Too Much Product, Not Enough Market Fit

If you’ve hit this wall with your startup, you’re not alone

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I’m at this weird inflection point right now with my startup — in fact, I’ve been there for a couple months and the problem keeps festering a tiny little bit more each day.

Have you ever reached the point with your business where there are a million things you should do and none of them seem like the “right” thing to do? That’s where I am, and it’s painful, in an existential sort of way. But I’ve done this startup thing long enough to know where the problem is sourced and how it will play out.

What I’ve got is “too much product, not enough market fit.” In other words, I’ve gotten way ahead of myself on the execution of the vision, and as a result, I’ve built this very robust version of my product that’s probably six months to a year ahead of its market.

So all at once I’ve got to play catch-up: Expand that market, educate it, accommodate it, and get enough revenue out of it to confidently take the next growth step.

Have you been there? Are you there now? Good, because I’m gonna talk myself through it and maybe there’s something in here you can pull out for yourself.

My Startup To Help Startups Do Startup

A little background. This is not my day job. Teaching Startup is my startup to bring expert advice to all levels of entrepreneurs at an affordable and sustainable price point. I’m going pure mission on this one — solution, meet problem — and at the same time trying to prove the merit of that approach to all my subscribers.

In other words, I’m not doing this to make a billion dollars. I’m doing it on the side with very limited hours to spend on it — much like doing pro-bono work, or maybe like the vast majority of startups that just don’t get the attention of the Stanford-connected ones.

But that’s no excuse. The gutter bumpers I proactively put on growth are really the only constraints here. If I’m right, and the concept of starting a high-growth business in the 2020s isn’t all Stanford connections or crypto bros, then the growth curve that results from my limited effort should have the same shape as any high growth startup, it’ll…