Lessons I learned on my journey to finding Product-Market Fit😭Hope you can avoid them

Last Christmas, I received a DM from a founder on Twitter asking how to find product market fit. Back then, I knew that the product needed to solve a certain problem of users from a certain market segment, but I still underestimated what PMF really was and had not realized my product was far from reaching PMF, so I responded confidently (stupidly) as follows:

"Conduct extensive research on your competitors and their market fit to identify market potential or unknown users."

Terrible answer. It sounds like I’m a layperson who has never worked in the marketing field.

So I wanna share my limited knowledge of PMF I gained and list some of the mistakes I made while trying to find PMF for Gemoo over the last few months. Hopefully, it can help one more startup founder avoid the mistakes I’ve made.

❔What Is Product Market Fit

According to Marc Andreessen, Product-Market Fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

In my words, PMF is a continuous process of asking yourself:

• Whether my product is what the customer really needs or not
• Whether my product has really found its market or not
• Whether my product has a big market space in the future or not
• Whether the potential users are willing to pay for my product or not
• Whether we have a profit margin or not…

❌What Went Wrong When I was Looking for PMF?

TBH, this is not my first time starting a business, but it is my first SaaS business. So I ignore the distinction between SaaS and other markets and stick to the old rules, which is when I start making mistakes.

Reach out to Too Many Potential Groups at Once
My team and I conducted some research and make some assumptions, but the more we did, the more ambiguous our potential users became.

We tried to attract developers’ attention by posting on dev communities; we tried to attract teachers’ attention by emailing them; we tried to attract marketers’ attention by reaching out to marketing influencers, etc.

Too many attempts and efforts on different groups of users simultaneously exhausted us.

Hold the Belief That My Product Can Do Anything
We initially believed Gemoo could do anything and solve almost any problem in remote communication. (I know it's completely wrong)

It does have a lot of features, such as built-in screen recording, screenshots, docs, and even a cloud space (not self-promotional👀). As a result, we believe it perfectly fits almost every need and can replace current tools. (Wrong again)

We’re not good enough to replace existing screenshot tools, screen recorders, or online docs, so we need to figure out what makes us different from other similar tools (which we’ve discovered is the power of visualizing things by various views, but we are still in the process of locating PMF, so not settled yet😉).

Build the Product Before Defining the Core Product Function
Long before we validate potential users and their true needs, we began to build products based on our market research and assumptions.

Fortunately, Gemoo is fantastic in some way, so we are finally getting gradual growth in users through these platforms. Meanwhile, our product is rapidly iterating based on users’ feedback.

Care too Much about Competitors
As I said, we conducted extensive research on who our competitors’ current users are and how they find users. We focused too much on competitors rather than figuring out our own path.

We certainly gained some insights from their experience, but knowing our own potential users and how we can 10x better meet their needs is far more important.

My advice is, make as many connections as possible with potential users and ask them what they require. Consider more users, rather than competitors. Losers focus on winners, while winners focus on winning.

💭 What Should I Do in the Future?

Interview Users More Regularly
When I realized we needed to pay more attention to our users, I began to interview users, and get way more insights than my expectation. (I've shared my learnings from user interview in this post before) We'll definitely conduct more user surveys and interviews in the future to improve products and effectively test and analyze our target market.

Set a Clear Goal for Achieving PMF
Since I now have a better understanding of the process of achieving PMF, I will set a more specific goal for my team and work towards it step by step.

Keep Reading and Connecting
I am a newcomer to this field, as are my product and team, so I will always be available to talk, connect, and share all things related to SaaS marketing, startup stories, and so on.

If you got any interest, you can also read the complete version of my learnings on this journey here: https://gemoo.com/blog/find-product-market-fit.htm

Hope you can find my sharing of any help. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and learn from your experience!