Product-market fit is a confusing term
A case of the ‘Draw the rest of the fucking owl’-syndrome
The mantra goes: after product-market fit, you can scale.
However, product-market fit is a misleading term. The term itself is only involves the product and customers. I encounter a lot of founders who, for that reason, just focus on the solution.
Yet, when you ask unicorn founders and gurus for definitions, they include a profitable revenue model and repeatable sales processes and an organisation that can pull all that off. Only then you can scale.
I have two issues with how the term product-market fit gets thrown around.
1. The SaaS focus of most unicorn founders
Most of the interviewed founders on PMFit are SaaS founders. And sometimes, they are even self-serve SaaS companies, such as Slack, Figma or SuperHuman
Figma, Slack and Superhuman are products you can use yourself or your team. You will stumble across them, give them a try, and if the startup has product-market fit, it sticks.
If you are happy, you tell more people. With that, more people come in, yada yada yada.
This is how some people think product-market fit works. Big surprise: almost for nobody it works like this.
Why? Well, first, not all startups are SaaS, or even software.
Secondly, most startups need to do manual sales to get things going.
2. ‘Draw the rest of the fucking owl’-syndrome
Some (like Sam Altman) define product-market fit as ‘people really love your product’, leaving out one of the biggest issues for any startup: new customers and a sustainable business model.
How to set up sales is not covered by the traditional gurus who just Build-Measure-Learned their way to PMFit. In all fairness, most startups don’t.
Saying after product-market fit customers and revenue will come in, feels a bit like ‘draw the rest of the fucking owl’.
Luckily, there are some great players like Maja Voje and Rob Snyder who understand the importance of setting up scalable sales, and its challenges.
Especially when your product is not self-serve SaaS, you need to make way more things than just a product and perhaps some social ad campaigns.
Startup-market fit
Thus, the term product-market fit is kind of misleading to capture that your entire startup is ready to scale.
Therefore, I propose the term ‘startup-market fit’. Your entire startup should fit the market, not just your product.
Startup-Market Fit: The degree to which a startup, including its team, operations, sales processes, and scalable revenue model, aligns with and effectively serves a specific market.
Startup-market fit ensures the entire business is structured to capture, convert, and sustain demand profitably within a given market.
Let’s keep product-market fit
Speaking of startup-market fit would not replace product-market fit.
Product-market fit will be more focused: to have a highly desirable product which I still think is one of the most important issues for any startup starting out.
What do you think?
Do you think the term product-market fit is confusing? Does this make sense? Let me know in the comments.
I think it's a really valid discussion that could entail different moments of an startup, PMF entails that your solution is actually solving a problem that someone really needs to be solved and there are enough people willing it to be solve, whilst Startup market fit, could mean that all processes to deliver that solution are tested enough to create a sort of machine that is capable to grow an organization and not just a solution.
In your examples you keep coming back to sales, in that context Startup-Market fit seems a confusing term to me because it encapsulates ALL business processes.
And yes, in order to be succesfull you need to nail all of them. Or you'll never make the unicorn list.
Not sure about terminology but essentially in order to effectively execute product-market fit you need to nail your marketing, channels and sales. Upbump Channel Fit in the models?