Entrepreneurs share about product market fit
Alex Armitage
CEO of Nectarine Credit
In the not-too-recent past most manufacturers and distributors were emailing and even faxing business credit applications to complete the simple task of checking credit, and then approving or denying commercial credit terms.
We’ve disrupted an entire industry thanks to moving this antiquated and cumbersome process to a digital SaaS platform by using b2b data.
It took many months and lots of sleepless nights, but we reached product market fit when we finally broke into the contract manufacturing space. Here was a market that was sophisticated enough to use a SaaS platform and recognize our automated capabilities, but were creatures of habit and were used to using paper and emailed credit applications.
They recognized the previous commercial credit application process was broken. It was manual, slow and inefficient. They just didn’t know they needed us and we had to teach them about the benefits of our platform. Once we got product market fit, our business took off and the network effect took hold. Simply put, our business then started to scale.
Nectarine Credit
Darshan Somashekar
CEO of Soltaired
I’m a serial entrepreneur (sold one company to Facebook and another to Chegg). Am working on a third now. I’ve been lucky that all of them eventually found PMF!
I know we have found product market fit when we start to hear complaints from our users. It means they actually care about our platform enough to write in and tell us about it. If you don’t hear complaints, your tool is not important enough to them to deserve taking time out of the day to write in.
Solitaired
Jonatan Attias
CEO of Sayollo
2020 was an insane year for mobile gaming, with Covid driving more and more people to ease their stress, fears, or boredom with mobile games.
Today, over a third of the world’s population play games on their mobile devices, and what advertisers have come to learn is how much these gamers dislike interstitial ads abruptly cutting off gameplay.
Our platform provides a way for advertisers to place both video and static ads directly within the game, taking advantage of ‘dead space’ in the game’s environment (walls, buildings, sky) and turning it into prime real estate for ad space.
The ads are designed to mesh seamlessly with the game’s look & feel, not only becoming a natural fit, but adding an element of realism to the overall setting.
With native in-game ads, we solve the problem on all levels: We’ve given publishers better tools with which to monetize their content without hurting the UX, which allows them to maintain higher retention rates; we’ve enabled brands and publishers to boost positive awareness with ads that seamlessly mesh with the game’s native environment and flow; and we’ve made gamers happier by removing the constant annoyance of interrupted gameplay.
Sayollo
Benn Stancil
Chief Analytics Officer of Mode
There’s no one-size-fits-all metric for determining when you’ve found product market fit, because every product and market are different.
The key is to figure out what behaviors are indicative of someone getting a ton of value out of your product, and measure how many of your customers are taking those actions.
For example, if you’re building a product like an email tool or a chat app that’s meant to be used every day, you want to keep track of how many days a week your customers use your product.
If you’re building a product in a crowded market where consumers have lots of alternative choices, NPS can be a good measure of how we’ll you’re standing out.
And if you’re offering a novel new service that you’re not sure if there will be demand for, revenue growth is a better measure because it demonstrates that customers see your solution being worth real money to solve.
Finally, it’s also important to remember that product market fit isn’t a binary. Products find it gradually. In their earliest stages, most products have some appeal to a very small set of people: the product solves a particular problem for a particular person in an ok way.
Over time, companies get better at solving that problem and at solving it for more people. For this reason, when assessing product market fit, don’t just ask if you’ve found it or not; ask how well you’ve found it with different markets and customers.
Mode
Ryo Chikazawa
CEO of Autify
Once you achieved it, it should be very apparent.
In our experience, with product market fit we could close contracts before launching a product, receive a lot of qualified inbound leads without marketing spend, and post-launch receive user mentions on Twitter and write-ups about us on their technical blogs without pestering them for it.
To achieve it, you need to solve customer’s burning needs.
The world has completely changed after we identified the burning needs and provided appropriate solutions.
We were surprised at the overwhelming shift in the quality of leads and at the dramatic difference in how the world reacted. Moreover, customers began telling us exactly what we need to do to grow the business.
We no longer develop features with hypotheses and now are able to develop only truly necessary ones. Our customers even started telling us price points they’d pay. By honestly asking customers their price point, we are now able to clearly set the price.
Stop writing code right away and focus all your energy on identifying your customer’s burning needs.
Set out solutions to the identified burning needs that are several times better than the existing solutions.
Put the product idea for these solutions in your presentation and start selling it.
Secure some contracts before you begin product development. If you pitch to several companies without securing a contract and keep getting responses like I described above, go back to the first step and start over.
Develop the product at top speed.
Autify
Matt Barnett
CEO of Bonjoro
Product-market fit means that there is a demand in the market for your product or services and that people are ready to pay for what you are offering. Achieving product-market fit is one of the keys to any successful business. Once we reached it, we realized that all the energy and efforts that we’ve invested in have proved to be worthwhile.
Bonjoro
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On the podcast, Sean talks with entrepreneurs about the reality of their struggle to succeed, as well as answering questions from the community, and sharing nuggets of wisdom from his own life.
Discover through these amazing episodes the courage to open your mind, heart, and soul to the world so you can be the best entrepreneur possible, respect the people you work with, and improve the world with your company while not hurting others or yourself in the process.
Sean Weisbrot
Sean is an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor based in SE Asia for over 12 years. He is passionate about Psychology and helping others improve themselves.
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