Getting to Product/Market Fit: Reverse Engineered System and Instructions

I have been struggling with a number of symptoms in the startup journey. All the articles I have read lead me to believe this is what I am struggling with is Product/Market Fit. The symptoms include having trouble raising capital, not getting the product out fast enough, and little word of mouth sales.

From my searching, I stumbled upon this article written by Rahul Vohra, the founder and CEO of Superhuman. He boldly states that “product/market fit drives startup success – and the lack thereof is what’s lucking behind almost every failure.” This point is well taken and very real to me. The quest to find and achieve true product/market fit is the single most worrisome milestone for founders. Until you hit this point, there is no clear way to drive growth, revenue, success of your company.

Vohra continues to share that there is are plethora of articles (Startups in 13 Sentences – Paul Graham and Before Growth – Sam Altman) and thought leadership around the results of not finding product/market fit or the characteristics of what it means to have product/market fit, yet there is no roadmap, process, or defined system to follow to achieve product/market fit. 

In my experience, my process as been adhoc with a series of trial and error experiments and A/B testing to reach the ultimate destination. This process that I have been following is not very organized or quantitative. As a systems-thinker, it has been a struggle for me to understand how to achieve it and how to know I have achieved it. Vohra faced the same struggles as I am facing now. This is when he started asking the question “What if I could measure product/market fit? If I could measure product/market fit, then maybe I could optimize it. And maybe I could systematically increase product market fit until I achieved it.” This type of thinking is so disruptive and brilliant.

Vohra describes his next steps of reverse engineering product/market fit. He starts by defining an important metric then detailing 4 steps that worked for his company, and will work for mine.

Define a metric: A leading indicator for product/market fit

1. Ask users “how would your feel if you could no longer use the product” and measure the percent who answer “very disappointed.” The magic number is 40%. When you ask this question and exceed 40% then you have strong traction and fit.
   • Slack did this in 2015 with 731 users. 51% responded that they would be very disappointed without slack. This was a true indicator that they had found product/market fit.

Once you have the metric, then you can use this 4-step process to optimize your product/market fit.

1. Segment to find your supporters and paint a picture of your high-expectation customers.
   • In the early days of the startup, you cast a wide net – “anyone and everyone should use my app”
   • This step is to narrowing your interest to the “true customers”. The ones that actually care about solving the need you are intending to solve.
   • To do this, dive into the people who answered “very disappointed”
   • Understand who they are, how they describe themselves, and create personas that align with them.
   • These insights will prove to be extremely important in understanding the value of your startup and your target buyer.
2. Analyze feedback to convert on-the-fence users into champion users
   • The first step was focused on going narrow, this step is focused on going deep. The goal is to figure out why the 40% really loved the product and how to convert more users into this segment.
   • Focus on 2 core questions
     1. Why do people love the product?
     1. What holds people back from loving the product?
   • Convert the answers into a word cloud to visually see the common themes
3. Build your roadmap by doubling down on what users love and addressing what holds others back
   • Important to consider that “If you only double down on what users love, your product/market fit score won’t increase. If you only address what holds users back, your competition will likely overtake you.”
   • Based on the feedback build a cost-impact analysis:
     1. Label each potential project as low/medium/high cost and low/medium/high impact
     2. Start by attacking the low cost and high impact work
4. Repeat the process and make the product/market fit score the most important metric
   • Track this number on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis as it will become your most important number.
   • Rebuild your roadmap every quarter using this process to ensure that you are improving the product/market fit score fast enough.

Using this single metric instead of a fluffy abstract goal can be very helpful to the founder, team and investors. I look forward to trying out this process for my startup and see where it takes me. If I have learned anything in this world of startups, it is that having a systematic way to evaluate progress and achieve milestones is imperative towards self and company success.

Content from this post was originally posted and written by Rahul Vohra. This article was not intended to copy or steal content, instead provide a summary of the brilliant work to inspire others to follow the similar process for product/market fit.