Product Market Fit is a myth — Do this instead
Why I believe chasing product-market fit leads to entrepreneurs failing
Why listen to me:
- I’ve been a part of two successful exits, one for mid seven figures.
- I’m the operations manager for Capitalism.com.
- I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses every month.
- In the last six months, I’ve worked with 2 companies who DOUBLED their business and a 3rd who saw his margin jump from 20% to 40% by nailing product market fit.
TLDR:
- The concept of product market fit is flawed.
- You are not trying to fit a product into a market, but trying to solve one problem for one person with one product.
- Product market fit is hard to quantify, but solving one problem for one person with one product is significantly easier to quantify.
- Use Reddit forums, YouTube comments, Instagram, reels, Facebook groups, and the like in order to verify the problem in the market.
- Tools like gummy search can help streamline this process on Reddit, but nothing will ever be as helpful as having one-to-one conversations.
- Questions to ask: 1. is this a genuine problem expressed by a significant amount of people? 2. Assuming other companies are already trying to solve this problem, is there a gap in the market positioning? 3. Is the market growing or shrinking? 4. Are these people easy to target or getting in front of?
- If you can answer those four questions, then your likelihood of success is significantly higher.
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The myth of product market fit
Product market fit doesn’t actually exist.
Within every market, there are hundreds if not thousands of beliefs and world views that drive the consumer to purchase the product.
Let’s look at the fitness watch industry as an example.
- Some people will purchase a fitness watch in order to increase their steps and make their doctor and/or partner happy.
- Others will purchase it in order to lose weight.
- Still Others will purchase it in order to “ one up” their friends who are trying to be healthier.
All of these would classify under the “novice health enthusiast”, yet a product marketed, “gamifying fitness” would likely appeal to one consumer, but not the others.
Same product. Same market.
Very different motivations to buy.
Isn’t that just a difference in how you market the product, not a fundamental difference in the product?
If only it was that simple.
If you look at whoop versus aura, you see this dilemma.
Both are premium fitness trackers geared towards the market of advanced health enthusiast.
Aura is focused more on recovery and health stats, well whoop is focused primarily on fitness and exercise stats.
This isn’t just a difference in marketing.
if aura said they were focusing on health in recovery over standard exercise, tracking, and yet they had 300 pre-designed exercises in their app, and their ring allowed you to live-track your heart rate while you exercise, giving their custom algorithm away to calculate your exercise intensity. Would that line up with their marketing? Of course not. It would be an inconsistent story. However, that is almost exactly what whoop did — and if it perfectly within whoops story, which is the advanced fitness tracker for Sirius athletes. Aura on the other hand, didn’t even have a heart rate tracker on their ring for the first few years.
Same, Market, different story, leading to a different product design.
So if Market doesn’t exist, can you verify that a market will buy your product?
Absolutely. The practical approach to this is to focus on one person, and solve one problem for that one person, in one unique way.
One person, one problem, one product.
You identify the person you are talking with, find out what problems they are already complaining about or already spending money to solve, and you solve this problem for this person in a better (or seemingly better) way.
So how do you verify the person, problem, product process?
It’s actually a lot simpler than you might think.
- You find a community of people who have that problem and share that same world view. At the moment, this is Reddit groups, YouTube comments, instagram reels, and Facebook groups.
- You listen to what that person is already talking about. You don’t try to project your ideas onto this person. Instead, read through the top comments or posts. What are they already talking about? The traditional “product market fit” concept is going into the market and seeing if they like your idea. That’s like finding a group of strangers who are all in a conversation, and interrupting them and talking about yourself. If you do this, you will instantly be shunned. Instead, take a more traditional approach: listen. What are they already talking about? If they’re talking about something that’s related to what you want to talk about, you can chime in. But only to add value, not to sell your idea. Let THEM tell YOU that they want your product, not the other way around. Tools like GummySearch will help with this process on Reddit — it uses AI to scan reddit groups and summarizes the top comments, topics, pain points, etc.
Streamlined process:
When validating a new product o market, I’ve found these 4 questions to be immensely helpful:
- 1. Is this a genuine problem expressed by a significant amount of people? Are people frustrated with the current offerings and actively complaining about it?
- 2. Assuming other companies are already trying to solve this problem, is there a gap in the market positioning? Is a company positioned as the premium, as the first, as the most innovative, as the cheapest, etc? Where is the gap in marketing positioning?
- 3. Is the market growing or shrinking? If the market is shrinking, everything you do will be significantly more difficult.
- 4. Are these people easy to target or getting in front of? How difficult s it to build a community of these people? Is there an opportunity on a specific platform (Pinterest, organic SEO, IG, FB, TT, YT, etc)? What’s the average Cost Per Click when targeting this market? Are you able to get in front of these people through the people they already trust? (Influencers they follow social media, email lists they read, authors they read, podcasts they listen to, etc)?
If you’re approaching the validation of a new product in the traditional “product market fit” concept, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.
Instead of focusing on product-market fit, focus on solving one Problem, for one Person, with one Product.
Did you find this concept helpful? Which part stood out to you the most?
If you’re full of ideas but struggle getting shit done, I have a daily Micro-Newsletter — a 500 character, bullet style email with the top 3 hacks, tips, and ideas on how to Get Shit Done.
Click the link below to join the micro-newsletter and Get Shit Done today.
