Product-Market Fit

Imagine you set up a lemonade stand. If people walk by and shrug, you don't have product-market fit. If people are lined up around the block fighting for your lemonade — you've got it.

Product-market fit is the moment your product and your audience click. People don't just try it — they use it. They come back. They tell their friends. They'd be genuinely upset if you shut it down. It's the difference between "that's nice" and "I NEED this."

Before product-market fit, everything feels like pushing a boulder uphill. Marketing is expensive, growth is slow, and every customer feels hard-won. After product-market fit, things start pulling you forward — customers find you, word of mouth kicks in, and growth becomes the easy part.

Because finding product-market fit is the single most important thing for any new product. You can have the best marketing, the prettiest design, and the most advanced technology — but if people don't actually need what you built, none of it matters. If you're building something, obsess over this before anything else.

Marc Andreessen coined the modern usage: "Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market." Sean Ellis' test: survey users asking "How would you feel if you could no longer use [product]?" — if 40%+ say "very disappointed," you likely have PMF. Metrics indicating PMF include organic growth, high retention, low churn, and customers actively recommending the product.