, Uber, Pinterest and Spotify wouldn't have product market fit, as they're not profitable yet.

xiphias2 6y ago

If the side project that the author built went nowhere means exactly that Naval was right: the author tried to build it without any concrete end user to serve perfectly. It didn't even achieve the product-market fit of 1 user (himself)