Getting to Product-Market Fit vs Market-Product Fit

From necessity comes invention, and from the market comes the product.

What came first - the Product or the Market?

There has been a lot said about PMF aka Product-Market-Fit, and whole swaths of the industry abide by the wisdom of launching an MVP and then finding the market fit for the product.

As a process, this is doing it wrong. Or at least, it does not lead to the best outcomes.

The Market is First and Last

If one is a true entrepreneur, then one looks for situations where BHAGs are possible. Large markets, not “large products”. And a large market needs not one but many product lines.

So look at markets, look at communities of possible users, and ecosystems of adjacent markets that combine holistically into a single class of opportunities.

Products Come and Products Go

Why get attached to Product Vision, much less a particular product vision? Technology changes, and business models change. The idea should always be to facilitate value creation, if that is at the base of all product design, then you will naturally see interlocking products that can act independently but when working together, add a whole new dimension of compounded value.

After all, products and processes change, and value is forever.

Product Innovation

This is why Product Management should always be bolstered with a venture program, a process that constantly interfaces with out-of-the-box thinking, if not outright disruptive ideas. Even if most do not make any meaningful impact on a team’s roadmap, the few that do make it often make a very non-linear impact.

Product Layers

Products should be built up as layered abstractions, and each layer should have tooling that allows composability between itself and the abstractions below it. Any business person should be able to configure solutions for customers or themselves using these configurable tools, allowing whole classes of problems to be solved systematically, rather than point solutions that are rigid and require lots of duct tape to plumb into actual solutions.

From Micro Services to Micro Products

Ultimately, an App Store model is more suitable than a singular solution or product. A flexible foundation serves as a developer platform for internal and external products - be they small services or full-fledged platforms themselves.

An app store in particular not just ensures that internal teams can work with each other across APIs but 3rd-parties can provide more or even better services that are built in-house.

Disruption as a Feature

This open model makes sure that new and old features are continuously brought to and tested by the market and also that the underlying platform and core features continue to stay robust and up to date.

It also allows new solutions to be delivered by the combinatorial expansion of last-mile solutions created and delivered by users of the platform and systems integrators alike.

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