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Product/Market Fit

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Product/Market Fit has emerged as a key threshold of success for startups, but the concept can apply to businesses of any size.

First coined by Benchmark co-founder Andy Rachleff, Product/Market Fit was popularized by Marc Andreesen in 2007 in a famous essay titled “The Only Thing That Matters.”

In the essay, Marc defined Product/Market Fit as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” He added, “in a great market — a market with lots of real potential customers — the market pulls product out of the startup.”

And yet, in practice, the “pull” that Marc references is often treated as a “push”. Companies push Product to the Market, whether or not there’s a Fit. There’s frequently a lack of understanding of the Market to guide what to make and how to make it.

I stumbled across this insight from MediaTech Ventures founder Paul O’Brien:

“It should be renamed a Market / Product Fit…

“You don’t start with the Product and find the fit in the Market, you start with the Market and design and deploy a solution (the Product) that addresses the needs, wants, and desires of the market.

“Misunderstanding Marketing (thinking that it’s just advertising or promotion – which is what’s typically done) causes founders to treat it as what’s done WHEN ready for business. WRONG.

“Marketing is the competitive analysis, customer profiling, chats with people, community building, pricing modeling, partner development, and more that creates a customer…

“Marketing comes first, not after.”

Winding down a year of speaking events

I just finished my last speaking events of the year — at back-to-back company offsites in California and Las Vegas. Keynote speaking has become one of my favorite things, largely because I get a chance to meet so many of you in person. This year took me to events in eight countries beyond the US: India, Czech Republic, Italy, France, UK, Romania, The Netherlands, and Turkey.

Please keep me mind if you come across any speaking events that you think could be a good fit. I really appreciate all of your support, 22 years after starting this cartoon and 14 years after leaving a job to pursue cartooning full time.

Here’s one of my favorite memories from the road this year — at Spotlight by Semrush in Amsterdam in October. We did a cartoon caption contest and I gave a cartoon print to the winner, Jean Navarrete. The cartoon featured a robot sitting in a meeting. Jean’s winning caption: “Perhaps we could train a human for this?” So good.

Cartoon from the archives

Here’s a related cartoon from 2014.

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Thank you for all of your support (and cartoon material)!

-Tom

P.S. If you like these marketoons, here are a few ways to help:

1. Bring me into your company to speak

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4. Buy my latest book

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About Marketoonist

Marketoonist is the thought bubble of me, Tom Fishburne. I first started drawing cartoons as a student in the Harvard Business School newspaper (not quite as well-known for humor as the Lampoon) and later started this newsletter from a General Mills cubicle in 2002. The cartoons have followed my career ever since. I poke fun at the ever-changing world of marketing and business because I believe that laughing at ourselves can help us do our best work.