I write about Product Growth and Experience Design.

The product life cycle is turbulent for startups, which constantly rush for growth and don’t have time to worry about design or even have a designer on board. Deliver fast, get feedback, fix, and repeat; there is no time for beauties. It's an entirely normal situation. Right, first things first.

However, people tend to judge things first by appearance but later value them for their substance and functionality. According to Toptal, 94% of the first user impressions are design-related. It is not always about the digital product itself; it relates to any major touchpoint on the customer journey, such as a website, a landing page, or even the design of an email template, and so on.

Radiant diamonds aren't found lying on the ground; they are diligently sought, carefully cut, and skillfully polished to reveal their brilliance. The same applies to any digital product. Sooner or later, it becomes necessary to frame and polish it. We call this redesigning or introducing a new user experience.

But why should you consider redesigning your digital experience?

Redesigning your application or entire customer journey is an important decision that carries both opportunity and risk. Whether you want to improve user experience, refresh your brand identity, or stay ahead of technological progress, a redesign can breathe new life into your product experience.

Redesigning is a powerful growth tactic and one of the most effective tools in an Experience-Led Growth strategy.

Based on my experience, I’ve brought together 14 compelling reasons why you should consider redesigning your product. So, let's explore why a fresh coat of digital paint might be your next best move.

1. Customer feedback

Delivering value to customers is the core of any business. Customers know better what, why, and how they want to use your products or services; at least, they think so. You get a lot of feedback daily through interviews, demos, surveys, and support requests, so at some point, you need to incorporate it into your product.

Sometimes, it’s easy, but usually, the more feedback you receive, the more painful it gets to add new features over time. They don’t fit into your current design system, and new additions break user workflow and the integrity of the user interface, and so on.

Eventually, the development team needs more time to implement new features, which often involves refactoring or completely rewriting the application. This slows everything down and requires a lot of resources. That’s not how successful companies work.

So, if adding new features becomes a nightmare, and your application gets cluttered and unusable with even a small change, it’s time to consider redesigning it.

2. Data and metrics

Data is a gold mine of product growth. Since the user interface (apps, websites, forms, etc.) is at your business's frontlines, the design directly impacts the product performance and usability metrics. Many product-related issues can be traced back to design shortcomings. These challenges include a terrible first impression, challenging onboarding, poor user experience, and visual appeal.

Data-driven design assumes making decisions based on hard data rather than lore, beliefs, or personal preferences. To improve your key product metrics and overall usability, you should consider redesigning the experience as a viable solution for problematic areas.

The best user experience (UX) and a straightforward customer journey are essential elements that eventually lead to better conversion and retention, happy customers, and a thriving business.

3. Eliminating the feature creep

Feature creep occurs when a user interface is overloaded, messy, noisy, cluttered, and has poor usability. Typically, it happens when the product team continuously adds redundant features until the product becomes too complicated to use and eventually loses value for the customer.

At this point, you stop getting feedback, but a torrent of complaints instead. Of course, if users are still interested in your product, otherwise they churn.

Redesigning will introduce a new user experience, unclutter the user interface, prioritize features by relevance of use, improve usability, and, as a result, increase overall customer satisfaction.

4. Overcoming MVP trap

A typical scenario is when you’ve built a throwaway MVP to test the idea and prove it right. However, on the wave of success, the team continues building the product on top of the MVP by adding more features, but there are not enough resources and time to make it right.

Usually, there is a blowback in terms of poor usability, redundant complexity, slow development speed, and increased scaling costs. MVP is not intended to be a product; it’s just another experiment.

But if you have already built a product based on your MVP and see that it doesn’t work well in terms of usability, consider redesigning it.

5. Building the Information Architecture

Information architecture (IA) refers to the organization of the content in relation to the available functionality in your application. One example of IA is a sitemap, which is a structured way to show how webpages are categorized, grouped, and organized on the website.

Well-organized content creates value and credibility for the end user, so whenever they visit your website, everything is located in the right place under the proper categories.

Often, designers simply ignore or don’t pay enough attention to the IA, jumping straight ahead to building the navigation without understanding the broader scope. This may lead to ad hoc content organization and confusing navigation, which I’ll discuss next.

6. Improving navigation

Navigation is a set of guidelines that help users interact with your digital experience. It is a part of IA and represents user interface components that assist the user in finding content or a feature that leads to the desired action. Without good navigation, your users will get lost or be confused using your app.

The navigation should be built considering many aspects, such as industry-accepted UX patterns, user preferences, and behavioral patterns. It should be tailored to a specific goal that the user must accomplish in your product to experience its core value.

7. Outdated design

Design trends are changing for a reason; they are not just a tribute to fashion. They respond to today's challenges and insights, market conjunction, user and industry demand, best practices, and more.

Modern design systems, like Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google’s Material Design, are not just a set of nice buttons; they are designed through an in-depth analysis of user interactions with digital products.

A good design is a harmony of beauty and functionality, where visual appeal marries the joy of use.

Updating outdated visual design and UX patterns is essential to keep up with modern trends. This promotes product growth, ensures it remains relevant, and meets evolving user expectations.

8. “Aha moment” optimization

The moment when the customer realizes the product's true value is known as the “Aha moment.” It sparks a shift in user perception that turns the product from an option into a “must-have” tool.

Another important concept in the customer journey is "Time-to-Value,” which is the period between the initial interaction with your product and the moment of realization of its core value. The shorter the time, the more likely the user will eventually convert.

However, users may find value in places you didn't expect or use the product in ways you didn't originally design it for.

Redesigning helps to identify the "Aha moment" and streamline the user journey to it, decreasing the "Time-to-Value." A well-executed redesign ensures that users will be led to the desired outcome and quickly discover and appreciate the product's core value.

9. Customer onboarding

Customer onboarding is among the most underrated or often completely overlooked product success factors. Onboarding introduces new users to your product, helps them through their first steps, communicates the product’s value, educates them on how to use it, and eventually encourages product adoption.

A good onboarding leads the customer through their entire journey, increasing the likelihood that users will get value from the product and continue using it. Effective user onboarding reduces friction, prevents user drop-off, and maximizes user retention.

Product redesign aims to simplify and clarify critical actions, such as discovering the core value or making payments, thus improving conversion, adoption, and retention.

10. Reduce complexity

While complexity does not necessarily mean difficult to use, simplicity alone does not always guarantee product success.

Complexity is inevitable. It may come from building sophisticated software like CRM or innovation that introduces new usability patterns to which users are not used. Consider redesigning as a way to reduce a product's complexity.

By redesigning, you can rethink the importance and priority of the core features, eliminate redundant elements, and focus on what is most valuable to users.

A clear hierarchy of information minimizes cognitive overload and enhances usability, while consistent design patterns throughout the application ensure the integrity of the user interface. The redesign can improve visual clarity using clear typography, appropriate color schemes, and consistent iconography.

In essence, the redesign is an excellent opportunity to address and mitigate the complexity of your digital experience.

11. Vision and brand alignment

A strong product brand should reflect the product's vision throughout its life cycle. The product vision is not static. It should remain responsive to emerging challenges and opportunities, shifts in customer preferences, market trends, competition, and the overall business environment.

Consider redesigning each time when you aim to marry the product design with a new vision, the updated brand identity, positioning, or messaging.

12. Pivoting

Another reason to redesign is changing the product concept or pivoting, in other words.

Pivoting is the adaptation process when a company realizes its existing offerings, strategies, or business models are misaligned with the market demands. It is a response to the insights gained from market analytics, customer feedback, or competitive analyses. Pivoting aims to reposition the business or product in the market to ensure growth.

Such drastic moves influence the value proposition, which leads to changes in the user experience, feature set, usability patterns, content presentation, product style, and user workflow. Thus, redesign is the next step after you have decided to pivot.

13. Strategic redesign

Strategic redesign assumes proactive measures in anticipation of or response to current or future challenges. These challenges may involve market expansion and adding new products, modules, or features.

To grow fast, you need to build a foundation that allows you to easily add new features or extensions later, change or adopt new technologies, address changes in legislation and compliance, merge different solutions into one offering, reduce costs, etc.

The goal of the strategic redesign is to redesign it now to save later; you will save not only money but also resources and time.

14. Scaling with the design system

Building a design system usually pops up when you want to scale up. The design system goes beyond traditional style guides and pattern libraries. It is a design framework that combines principles, reusable components, and standards that govern the visual and functional design of digital experience across various channels and devices. It provides clear guidelines and documentation on the appropriate use and implementation of UI elements.

The design system is a shared language that facilitates communication and efficiency among team members, speeds up the development process, and improves product quality.

It is no coincidence that the design system is the last on our list of reasons why your digital experience. Usually, the redesign process results in a long-lasting design foundation upon which your company's success is built.

Conclusion

As we wrap up this exploration, remember that redesign is a transformation journey. It’s about taking what works, fixing what doesn’t, and reimagining what your product can be. Digital experience redesigning is a growth tactic for creating a functional, usable, delightful digital product that inspires your customers.

Thanks for reading The Exponential Growth

Let’s grow together.

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Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. - Andreseen

Every startup has a unique success story, but they always share three things in common: a product, a market, and fit in between. All the rest comes into play as the story unfolds.

Product-market fit (PMF) is the launchpad for success and the number one challenge for all startups. It is a complex concept with no clear definition and approach to it.

But why is it so important? What’s the buzz about it?

Broadly speaking, PMF happens when your company creates a unique product for a big enough market where people are desperate for it. It's when your customers not only buy and actively use the product but also spread the word about it to others. With PMF, everything changes and becomes much easier. It is the basis of your company’s growth and success.

Without PMF, you can forget about scaling. However, I would say forget about your business without it. This blog post is my attempt to understand the basic elements of PMF. I’ve explored various sources and success stories and identified seven key elements that form the foundation of PMF. I'll break them down for you in the sections ahead.

So, what are the ingredients for the PMF? What do you need to achieve it?

Urgent Problem

What problem are you solving? How painful is this problem?

“Things you don't need to launch your product: a great name, a one-word domain, a beautiful logo, an ever better website, brilliant copy, perfect code, custom illustrations, shiny buttons, optimized CSS… Things you do need: a product that solves a problem for someone. That's it.” - Sahil Lavingia, the founder of Gumroad.

A customer “hires” your product to solve their problem. The problem can be anything, from the desire to have fun or kill time to building and growing a business, increasing productivity at work, improving health, etc.

The key to achieving the PMF is to find a “hair on fire” kind of problem that pushes the customer to seek a solution. There are many problems worth solving, and your task is to find one so big that people are willing to pay for its solution and that you can solve it.

However, there is the eternal founder’s dilemma. The problem or the solution: that is the question. Unfortunately, most founders try to build a business on a solution. But the market always wins!

42% of startups fail because they have a solution that no one is interested in because it does not solve a real problem. Or the problem is not big enough for someone to want to pay for it. This is called a solution in search of the problem. Avoid it.

Don't think of solutions; look for problems!

A craving market

Who are you solving the problem for? How many people have this problem?

"Strong brands always work for one person. They know her name, exact age, and school nickname, and they know what songs she sings in the bathroom in the morning"—Yaroslav Serdyuk, Banda Agency.

A craving market is a market in need. It has two components: your ideal customer and the market size, or how many such ideal customers are out there. In other words, these are the customer persona and the total addressable market (TAM).

Your ideal customer is someone already paying money to solve an urgent problem or unsuccessfully trying to solve it on their own. "Desperate customers" are those who pull the product out of your hands and are ready to stand on long waiting lists to get it.

In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup. - Marc Andreessen

Remember, PMF is about finding your ideal customers and understanding how many are available on the market. If you think you have found a PMF after talking to several people who are excited about your product and want to pay for it right now, I will disappoint you. No, this is not a market-fit product; most likely, it is a solution fit.

Although this is a good sign that you are moving in the right direction, those few people, even 100 potential customers, are not the total market. Even if these people represent the total market, can you build a profitable business from it?

The craving market has to be big enough to support a sustainable business.

No matter what you do and what problem you try to solve, remember for whom you are doing this! Find and understand your ideal customer.

A unique insight

What is your unique insight?

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” —Albert Einstein.

A unique insight is a vision of the future supported by knowledge and intuition. Such insights usually emerge during major market or technology shifts. Andy Rachleff says, “Without change, there’s seldom opportunity.” For example, Figma has used new technologies, such as WebGL, to create an innovative multilayer UI design platform that designers can use via browser.

You can spot opportunities other incumbents overlook because they seem unattractive or risky. For example, back in the day, big data analytics was somewhat unattractive to mainstream tech companies, so Palantir, with its massive analytical platform, targeted government and financial sectors, which were perceived as complex and risky.

Insights can bend reality to open new, unforeseen opportunities. This is a superpower of successful founders who see ordinary things in “a radically different way”; they can see the extraordinary in the ordinary, find atypical solutions to typical problems, listen carefully to their customers, and, most importantly, catch the vibe of new opportunities.

Insights don't come out of nowhere; they result from hard work, trials, and errors. In most well-known startups, the insight that led them to success came through many failed experiments and sharp business turns.

Success comes from listening carefully and looking closely at what is happening around you and your ability to reshape this reality.

Groundbreaking solution

How do you solve the problem?

The only way to make money is to be right and non-consensus. - Andy Rachleff

A groundbreaking solution is a product that communicates your unique vision by solving a customer problem. However, for the user to pay attention to your product, it must solve the problem in a fundamentally different way and be a no-compromise solution among “good enough” alternatives.

Andy Rachleff emphasizes that adding more features won’t beat the status quo if people already use a good enough solution and are happy with it. Even if not fully satisfied, people often stick with what they know. They're used to their current solution and its quirks and might be hesitant to learn a new product, even if it's cheaper.

People need a compelling reason to switch to and pay for your product. The reason that creates a big difference between a good enough and an ideal product, the reason that becomes a real revelation from which the customer exclaims in ecstasy “Aha, this is it! I love it!”

A groundbreaking solution taps deeply into the problem, its context, and the customer's persona, including attributes like age, gender, occupation, preferences, etc. It doesn’t need to be an innovation; it just needs a fresh look.

Take Duolingo, for example. They solved the problem of expensive language courses by offering a free game-based learning program that made learning a new language accessible and enjoyable for anyone, anywhere.

Value Experience

How do you share the value with the customer?

“You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology”. - Steve Jobs

The essence of commercial activity lies in the exchange of value.

Business is an act of value co-creation. Your company receives value in the form of monetary compensation from the user who receives value from using your product. This value is transmitted through experience, in other words, value experience.

Value experience is a part of the offering through which you realize your competitive advantage; the customer experiences the value from it by solving their problem, and your company receives value from the customer.

Under the value experience umbrella, I put two concepts, User and Customer Experience (UX, CX), two main components of your value proposition. It is everything your customer interacts with, from the user interface, onboarding, payments, website, customer support, and even your brand, style, etc.

Modern users are experienced and picky. It's not the 2000s or especially the 90s when online technologies were new and unusual. Now, users have established patterns of evaluating a product by looking at a website, registration flow, or payment process. I'm not even discussing the application interface, performance, and security. Any carelessly placed button can have negative consequences.

But why is experience so important?

There was a time when tech companies competed with hardware technologies and then with unique digital products. But now, when the market is saturated with similar products, the focus has shifted to providing the best experience possible, leaning toward hyper-personalization.

Value experience is how you realize the unique vision and insight into the customer’s problem. Don’t neglect it even in the early stages of your startup. People evaluate your product by how it looks and feels now, not by how you see it in the future.

Once the king of social networks, MySpace lost its dominant position to Facebook largely because of its failure to innovate and improve the user experience. MySpace became cluttered with ads, and its interface was not user-friendly, leading users to migrate to the cleaner, more streamlined Facebook platform.

Viable business model

How do you make money?

"The most powerful sign of product-market fit: A product that makes money while you sleep. You don’t need salespeople or partnerships to sell products that reach this elusive point", - Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator

It is often believed that you have found a product market fit if users sweep your product off the virtual shelves faster than you build up your digital capabilities. Yes, it's definitely a good sign that people are interested in your product, but only if you're charging customers and not just giving away your product for free.

“Start charging on day one,” suggests Ash Maruya. Otherwise, you won’t be able to test your value hypothesis. Your business model shows whether the market is ready to pay for your solution. You should find out how and how much the market has to pay by testing your model, along with the value proposition.

Earning revenue as an early-stage startup is more about proving your product's value than making money. You can’t understand whether your product is valuable if you're not charging.

Only organic sales growth is an important indicator of product market fit. Organic growth is natural growth that does not result from paid marketing or aggressive sales.

Be smart when pricing; it should be aligned with your customers’ needs and budget to secure a profitable and long-lasting future for your business. This refers back to knowing your customer.

Your business model, especially how you price your product, is key to achieving product-market fit. It's how your company will make money to reinvest and grow.

Technology stack

Do you have an appropriate technology to solve the problem?

“My number one predictor of whether or not a company will find product-market fit: High shipping cadence.” - Naval Ravikant, AngelList

Finding an interesting problem, developing an original solution, and defining a business model is actually half the battle. Now, all these need to be implemented. And for this, you need the appropriate technology, or rather technologies, because writing code alone won’t be enough.

The technology stack is your business's foundation. It isn't just about your product's coding language. It includes all the tech that makes your business function. Let's explore some key aspects.

First, you need the right development tools to build a first-class, reliable, scalable product that can be delivered quickly and often with proper quality. The main thing you should consider is the solution's context. Is it a consumer—or business-oriented solution? Do you need a user interface, or is your solution API-based?

Also, it's super important to know how people use your product and how it's performing. Analytics tools like Mixpanel or Amplitude will show what features users love, where they're having trouble, and what keeps them coming back.

Customer feedback is your fuel for achieving PMF. You need tools to gather and analyze feedback, such as SurveyMonkey, UserVoice, or Intercom, to understand what customers think about your product, their satisfaction, and areas for improvement.

“Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day,” says Jeff Bezos. You’ve got the point: experimentation is a cornerstone of finding PMF. Running experiments is a practical way to test your value and product hypothesis.

You must also consider other things, such as user onboarding and engagement tools, cloud infrastructure and services, CRM and marketing tools, security technologies to ensure compliance and data protection, etc. Sure, it might seem complex, but each tool supports your journey toward achieving PMF.

Conclusion

Product-market fit is "the only thing that matters" for the early-stage startup because you can’t build a thriving business on a product no one wants. You achieve the PMF by creating a unique product for a large enough market that desperately needs it.

The seven elements of PMF are an urgent problem, a craving market, a unique insight, a groundbreaking solution, value experience, a viable business model, and an appropriate technology stack.

Everyone ventures on their own unique entrepreneurial journey. With all the above said, you have all the elements necessary for product-market fit. Now, it's your turn to assemble them to complete your business success puzzle.

Thanks for reading Exponential Growth

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New times and challenges require new approaches to managing the company's success. What worked for technology companies in the 80s or 90s was no longer relevant in the 2000s. Companies have moved from business plans as a way to predict business outcomes to evolutionary product development based on analysis and experimentation. This is how the Lean Startup movement was born.

Having accumulated experience mainly on the failures of technological products created without understanding the market's needs, it became clear that the old approaches didn’t work. Marketing and aggressive sales didn’t bring the expected results, and the presence of significant resources does not guarantee success. That's when a new concept was born, which is now the most wanted for every startup and to which investors pay attention in the first place: the product-market fit.

Product-market fit (PMF) is the most desired yet mysterious moment in startup life. It’s considered a number one priority for founders and product managers during the early stages of start-up development.

PMF is the key to taking your business to the next level. Once you've nailed it, you know your company is on the right track and can scale up.

We debate a lot about what PMF is and even more about how to achieve it.

In this article, I aim to clarify the origin and meaning of the concept of Product-market fit.

Let’s dive in…

What is the only thing that matters for your company?

A team, a product, or a market?

The answer will define the most critical factor in a start-up’s success or failure.

Marc Andreessen's fundamental article about PMF, The Only Thing That Matters, clearly answers this question: the market.

Why market?

In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup. - Marc Andreessen

In a great market, the product is pulled out of your hands; people are “fighting” to have your product; they are talking about it everywhere. This is the product-market fit, according to Marc Andreessen.

He argues that the first viable product that arrives will fulfill the market need, regardless of the team's competency, as long as the product works. When the market is great, you can easily improve the team.

However, even with a top-notch product and the “killer team,” if the market isn't there, your startup won't succeed. You might spend years seeking customers that don’t exist, demoralizing your team, which will eventually quit. Your startup will finally fail this way.

Marc Andreessen credits Andy Rachleff with the Law of Start-up Success.

The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

Based on this premise, Andreessen was the first to define the Product-Market Fit:

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

Things feel off when you haven't hit product-market fit. Customers aren't too excited, word of mouth isn’t spreading, and sales take time if you have them at all.

But when you achieve PMF, you'll feel it. Customers can't get enough of your product, your company's growth speeds up, and the media gets interested.

Andreessen splits the startup’s journey into two phases: before product/market fit (BPMF) and after product/market fit (APMF).

In the BPMF phase, your number one job is to achieve PMF. This may involve making big changes like swapping team members, modifying your product, or switching markets, but it all aims for your startup's most important goal: Product-market fit.

Once you've hit your PMF, you'll realize that startup success isn't about having a perfect strategy, marketing plan, sales model, workflows, and operation. It's about finding that sweet spot where your product meets the market needs. You can screw up everything else.

Andreessen warns that many startups fail before finding their PMF, but you're on the path to success once you do.

What do you uniquely offer that people desperately want?

Andreessen wasn’t the first to coin PMF. Andy Rachleff, cofounder of Benchmark Capital and Wealthfront, explains that he first learned this term from Don Valentine, the founder of Sequoia Capital.

Don used to say, “I’m looking to invest in companies that can screw everything up and still succeed because the customer pulls the product out of their hands.”

Startups are bound to make mistakes, but if the market demand is strong enough, they'll succeed no matter what.

Andy Rachleff picked this idea and was the first to name it as Product-Market Fit. He defines it as "a unique product offering that people desperately want."

Andy Rachleff highlights three essential ingredients critical to achieving PMF:

• a unique insight;

• a radically different vision;

• a desperate customer.

The first ingredient is a “unique insight.” It often emerges from significant changes within the market or technology that create new opportunities.

Successful entrepreneurs have a unique insight that allows them to identify unmet needs, which leads to creating products that people desperately want. This insight could point out a market need overlooked by existing players, possibly because it targets a segment they find unattractive.

Rachleff emphasizes that a founder’s strong vision and leadership skills alone are not enough for success; it's a unique insight that truly differentiates a company.

“I think entrepreneurs succeed because they have a unique and powerful insight that leads to a product that people desperately want.” — Andy Rachleff

A “radically different vision” is a new idea that grabs customer interest and significantly differs from existing solutions. This is particularly true if this idea is not commonly discussed within their networks and communities. Typically, customers are satisfied with"good enough" alternatives, so incremental improvements on existing products are less likely to attract attention.

“If you're just going to add incremental improvements to your product, it's unlikely people are interested, because there's a good enough alternative they already use,” says Andy.

A "desperate customer" must feel a compelling urgency or a "hair on fire" problem to adopt a new product, especially from a startup. This desperation comes from frustration with current offerings or the lack of viable alternatives.

According to Andy Rachleff, PMF occurs when a product is born from a unique insight with a radically different vision that addresses a desperate need customers urgently want to solve.

What is your business model?

Steve Blank defines product-market fit as a crucial milestone in the customer development model where a startup discovers a repeatable and scalable business model that meets the needs of its customers.

Product-martket fit is a “match between product features and the ability to solve customer problems and needs” - Steve Blank

This concept is a core of the lean startup methodology. To find the perfect PMF, you need to understand your customers' needs and continuously adapt the product based on their feedback.

Blank's approach encourages you to rigorously test hypotheses about your business model and customer segments and iterate the product development until you find a fit between what you’re offering and what the market really wants. If you don’t see it, take your experience and pivot to explore other business opportunities.

In their book The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, Blank and Dorf define PMF as a combination of three factors:

• Answering to a problem or need that is urgent or vital to lots of customers;

• Solving the problem or filling the need at a price customers will gladly pay for;

• Having enough customers “out there” to deliver a sizable business opportunity.

Like Andressen and Rachleff, Steve Blank points out that you must find and address an urgent problem with a valuable solution for a big enough market to achieve PMF.

However, Blank also highlights the importance of value perception. It's not enough to build a product that meets customers' needs. You must do so at a price that feels right to the customer, balancing cost with the product's perceived benefits. Proper pricing is vital to attracting and retaining customers and securing the product's market position.

Desirability, Feasibility, Viability

A group of university researchers suggest another interesting approach to product-market fit. In their model, a product must meet three overlapping criteria to achieve PMF:

• Desirability: What do people want?

• Feasibility: What is technically possible to develop?

• Viability: What is a sustainable business model?

To achieve PMF, you have to understand what people want (desirability), devise a sustainable business model (viability), and confirm that your ideas are technically doable (feasibility).

Feasibility is another important aspect that has yet to be encountered. No matter how great your idea is, you have to be able to realize it.

Often, you’ve got a great idea that solves a real problem in the real market can't be implemented with existing technology because the solution is way ahead of its time. Such ideas are rather risky moonshots that are difficult to build a business upon. But that doesn’t mean you have to give; you must be careful and reasonable.

In this article, I examined various approaches to product-market fit, all of which share a common element: the market. The market shapes your product, team, technology, business model, and the company's success.

Simply put, Product-market fit is a unique product offering that people desperately want.

It is the moment when a product gains traction in the market.

Achieving PMF is not a one-time event, and it doesn't guarantee permanent success.

Like everything in life and business, it is a process of trial and error, conclusions, and actions.

Thanks for reading Exponential Growth

Let’s grow together.

Connect!

Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mloboyko/

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