This week, I saw a tweet from positioning and market strategy expert April Dunford. It resonated with me and lined up with some observations I’ve made recently while working with early-stage startups.

Product/Market fit is often seen as the holy grail for new tech companies. The “we’ve made it” moment that is promptly followed by a big round of funding and increased ad spend.

The problem April argues is, “If you don’t have a clear grasp on what your value is, who it resonates with and why - product market isn’t a helpful concept to get you there.”

In order to repeatedly acquire paying customers who achieve their goals using your product (my view on what product market fit typically signals), you need to be more specific about the actual people you serve than a broad term like “market”.

Markets don’t buy products. Markets don’t use products. People with specific desires and goals buy products and use them to improve their lives.

People like Sarah, John, Mike, Ashley choose to spend their money (or their company’s money) in exchange for your product. And yet, how many times have you heard or said something like this yourself?
 

• We’re building a solution for the {X} market.
   
• People in the {Y} industry love our product.
   
• I’ve talked to lots of people who are a great fit.

Who are these people?

Fortunately, you actually already know who some of these people are.
They might be in your inbox, in your CRM, or best of all in a product analytics tool like Mixpanel or Amplitude that lets you see not just each person but how they are using your product.

A tangible step to improve your product is to talk to these people and ask them about the outcome your product helps them achieve.

Instead of projecting your own bias about the solution, ask for a specific story about how achieving their desired outcome is changing their life and listen intently.

Give it a try. Think less about the abstract “market” and more about the specific people you are building your product for. What are their names? What do they use your product to do that they couldn’t do before? Why do they love using your product?

Talk soon,

- Stuart

See you back here in two weeks! In the meantime say 👋 on Twitter or LinkedIn.
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Here are 3 resources I found helpful this week:

- How Superhuman built an engine to find product/market fit (23-minute read). Rahul Vohra, CEO of Superhuman discusses the tactics they’ve used to iterate their way to a product customers love and can’t wait to share with their peers.

- Can Lambda School be a $100M business? (9-minute read). Lloyd Alexander, Growth at Udemy discusses the mechanics of why Lambda School is growing fast and on track to become a big business.

- Do This Now: 8 Ways to Focus your Product Team on Impact, Not Features (7-minute read). Product evangelist at Amplitude John Cutler outlines the actionable steps product teams can take to become more outcome driven in their work.