Ask HN: Is Product Market Fit Just Luck? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Product Market Fit Just Luck?

12 pointstmaly9 comments

I you read some of the lean startup type books, you get the idea that you need to speak to customers first.

Pat Flynn had this idea of making a market map in his book Will It Fly. I think this is similar to Amy Hoy's Sales Safari. The idea is to go around online forums and other places where users are having discussions. You look for pain points by certain keyword questions.

These method works great when there is a forum and a good number of people discussing a problem. But if you recall the 1% rule, there are 99% of the people not talking online and contributing content.

Rob Walling had another method where he used the Google Ad tools to gauge search volume. I am not sure if this really works anymore given changes to those tools.

This makes me wonder if finding product market is really just luck. What is your take on this? Is it luck or are there better methods?

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It seems that a lot of the best products are built by people who themselves would be end users. IMO product market fit research is great for someone outside of an industry, trying to start a new industry, or with deep pockets to spend on researching the market. As a first timer or a small business owner, you're better off targeting your own real pain points.

It still seems like luck if you have different pain points than the majority in that industry.

Absolutely. Life is luck, starting from where you are born and who your parents are.

I've had that question mulling around in my head for a few years.

Like others have mentioned, of course there's an element of luck. It helps to have a product that fits the zeitgeist.

But in my experience, the remaining 99% is all working smart and understand what and the "why" of the problem at hand.

The Google Ads technique is good, but only if you're working on a product with a known problem. For anything new... it probably won't be much help on it's own. It's useful though if you use to see how people try to solve known problems.

Best resources hands down IMO for understanding 0 to PMF are: The Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen. Gives a good view on how products fit with the market. If the problem space is wobbly, the solution space will suck. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick (my favourite). Excellent book on user interviews. It's so good that I made a primer out of it: https://gum.co/DeSxL The PMF Engine by the founder of Superhuman: https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine... It's a more quantifiable way of approaching it.

I have an entrepreneur in my family. After watching him build businesses I have realised these two things when it comes to understanding what business to start:

- Trying out multiple projects(however small they may be) opens a lots of doors because people start talking to you about their own pain points! and

- Luck favours the bold; you need to take risks.

And one thing is very important, "Get out of the building and meet people".

So is there a luck factor in PMF? No, there isn't. You find PMF when you try different things while at the same time talk to people(past, present and prospective customers).

I will give you an example. The person I mentioned above initially started with a small business of supplying toiletries to businesses(big and small). One day one of his customers asked him whether he would be able to supply instant tea and coffee mix to the business. He agreed and started supplying tea and coffee. Went to other businesses and asked if they would be interested. Got sizeable amount of customers. One day, one of his tea and coffee customers, a defence establishment, asked him if he could arrange student visits to their facility for educational purpose. He agreed. Then went to lot of other schools and businesses and asked them if he could help them arrange student visits. He got success in that! Now he has recently started building a park(with space theme) for students.

So, if you look at the journey it is not some magic with which one finds a PMF. The entrepreneur has to go out and talk to people so that s/he receives the right signals. And then be bold enough to take the risk to start working on the problem.

Everything in business has an element of luck.

But if your product doesn't provide value or customers aren't willing to pay for it I'm not sure you can overcome that with luck.

I would look at it more as you can have product market fit and your product not grow fast or even fail without some luck.

But your product will eventually fail without product market fit even with lots of luck.

Check out Rob Walling's new podcasts.

8 Things You Must Know When Launching Your SaaS and 10 Things You Should Know As You Scale Your SaaS.

Sign up for the email list here: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ And receive two never-before-released podcast episodes: 8 Things You Must Know When Launching Your SaaS and 10 Things You Should Know As You Scale Your SaaS.

Listen to 10 Things You Should Know As You Scale Your SaaS.

The part about product market fit starts around 2:00.

Rob talks about using this method to quantify your product market fit.

https://justinjackson.ca/product-market-fit-survey

not "just" luck, but luck plays a large part too. That doesn't mean you can't beat luck as an unlucky person. You just have to try many times.

luck = (size of success / # of attempts)

which translates to:

size of success = (# of attempts) * luck

if your luck is low, you can compensate for it by working hard.

There's accidental product market fit where you make a product for some purpose and it turns out that a completely different use case is discovered by users, or a narrow subset that you didn't imagine/target gains traction.

Then there's product market fit where you started with an identified group of users and in some way made their jobs/lives easier. What the product was to be was an open-ended journey to understand what they do, why it matters, and how it can be better. Luck still plays a lesser role here, where if you're actually only in communication with a very small group and have no easy means to find/target, demonstrate value, some unplanned event connects the dots.

Mining information from forums can be useful, but that's just scratching the surface. I suggest reading this:

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful-Strate...

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