A lot of focus in the past few years has been on the quantitative and qualitative indicators of product market fit. In a recent Reforge discussion, I realized they don't capture the three toughest things that I've seen around validating product market fit.
1: True Validation
A lot of people approach MVP's and de-risking with qualitative interviews. They typically end with some version of "do you want this?" Most people will say yes, even though they don't truly mean it misleading teams down dead ends. Andy Johns enlightened me that this not only exists at the startup phase, but also in scaling product in larger orgs.
But true de-risking involves finding a way to get people to put their money where their mouth is. This is easiest in B2B. by having people who say they want this, put money down (that you will return if you don't deliver the product by a certain time date). People who say they want the product, but won't put money down is where the real conversation begins.
2: Solving From First Principles
When you are building a new product in a larger org (Product Market Fit Expansion) you can typically leverage a strength of your existing company to enter a space which means you don't need to necessarily solve everything from first principles.
For example, with the HubSpot CRM we didn't try to invent a completely new type of CRM, we made a better CRM, made it free, and used our distribution muscle to enter into that space. When you are trying to find initial product market fit you don't have this luxury. So you need to dig much deeper on the problem and solve in a new way from first principles vs leverage a bunch of knowns. I see a lot of seed pitches that are incremental better versions of other products out there but not a leap forward.
3: Sequencing Your Hypotheses
Often times to reach product market fit you need to validate multiple hypotheses around the product, market, model, and distribution. I cover this in the 4 Fits Series. But even within each fit (especially product) there tend to be multiple hypotheses to get a new idea to work. The trap is not thinking about sequencing. You need to know what is the most important hypothesis to de-risk first? What I often I see instead is validating the easiest hypothesis rather than the most important hypothesis first which can lead to a false feeling of validation.
The Feeling of Product Market Fit
I've done 4 different startups now around initial product market fit. Even though I'm more comfortable with numbers, I believe there is a feeling of product market fit. In my first 3 startups, there was not initial PMF out of the gate. We had to really work for it. With Reforge, it was a different story. There was obvious PMF from the beginning. Interestingly, I think my first three experiences biased me in too conservative of a direction and if I had to do it all over again, I would have been much more aggressive in the first two years of Reforge. But more on that in a future quick take.
Related Posts: The Never Ending Road to Product Market Fit, Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough, Market Product Fit, Not Product Market Fit
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