- There hardly is a more popular concept in product development than product-market fit (PMF). The term is coined by Andy Rachleff and popularized by Marc Andreessen’s saying that PMF is the only thing that matters for an early-stage startup.
- But concentrating solely on PMF has a tunneling effect.
Only recently I got to know about Puzzle Fit, a concept popularized by Brian Balfour.
It was very shameful to note unless I realized that even Brian himself does not feature this series as a must read. - But his constellation of 4 fits working together is also not enough!
Having started to search other useful but overlooked fits, the obvious #1 missed fit was founder-market fit.
Product-founder fit is also noticeable, making it a trio: product-market-founder fit or PMFF. - Thanks to Taylor Pearson who put PMFF as a Venn Diagram. it was easy to realize that finding an intersection of these three things is similar to what is popularised as ikigai outside Japan (domestically, ikigai means another thing).
Market is ‘what people would pay for.’
Product is ‘what I do well.’
Founder is ‘what I want to do.’
I know that western understanding of ikigai also has a fourth element, but we will put it aside. - To underline the reason why Brian uses the term market-product fit instead rather than vice versa, in my Ultimate Fit diagram I use colors to highlight things that we have control of.
Also, to make one more option changeable, I opted to use the term Team rather than the Founder.
Yes, if you are alone, you can change yourself – but a better strategy is to exploit your strengths rather than fix your weaknesses.
Thus if you are an established professional, at any given moment you better suit one markets and products rather than others. - But when there is a Team rather than a Founder, things are getting more changeable. That is why it is gray.
Also, putting Team instead of a Founder and featuring Timing makes the diagram highlight the solid things that early-stage investors look for: Market, Team, and Timing.
And using colors makes it visible why current Product hypothesis is regularly neglected – because it is the easiest to vary in this quartet.
How to understand the diagram?
- You have 6 parameters: 2 variable (white), 2 slightly variable (gray), and 2 fixed (black).
You cannot change channels or timing for a given product.
Once you started, you have a limited opportunity to tweak your team.
Instead of impossible changing a market you can create a new one, but it is still is very difficult.
The things that you have actual control over are your business model (2 intersections) and your product (4 intersections). - One intersection covers slightly variable Market and Team, and this is where you should start from.
Having outlined your Market and Team, you should come up with a Product that suits your Team, your Market, current Timing and available Channels. - Having defined all these things, you should come up with a Model suitable to your Channel and Market, and if necessary – follow the circle once again to tweak your decisions until you found all 7 fits in theory.
- And then, your theory gets stress-tested by practice, and getting insights from your market (users), your start understand your market better and make tweaks once again if necessary.
What other fits I found but left out of the diagram?
- Product-User Fit. The concept outlines that initially know only of a tiny fraction of a market, so finding PMF is an incorrect goal – we should concentrate on concrete users than an abstract market.
But users are still part of the market, so they this circle should be drawn within one for Market and would be tiny right as the idea suggests. - Product-Habit Fit. Another rare angle and another complication: habits are features of users that belong to a market, so no new dimension added here.
Is there anything missed here? Please let me know in comments!