3 Ways for Startups to Quickly Reach Product-Market Fit

Written by Ed Johnson

13 January 2024

Product-market fit is often spoken about as a crucial part of the start-up business journey. The reality though, for a lot of entrepreneurs who, like me, focused on building a business, rather than learning the terms and technical acronyms that are rife in the start-up ecosystem, is that I didn’t really know what that word meant when I started PushFar or the Omyx Club and I probably didn’t spend enough time actually thinking about it. In fact, I only really stopped to think more about it after PushFar was already profitable and had, undoubtedly, reached a product-market fit.

So, first let me start by enlightening you, if you are running your first business but haven’t thought much about product-market fit before. In its simplest terms, product-market fit means that you have a product that fits the market and its needs. Simple enough, I suppose. If you try and sell something that nobody wants or is interested in, then, clearly, you haven’t reached product-market fit. But how much time should early-stage founders and start-ups be spending, thinking about their product-market fit and how can businesses quickly reach product-market fit? Here are my top three recommended fastest ways to reach product-market fit and recommendations that I will always use for future businesses. In fact, they’re the same ones that I used, without realising it, as I was building PushFar.

1. Build What You Believe In
This one might be seen as controversial and, sure, there’s a need for common sense when building a business but the truth is that if you really believe that what you are building has value, then the chances are you can find others who will do too. Of course, it’s important not to be blinded by your passion and to continue to evolve your product or service as you go. I’ve learnt that tiny incremental changes to marketing, product presentation and even the way a start-up describes themselves can have a huge impact.

A new product or service can often be described in a variety of different ways, and these can be the difference between a successful business and one that withers and dies. I remember when we started PushFar. We described the platform as a “career progression platform” because we thought we were the first of our kind. There was nothing like that out there. The reality was, we had to spend too much time convincing people that they needed it and actually understanding what it offered. Without many changes to our product at all, we began describing it as a “mentoring platform” and suddenly it picked up traction. Our product-market fit wasn’t so much that the product was wrong for the market, it was that the way we marketed it wasn’t quite right.

Research along the way can be valuable but I’ve seen so many start-up founders spending more time on market research than on actually building the business. If you believe in your idea, you’d be far better spending your time building it and seeing how a market responds, rather than putting off launching because you’re fearful you’ve not done enough research.

2. Speak to Every Customer, as Often as Possible
Another vitally important step for founders is to resist the urge to outsource or delegate on too much too soon. The good news for a lot of founders is that you likely won’t have the financial resource available to hire a sales team and a customer support team but even if you do, try and resist the urge to do so early on. You, as the founder, need to be right there at every single pitch, presentation or sales conversation (admittedly slightly different from B2B and B2C businesses). You need to know what sort of questions are being asked of your business, of your product or of your service. You need to know what the consumer wants, what is missing (if anything) and how you can win more business.

Remain curious, not just during the sales process but in the usage and lifecycle of your customers’ engagement with your business. If it’s an app or piece of software, understand the true usage, data sets and ways in which they are engaging. If it’s a physical product, ask for feedback, look at where there might be teething problems and explore ways in which you can improve it – and quickly. Iterate, evolve and get as much first-hand feedback as possible. Ask your customers how they found you, double down on the marketing channels that work and pay close attention to the language they use as well. What problem are you fixing and how are they describing the problem in the first place? The language used will help with SEO and ensure you’re positioning yourself in the right place at the right time.

3. Data Doesn’t Lie but Track the RIGHT Metrics
As you start to develop your business and scale it, looking to find a product-market fit, you might discover that it takes longer than first thought. Most entrepreneurs who I talk to are optimistic that they will build their business, launch it and then the customers will come running. This happens in very few cases. So, don’t expect the launch to open the flood gates – far from it. The reality is you’ll have to get good at marketing very, very quickly. We can talk about marketing another time though. The purpose of this third product-market fit recommendation is to help you in the right direction as you grow the customer-base and business and that is by looking at data carefully, closely and curiously, over time. Track data to show how your product or service is landing with your customers and use this to inform decisions you make. With everything from customer acquisition to retention, engagement to usage. Understand how, why, what, where and when, as far as your start-up is concerned. This will help you to improve your product-market fit.

A word of caution when it comes to data – make sure you’re tracking the right metrics! I said in the headline of this recommendation that data doesn’t lie and that’s true, provided conversions and analytics are correctly setup. However, what can easily happen is that we focus on the wrong metrics. The metrics which look great and can be described as “vanity metrics” for that very reason. They give us, as founders and entrepreneurs, a boost, but don’t really have any true value or impact on business success. For B2B brands, this might be things like pageviews. Sure, it’s good to have lots of traffic on your website but is it actually converting into sales? Don’t get sucked into the trap of following the wrong metrics and spending money driving visitors but not making sales. If you’re following the right metrics, you’ll be able to get your start-up to product-market fit more efficiently.

So, there we are. Three relatively straightforward, yet often overlooked, ways to get your start-up to product-market fit quickly, easily and at a low cost. Whatever your business, if you are doing research before launching, I’d suggest putting more effort into getting the business to launch and seeing first-hand how markets respond to it.