What comes first: the product or the market?

This is the question most of the entrepreneurs face with when deciding to come out with a new product. To make this easier to understand, let us consider an example.

You have come up with this unique and astounding software product development idea, and subsequently after undertaking market research, numerous discussions with your team, listing out multitude of product features, you finally get down to your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and approach your friends, associates, acquaintances, and start sharing about your product. And, what more everyone loves your product & provides great feedback.

Now, you share your software product with them, but after sometime you are surprised to find that these people do not seem to use it, and basically are not really that interested or zealous about your product.

And, this could be simply because of the fact that though your idea was innovative but you overlooked to consider that does it really solves a problem which the market really wants to get solved; and most often the problem is not that significant or big enough.
Now, this is a sign that one does not have a ‘Product-Market Fit!’.

End of the day, it does not matter how excellent your idea is or how good you think your product is; it is all about whether someone needs it, and whether someone is eager to pay for it. As Marc Andreessen, the first person to define it rightly said, “Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market”.

So, to avoid reaching the wrong product-market fit scenario, make sure you understand the pain points that your product intends to solve as well as the challenges your customers are seeking to solve. And, this can essentially be done by focusing on the five key ways which will help in making your product “market fit”:-
➡ Determining your target customers
➡ Identifying underserved customer needs
➡ Defining your product’s unique value
➡ Specifying your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) feature set
➡ Creating MVP Prototype of your product & getting feedback

Understandably, it is not possible to find product-market fit on the first go itself, so there is absolutely no need to feel panicked. The key lies in testing it till the time your product meet the needs, demands and pain points of your targeted customers.

And, believe me, once you have achieved your product-market fit, rest assured you will end up with a successful product which will be ready to capture the market and your customers!

So, have you found your product-market fit or still searching? Let us know by commenting below.

Tags: Business, customer, enterpreneurs, growth, kenresearch, Market, pmf, productdevelopment, productmarketfit