My invited talk at SAP Startup Studio on Aug 11. The talk was part of the Inspire Us series at the startup studio and was well attended by SAP employees as well as the startups.

1. Tathagat Varma
Knowledgepreneur
http://thoughtleadership.in

2. 90%

3. http://qz.com/682517/after-analyzing-200-founders-postmortems-researchers-say-these-are-the-reasons-startups-fail/

5. https://steveblank.com/2014/06/28/
customer-discovery-the-search-for-
productmarket-fit-2-minutes-to-see-why/

7. — Marc Andressan (2007):
— Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that
can satisfy that market.
— When you are BPMF, focus obsessively on getting to product/market
fit. Do whatever is required to get to product/market fit. Including
changing out people, rewriting your product, moving into a different
market, telling customers no when you don't want to, telling
customers yes when you don't want to, raising that fourth round of
highly dilutive venture capital -- whatever is required
— Paul Graham (2008):
— Make things people want.
— Sean Ellis:
— Achieving product/market fit requires at least 40% of users saying they
would be “very disappointed” without your product.
— PMF as a pre-condition to scaling up business!
— Michael Seibel (2016):
— Focusing on market first!

8. “You can always feel product/market fit when it's
happening. The customers are buying the product just
as fast as you can make it -- or usage is growing just as
fast as you can add more servers. Money from
customers is piling up in your company checking
account. You're hiring sales and customer support staff
as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they've
heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk
to you about it. You start getting entrepreneur of the
year awards from Harvard Business School. Investment
bankers are staking out your house.” – Marc Andreessen

9. You can always feel when product/
market fit isn’t happening. The
customers aren’t quite getting value out
of the product, word of mouth isn’t
spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast,
press reviews are kind of “blah”, the
sales cycle takes too long, and lots of
deals never close. – Marc Andreessen

13. 1. Determine your target customer
2. Identify underserved customer needs
3. Define your value proposition
4. Specify your MVP
5. Create your MVP
6. Test your MVP with customers
It is an iterative process. Iteration leads to feedback
on MVP, which gets revised. When you MVP is
valuable, easy to use, etc., you have found PMF!
http://medium.com/lean-startup-co/a-playbook-for-achieving-product-market-fit-434a644a9b91#.k8b6q93dp

16. — The Value
Proposition Canvas
zooms into the
details of two of the
building blocks of
the Business Model
Canvas
— Helps you create
value for your
customer

17. — Customer Profile: clarify your customer
understanding
— Value Map: describe how you intend to
create value for that customer
— You achieve “Fit” when value map meets
your customer profile – when your products
and services product pain relievers and gain
creators that match one of more of the jobs,
pains, and gains that are important to your
customer.

22. http://www.slideshare.net/rishi12/finding-product-market-fit-introducing-the-pmf-matrix-presentation-by-rishi-
dean-to-mit-sloan-breakfast-club

23. 1. Product market fit is always a discrete, big
bang event
2. It’s patently obvious when you have
product market fit
3. Once you achieve product market fit, you
can’t lost it
4. Once you have product market fit, you
don’t have to sweat the competition
http://blog.pmarca.com/2010/03/20/the-revenge-of-the-fat-guy/

24. 1. Your product is NOT “the product”
2. Brainstorm multiple models and prioritize where to start
3. Understand the three stage of a startup
4. Focus on the right macro metrics
5. Formulate falsifiable hypotheses
6. Architect for learning
7. Architect for speed
8. Go only as fast as you can learn
9. Validate qualitatively, verify quantitatively
10. Systematically test your model
http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/10-steps-to-productmarket-fit

25. http://torgronsund.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Slide1.jpg

26. GET OUT OF THE BUILDING…

28. — Product-Market Fit is all about finding the
“resonance” between your customer’s needs and your
value proposition
— You start with sketching your assumptions on paper.
A tool like VPC or PMFC could be useful.
— However, you need to validate your assumptions! So,
you build an MVP and test it rigorously.
— When you see your BMC is checked all green, you
have no “guesswork” left unvalidated anymore.
— At that point, you have achieved PMF and have a
playbook for next phase of growth.

29. — http://web.archive.org/web/20070701074943/http://
blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html
— http://productmarketfitcanvas.com/
— http://rishidean.com/2010/03/15/finding-product-market-fit-
introducing-the-pmf-matrix/
— http://blog.pmarca.com/2010/03/20/the-revenge-of-the-fat-guy/
— https://leanstack.com/achievingproductmarketfit/
— http://www.startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid/
— http://www.slideshare.net/ashmaurya/10-steps-to-
productmarket-fit
— https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-define-Product-Market-
Fit
— http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/06/the-real-product-
market-fit/