There’s a lot of discussion these days around Market-Product fit vs Product-Market fit. It’s 37 Signals against the whole lean movement, Jason Fried against Don Norman, etc.Should a startup scratch its own itch and design the best intuitive solution before finding a market for it or, go through customer development and user research cycles to validate assumptions first?I’ll brush that aside for a moment. It seems to me that the appeal of a 37 Signals-like approach revolves around putting the entrepreneur up front and center – passion is there from the start since the entrepreneurs are solving a problem of their own choosing (or creation…)But what happens if, through research, validated learning, and customer development your company identifies that your Market-Product fit is around a solution that’s both uninteresting and unfit for your team?The first company I worked for was a startup. My boss had taken over from the original founders and grew, over the course of a few years, the company into a multi-million dollar business.Through discussions, I learned about his previous ventures and his first run at making real money. Immaturely maybe, I had imagined that the companies that really made money were exciting businesses, but I learned that his fortune was made consolidating and selling reports on businesses… finance, market, etc.I asked myself at the time, would I actually want to run a business like that?There’s plenty of uninteresting ways to make money – some of them are even near sureshots. But would you be passionate about running a dentist’s office, trading for pennies or buying and selling bankrupt houses?Money should never be the main motivation to startup.One of my favorite posts of 2010 was Alistair Croll’s Minimum Viable Vision. In this post, Alistair lists a dozen factors that can lead to business success. Although lists like these show us what VCs and investors look for, it says nothing of the entrepreneurs. If a minimum vision checks all of the boxes, does it automatically mean that it’s a business you wish to be a part of?As an entrepreneur or entrepreneur-to-be, it’s important to ask yourself what you want.Ultimately, you’re building your business. It has to fit with your objectives and enable the lifestyle you’re seeking.You may not be building a lifestyle business but working 80h a week on your business will have a tremendous impact on your life.Beyond market-product fit, there has to be an entrepreneur fit.Maybe you’re not the best person to solve this specific problem.Or maybe you’re not passionate enough about solving this problem. In the end, without passion, it will get harder and harder for you to survive the motivation roller-coaster and get up every time you’re knocked down…It’s easy enough to have ideas. But, are they right for you?To avoid going too deep in a business that ultimately won’t bring what you seek, I’ve devised a model to assess idea potential and realign entrepreneur, market and product considerations.Although these specific questions are what I seek, the model is good to track the important stuff and identify imbalances in your fit.More so, a model like this allows entrepreneurs to iterate more quickly by focusing creativity within set constraints and reducing emotional attachment to ideas.Market-Product-Entrepreneur fit will always be a balancing act. Pushing too much in one direction (product, market or entrepreneur considerations) will always create tensions and risk impacting business success. Keeping an eye on your “fit” is essential to ensure startup success.
Sponsors
Find us on Plancast
About Author
David Crow
David Crow currently is leading product and marketing efforts at the hard to type Maintenance Assistant...
