How to Build a Successful Product That Customers Want to Buy

Targeting product market fit

Last month, I wrote about my product playbook, a guide I put together because I was answering a boatload of the same questions for startup founders suffering from stagnant growth and lifeless products.

In that post, I started at the very top, with the startup’s vision. In this post, I’m going to jump ahead in the playbook to the most critical part of the product development process.

Once vision, mission and position are settled, and once a target market is defined, the most important choices are those that concern what features to build into the product itself.

This is product-market fit. It’s a target. And aiming at it should never be guesswork.

What Is Product Market Fit, Really?

First, I’m going to do a quick high-level overview of product-market fit so we’re all on the same page when I use what is essentially a buzz-term.

Product-market fit is a relatively new term, usually credited to a couple of Silicon Valley venture capitalist investors, with ultra-famous VC Marc Andreesen popularizing it when he said that achieving product market fit meant this: