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Written on 1/1/2001

Written on June 5, 2023





Striving for user growth without understanding how to adapt to the product market can be detrimental to acquisition-hungry start-ups that do not have the knowledge or are willing to start acquiring in the right place. Many start-ups crash and burn because they assume that everyone loves their product, they spend all their money, and then they find that people don't want or need what they sell. After hours of research, the result is a profitable product where customers have to hold hands.    
Companies make the mistake of thinking of a brilliant idea for a product and investing an enormous amount of time, money and resources into the design and development, user feedback and launch. The implementation of the idea is worthless without a perfect product that fits on the market. Customers do not get value from the product, word of mouth does not spread, usage does not grow, press reports are pale, sales cycles last much longer, and offers never exist.  
Customers don't get the value of the product quite enough; word of mouth doesn't spread; usage doesn't grow as fast; press reports are a kind of blabla; the sales cycle takes too long, and many stores never close. Customers will buy the product if you produce it fast enough, and usage will grow as you add more servers and so on. The customer will buy it quickly and you will do it fast enough, but usage will increase as you add more servers. 
You have to find a problem that is so bad that users are willing to try a half-baked, v1, imperfect solution. Once you are marketable, the chances of competitors taking customers away are much higher. Understand what customers need and you will fit into the product market.
Companies that solve real problems for their customers identify the target group they should focus on. A great product roadmap should not only focus on the product, it should also focus on the customers, especially the 1,000 customer-centric ones. Those who recognize a strong product market will attract competitors because they offer high growth.
Make sure that you donate to create a product that a large number of people want in a small amount. The company's goal should be to offer the customer so much value that they can become your advocate and help you grow your customer base. 
In order to estimate your entire addressable market, you need to do a considerable amount of research on your potential customers. In principle, you can measure the marketability of products based on surveys that show what percentage of your users think positively about your new product.
Segment the market into your target group and understand who your target customers are. Your answers give you a deep understanding of what your product means to you and what it doesn't. Don't be afraid to look at different potential customer groups when calculating your TAM, as you may find that the customer base you devote to marketing your product is not the best product market you could have found.
The 40 percent rule is that if 40% of customers are disappointed that they no longer have access to your product or service or feel that it can not be used as an alternative, you have created a product that suits the market. The following questions are open-ended and can help you understand how your product fits on the market based on the individual experience of your consumers. If a leading industry expert feels that a product is bad or does not meet industry standards, it is not suitable for this market.
Whether people want candy bars or not, whether we want productivity software, security apps or 3D printers, we cannot force a fit-fit model, even if it is easy to establish in startup history. Fit or not fit is not a product that works, and it is not something that people can work with. 
In short, product market fit (PMF) is how well a group of people accept and use your product. Forbes magazine describes the fit of the product market as "a hair-raising problem that can be easily identified by all groups of people.". To understand what "product market fit" means, you need to understand who uses your product or service and why it is valuable to this group.
Product Market Fit describes a phase in a company in which the company identifies a target customer and serves him a product that meets his needs. According to the entrepreneur and investor Marc Andreesen, who developed the concept, product marketability means finding the best on the market and a product that can satisfy it. It describes a scenario in which a company buys, uses and tells others about the company's product in a number large enough to sustain its growth and profitability.
If a company fails to reach product / market maturity within the first 2-3 years of its lifespan, it may be forced to restructure or close due to a lack of funding. There is no magical belief that product / market fit is a turning point that changes the weight of the product and limits creative ideas for solving the company's problems. In the graphic Brian posted on P & M Fit IMO, there is a propensity for companies to make bad decisions that go beyond building and marketing.
I see no benefit or added value in product development, gathering customer feedback, marketing, or any aspect of corporate strategy or tactics. As Casey Winters explained in his earlier post on growth, Facebook is a superior approach to generate growth in a business by relying on networking effect that not only captivates customers but also changes perspective and keeps competitors away. This model better describes how ordinary small businesses and high-growth startups build their products, markets, and customers to gain traction.
Make an existing activity 10 times easier: By taking an existing activity and improving the experience with it, you can connect it and increase the likelihood that the product / market will fit. Slack brings to the workplace activities that are already socialized and connects them by creating versatile clusters of workspaces, channels, groups, DMS access, and a seamless login process through an email address for work. There are water cooler conversations, chatting employees and people from various social networks and messaging solutions for businesses, but Slack makes the experience much better with its intuitive interface, threads, emoji usage and other features. 

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