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Resources for Finding Product/Market Fit

I ran a profitable company for about 7 years, but I didn't have product/market fit. It was always pulling teeth to find users. After I decided to call it quits with that first one I started on the career developer path until coming back to building my own thing.

One thing that was extremely clear was that the products I worked for that did well, very clearly had product/market fit.

Marc Andreessen said: "You can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers." every successful business I worked for has had this be true for them.

Growth is organic. Direct traffic/branded keywords made up well over 80% of signups. My goal now is to find product/market fit at all costs. If that means throwing out everything I've done once it's obvious I'm not there and pivoting hard, I plan on doing it. I've been doing a lot of research lately on how to measure and find product/market fit and thought I would share a cumulation of the more interesting resources I found.

Here is the link: https://bit.ly/3gtOxHA

Hopefully it's helpful. I would love to hear your journey to product/market fit too!

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    Pretty neat platform, but I do see your dilemma with product/market fit.

    The problem most products and services face in getting notable traction is related to how much people need a specific product. Meaning, what is the pain-point, how severe is it, and how well does the product/service address it?

    There are occasions where people don't consciously know they're frustrated with something, until something comes along to solve it. (i.e. email, uber, airbnb, dropbox, early online dating apps, google maps on your mobile, mobile check deposit, a camera & music on your phone, etc.)

    If something is not disruptive enough, or doesn't solve a real need, doesn't notably improve your life, not marketed heavily via paid advertising, or is not promoted by someone with a massive following -- well, then it will likely grow slowly/organically, or fail.

    With Trig, there's an additional obstacle -- and that's to get people to install the Chrome extension successfully. Not saying that's a huge obstacle, but it's something that adds friction. TBH, I'm a pretty advanced user, and I haven't found many things compelling enough to add in a Chrome extension and keep it there for long periods of time.

    The other issue is that there seems to be an app for everything, and in many cases, there are tons of apps to choose from in each category.

    So, how do people choose? Usually, based on marketing.

    Good luck with Trig -- maybe you can find your ideal customer, and be able to speak & market to them effectively.

    1. 1

      Hey appreciate it. Yeah definitely feel where you're coming from. I'm struggling finding my ideal customer. I think I have to dial it in a bit more.

  2. 2

    I agree with you 100%. I'm trying to nail the fit between what my product does, what my active customers love most about it, and how to explain it in a way that a stranger can look at a landing page and say "okay that's what I want, count me in". This is very hard to and take tons of iterations. But as long as I make progress I keep going. Please share your product whenever you're ready!

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      For sure this is what I got so far: https://trytrig.com - So far I'm not getting really the responses I was hoping for, gotta figure out some angle that makes this useful.

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        My two cents: this looks promising but doesn't make me go "wow". I think what's missing is an undeniable proof that it's going to work and save me time, that it's not just one more bookmarks manager.

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          Hey yeah for sure. I wasn't intending to make a bookmark manager, but that's where my MVP landed :)
          Because it wasn't the original intention I think it fell flat a little bit. Going to do a little bit of pivoting to see if I can dial in exactly where I fit in the market. Thanks for checking it out and the feedback!

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            You're welcome Brian! You probably already know about it, but the book "obviously awesome" is perfect for that.

            Basically it's made for people who set out to build something, ended up building something else entirely, and don't know how to position themselves as a result.

            Used it for logology. We set out to build a better "logo generator", but what we actually built is a "fully automated brand design agency" and it helped us fix our messaging a lot (even though there's still work to do there, as I'm not super proud of the value prop I've written above 😂).

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              Man there's a book for everything. That's one I haven't read. Thanks for the suggestion I just bought it. Will start in on it soon!

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                Awesome! Following you on twitter to see your progress 🚀

  3. 2

    Thanks for curating the list.

    Trig looks interesting . Great intro video. On a side note - learned about text-fragments in chrome from your video.

    1. 1

      Thanks appreciate it! Yeah text fragments are a pretty cool newish chrome feature. I think they might be moving over to other browsers as well.

    1. 1

      Thanks for checking it out!

  4. 2

    Wow, quite a few articles! Thanks!
    Bookmarked😁

    1. 2

      No problem glad you found some value!

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