Yikes! 4 Product/Market Fit Myths

💡 Don't fall into these traps. How to avoid four classic PMF honeypots.

Setting The Stage

Along the way to investing in some of the greatest unicorns of this recent era, Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, identified four classic product-market fit myths in a pair of seminal articles that set the tone for the next decade and still stand true today.

This week I briefly revisit these evergreen gems in the hope that they might help build your playlist for this dance party we call entrepreneurship and product management. 

Myth #1: Product-Market fit is always a discrete, one-time event.

In a utopian product launch cycle, we all wish there would be a moment of clarity where everything suddenly clicks and our business knows exactly what customers want and how to deliver it to them.  However, in reality, achieving product-market fit is often a process of trial and error.  Scaling sales & marketing before solving the PMF puzzle is a recipe for pain - and a great way to prematurely shorten your runway.

PMF requires ongoing experimentation, listening to customer feedback, and making constant adjustments to the product and the business model.  Even after achieving initial product-market fit, our businesses need to continue adapting to changes in the market and the needs of customers.

Myth #2: Once you achieve it you can't lose it.

Only in a non-competitive market with dull customers of unchanging tastes will we find a permanent product-market fit. For the 99.99% 🤞 of all businesses that don’t fall into this category, maintaining product-market fit is a constant challenge that requires ongoing effort.  The trap of complacency can sneak up on anyone when times are good.

Vigilance is key.  Markets are constantly evolving, and competitors are always looking for ways to disrupt the status quo. To maintain product-market fit and grow, a business needs to stay ahead of these changes, continue to innovate and improve its product, and remain focused on the needs of its customers.

Myth #3: Product-Market fit is always easy to recognize.

This myth suggests that product-market fit is a clear and obvious state that founders and PMs can easily recognize. However, in reality, it’s often not clear whether a business has achieved product-market fit if only qualitative methods are used to assess the degree of fit. 

It’s tempting for us to get excited about a specific marketing campaign that went viral, or landing a handful of big customers really quickly after a product launch. But using these soft indicators of PMF can be misleading and often distracts us from the bigger picture of building a sustainable and scalable business that can withstand the test of time.  

Instead of drawing conclusions from anecdotal evidence or singular incidents, the most successful companies intentionally choose to structure their products and workflows around measuring product-market fit.  In doing so, they are much better positioned to reliably verify their PMF hypothesis and much more likely to avoid the pitfalls of premature scaling.

Myth #4: PMF can be achieved through a formula or process.

Much has changed in the days since Ben wrote this original article in 2010.  Growth teams within organizations have become commonplace. Product-Led Growth has emerged as the leading strategy for unicorns like Slack, Duolingo, and HubSpot.  Competition has become more intense than ever.  The marketer in me wishes, and the engineer in me sometimes believes, that there must be a one-size-fits-all formula for product-market fit.

However, achieving product-market fit is highly situational and dependent on a range of factors, including your market, your competition, your product, and your customers. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for achieving product-market fit, but by adopting a data-first framework as the one core tenet that guides your product development it is possible to stack the odds in your favor and find fit faster. 

By adopting a data-first framework as the one core tenet that guides your product development, it's possible to stack the odds in your favor and find fit faster.

Parting Thoughts

As Ben points out at the close of his article, there are businesses that have been fortunate enough to bust one or more of these myths along their journey. But not every business can be Twitter in 2010.  Finding product-market fit is an exciting, exhausting, sometimes emotionally perilous journey for most of us.  However, with an occasional nudge in the right direction, and some guidance from a growth coach, we can all be the DJ that takes the party to the next-level.