🧠 Deep dive — top 3 PMF mistakes (and how to avoid them)
Product-market fit is hard enough. Don't trip over your own shoelaces.
The frustrating reality most startup founders face
Have you ever felt a bit lost — or worse, completely stuck — when trying to find the perfect customer for your startup? You’re not alone. Despite their best efforts, all pre-seed startup founders struggle with finding product-market fit.
And many don’t make it out alive, for the road to scale is lined with death traps.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Why you’re stuck (and what to do instead)
The reason so many founders get stuck is that they’re making some common (yet easily avoidable) mistakes. Once you grok these missteps, you can course-correct toward that elusive product-market fit.
Here are three of the biggest blunders holding most founders back:
Mistake 1: ignoring customer feedback
Many founders believe they know what their customers want without actually asking them… and then they build products atop the house of cards of their own assumptions.
As opposed to, y’know, data.
Instead, actively seek out and listen to customer feedback. Conduct customer interviews, involve customers in rapid testing and iteration, and send surveys to understand what your target audience’s needs, wants, and fears really are. Then, iterate incessantly until it resonates consistently and predictably.
Mistake 2: lack of focus
Some founders try to make their product or message appeal to everyone, which often leads to a vague and unfocused offering that appeals to no one.
Instead, clearly define your customer persona, and focus on solving their specific problems. Tailor your product’s features, benefits, and experience to the needs, wants, and feats of this particular person — rather than any generic group of people — which will dramatically increase your chances of creating an offering that scales.
Mistake 3: adopting an inflexible approach
Founders often fall in love with their initial idea and refuse to change it, even when faced with increasing evidence from customers that it’s not desirable.
“Customers just don’t get it yet,” they say. “We just need better marketing/sales.”
Sure, Jan.
Instead, be open to pivoting your product or business model based on direct and indirect feedback from customers, as well as identifiable market trends. Adopt the mantra that there’s no such thing as a good idea. Be eager to make changes to improve your chances of finding fit.
After all, your idea sucks.
The learning loop to find product-market fit
With these common pitfalls out of the way, here’s a simple process for finding the right customer for your startup. I call it “the learning loop”:
Identify an early adopter: Clearly define who your ideal customer is.
Create a robust customer persona: Conduct market research to understand and validates the needs, wants, and fears of that early adopter.
Identify the “critical path”: Find the smallest possible way of solving their biggest problem.
Run a test: Whether an MVP, rapid prototype, Wizard of Oz test, or any one of dozens available experiment types, create and run an experiment of your value prop.
Gather data: Whether qualitative or quantitative, measure the response to your test with precision and specificity.
Iterate and pivot: Analyse the data. What worked and what didn’t? What does this mean? What’s next?
Rinse and repeat: Continuously engage in “turns” of this build-measure-learn loop, co-creating your product with the customer. A startup’s runway is just a measure of how many turns you have left. Momentum wins!
Of course, it’s not always so linear.
It’s time to build smarter.
Finding product-market fit is always an uphill battle, so there’s no sense making it harder! Avoid these common mistakes, and keep spinning around the learning loop until you’ve nailed it.
That’s it. Because that’s all a startup is.
See you next week!
—jdm
PS: Got a startup question? Reply this email, leave a comment, or slip into my DMs: