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Comment by jackblemming | Hacker News Reader

What was product market fit called before the new wave of jargon took over? “Building shit people actually want”?

It was called "product market fit". Earliest mention was in 1972: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=product+market...

Building something people want is the first part of PMF. There's a big gap between "want" and "willing to pay for" and an even bigger gap between "willing to keep paying for". I think someone else here pointed out that PMF is an old phrase from the '70s.

Yea, so let's just say:

- It's nice

- It's useful

- It's something I depend on

- It's something my business depends on

The jargoning is just saying the simplest things. So OP's statement is on a spectrum where the axis variable is "how badly you want something". We need to cut all this startup bullshit and just speak simply. Steve Jobs did that well.

Product market fit is the context of an investible startups is quite different. You can always build shit people want. For eg. A static website hosting you know that market exists. But in case of an investible startups, you have a product hypothesis that has never been tested ever, validating the tech that is new, innovative gtm motion and business. The point I'm trying to make is the question whether the market exists for the idea is validated which is where the opportunity lies.

Even for static website hosting, it's unclear if a given product has market fit. Some other host could be well-known, strictly cheaper, more reliable and "better" in all ways customers care about.

The product that loses on all dimensions is unlikely to find a market fit, even if it would have been competitive ten years ago.

It's been called that for a long time...

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