Chetan Kumar is a mentor at Microsoft Ventures who has held roles in strategy, product, operations, and marketing globally. In this presentation, he discusses the importance of product-market fit (PMF) for startups. Specifically, he covers:
- Defining the target market and understanding customer needs and problems to address. The market exists prior to the product.
- Developing an initial minimum viable product (MVP) solution focused on a core customer problem and iteratively improving the fit based on feedback.
- Considering competition, timing, funding, and team when evaluating fit.
- Providing examples of companies like Uber, AirBnB, and others that achieved fit through iterative customer
This lecture focuses on defining the field of marketing communications with a particular emphasis on technology start-ups. This lecture focuses on the importance of strong messaging for entrepreneurs marketing their ventures. It examines what messaging is, why it is valuable, how to best create it and what you need to produce.
Enrique Godreau, Managing Partner of 9Mile Labs, shared some thoughtful, data-driven ideas around market sizing and competitive analysis for startups.
If you are looking to understand more about Total Addressable Market, Serviceable Addressable Market, Target Market, etc., check out these slides.
Enrique shared this presentation at the NEXT Program in Seattle (swnext.co)
Joanna Lord, CMO at BigDoor, shared her lessons learned from a few BPMFs (before product/market fits), a few APMF (after product/market fits) and some NFPMFs (never found product/market fits).
Lesson #1: The market wins
Lesson #2: Realize your product is not the product
Lesson #3: Start at the pain point
Lesson #4: Ask all the questions
Lesson #5: Be skeptical
Lesson #6: Minimum sellable product
Lesson #7: Double back…a dozen times
Lesson #8: Repeat after me: activation & retention
Lesson #9: Architect for speed
Lesson #10: Validate qualitatively, verify quantitatively
Joanna shared this presentation at the NEXT Program in Seattle (swnext.co)
Business Plan and other Communication Tools - Entrepreneurship 101 (2013/2014)MaRS Discovery District
This lecture presents tips, examples, techniques and tools for building the four essential communication documents for entrepreneurs including:
-The Elevator Pitch
-Executive Summary
-Company Presentation
-Business Plan
Learn how to create these communication tools and how to use them effectively to grow your business from an idea to a funded business.
This lecture focuses on defining the field of marketing communications with a particular emphasis on technology start-ups. This lecture focuses on the importance of strong messaging for entrepreneurs marketing their ventures. It examines what messaging is, why it is valuable, how to best create it and what you need to produce.
Enrique Godreau, Managing Partner of 9Mile Labs, shared some thoughtful, data-driven ideas around market sizing and competitive analysis for startups.
If you are looking to understand more about Total Addressable Market, Serviceable Addressable Market, Target Market, etc., check out these slides.
Enrique shared this presentation at the NEXT Program in Seattle (swnext.co)
Joanna Lord, CMO at BigDoor, shared her lessons learned from a few BPMFs (before product/market fits), a few APMF (after product/market fits) and some NFPMFs (never found product/market fits).
Lesson #1: The market wins
Lesson #2: Realize your product is not the product
Lesson #3: Start at the pain point
Lesson #4: Ask all the questions
Lesson #5: Be skeptical
Lesson #6: Minimum sellable product
Lesson #7: Double back…a dozen times
Lesson #8: Repeat after me: activation & retention
Lesson #9: Architect for speed
Lesson #10: Validate qualitatively, verify quantitatively
Joanna shared this presentation at the NEXT Program in Seattle (swnext.co)
Business Plan and other Communication Tools - Entrepreneurship 101 (2013/2014)MaRS Discovery District
This lecture presents tips, examples, techniques and tools for building the four essential communication documents for entrepreneurs including:
-The Elevator Pitch
-Executive Summary
-Company Presentation
-Business Plan
Learn how to create these communication tools and how to use them effectively to grow your business from an idea to a funded business.
The Best Startup Investor Pitch Deck & How to Present to Angels & Venture Cap...J. Skyler Fernandes
Take the online video course on Udemy:
https://www.udemy.com/course/the-best-startup-investor-pitch-deck/?referralCode=A5ED0FBD65120A93A16E
3.5+hrs of video content, walking step by step each part of the pitch, with personal VC stories, examples, and advice.
The "Best" Startup Investor Pitch Deck is an aggregation of some of the best pitch decks and wisdom from some of the top angels, VCs, and entrepreneurs including my own person insight/experience. The slide deck includes a template for entrepreneurs to use to present to investors, with details on what should be addressed on each slide. There are also additional slides on how best to pitch to investors effectively, how to design and format slides, and what to do before the pitch.
What should new products or startups focus on first on the journey to achieving Product/Market Fit. How do you know if yo have achieved it? If you think you have Product/Market fit, what are the next steps?
Many startups approach marketing in a very tactics-oriented way by selecting how they will market and then tuning that based on prospect responses. In this presentation I make a case for a more systematic approach that starts and ends with customer knowledge. This presentation was given at The International Startup Festival in Montreal on July 12, 2012
Different types of startups, markets and whysBlaz Kos
This presentation is about various types of startup companies, markets and core competencies.
In the presentation you will learn why market trends are important, why markets always win, how to calculate market size and why you have to start with the strong why.
You will also learn the fundamental difference between established companies and startups. Startups are designed to search and established companies to execute.
MIT-CHIEF Training Session 1: Know your Market and CustomersElaine Chen
Have a startup idea? What’s your beachhead market? What’s the total addressable market (TAM)? Have you created a customer persona? These are key concepts that you must address thoroughly before moving ahead with prototyping. Based on a rigorous and structured framework for entrepreneurship from Bill Aulet, the managing director of Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, this interactive workshop will provide you insights on how to conduct effective market research and identify target customers. It is the first part of MIT-CHIEF’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship Training Series - “Building bricks for the Great Wall”, which teaches you all you need to know about how to build an innovation-driven startup.
Finding Product/Market Fit is the holy grail for each early-stage founder. In this presentation we share our learnings from the signals Pre-Seed Program (hellosignals.com/pre-seed) with hands-on examples and tools on how to prototype, validate your hypotheses, market need and business model.
The Product Market Fit Cycle (Updated to v. 2.0)Carlos Espinal
This presentation was used for my talk at HowToWeb 2014 in Bucharest Romania and is the updated presentation to my blog post on the subject - http://thedrawingboard.me/2013/05/03/the-product-market-fit-cycle/
This slide contains the details about what Product Market Fit is and how you can conduct the product-market fit for your product in the market. A detailed step of Product market fit by Lean has been mentioned with the various methods of how you can maintain your product-market relations.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship: How does your Customer Acquire Your Product? Ho...Elaine Chen
In this class, we will explore how your paying customer acquires your product. We will examine the entire buying process and identify all decision makers (economic buyer, champion, influencers, veto powers, end users) who are involved in any way in the decision to buy. We will look at the decision making process for buying this product. We will look at go-to-market strategies and business models / pricing strategies that allows you to monetize your product. We will in particular look at the importance of having a recurring revenue stream for hardware products that have a connected things / IoT component.
The Best Startup Investor Pitch Deck & How to Present to Angels & Venture Cap...J. Skyler Fernandes
Take the online video course on Udemy:
https://www.udemy.com/course/the-best-startup-investor-pitch-deck/?referralCode=A5ED0FBD65120A93A16E
3.5+hrs of video content, walking step by step each part of the pitch, with personal VC stories, examples, and advice.
The "Best" Startup Investor Pitch Deck is an aggregation of some of the best pitch decks and wisdom from some of the top angels, VCs, and entrepreneurs including my own person insight/experience. The slide deck includes a template for entrepreneurs to use to present to investors, with details on what should be addressed on each slide. There are also additional slides on how best to pitch to investors effectively, how to design and format slides, and what to do before the pitch.
What should new products or startups focus on first on the journey to achieving Product/Market Fit. How do you know if yo have achieved it? If you think you have Product/Market fit, what are the next steps?
Many startups approach marketing in a very tactics-oriented way by selecting how they will market and then tuning that based on prospect responses. In this presentation I make a case for a more systematic approach that starts and ends with customer knowledge. This presentation was given at The International Startup Festival in Montreal on July 12, 2012
Different types of startups, markets and whysBlaz Kos
This presentation is about various types of startup companies, markets and core competencies.
In the presentation you will learn why market trends are important, why markets always win, how to calculate market size and why you have to start with the strong why.
You will also learn the fundamental difference between established companies and startups. Startups are designed to search and established companies to execute.
MIT-CHIEF Training Session 1: Know your Market and CustomersElaine Chen
Have a startup idea? What’s your beachhead market? What’s the total addressable market (TAM)? Have you created a customer persona? These are key concepts that you must address thoroughly before moving ahead with prototyping. Based on a rigorous and structured framework for entrepreneurship from Bill Aulet, the managing director of Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, this interactive workshop will provide you insights on how to conduct effective market research and identify target customers. It is the first part of MIT-CHIEF’s Disciplined Entrepreneurship Training Series - “Building bricks for the Great Wall”, which teaches you all you need to know about how to build an innovation-driven startup.
Finding Product/Market Fit is the holy grail for each early-stage founder. In this presentation we share our learnings from the signals Pre-Seed Program (hellosignals.com/pre-seed) with hands-on examples and tools on how to prototype, validate your hypotheses, market need and business model.
The Product Market Fit Cycle (Updated to v. 2.0)Carlos Espinal
This presentation was used for my talk at HowToWeb 2014 in Bucharest Romania and is the updated presentation to my blog post on the subject - http://thedrawingboard.me/2013/05/03/the-product-market-fit-cycle/
This slide contains the details about what Product Market Fit is and how you can conduct the product-market fit for your product in the market. A detailed step of Product market fit by Lean has been mentioned with the various methods of how you can maintain your product-market relations.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship: How does your Customer Acquire Your Product? Ho...Elaine Chen
In this class, we will explore how your paying customer acquires your product. We will examine the entire buying process and identify all decision makers (economic buyer, champion, influencers, veto powers, end users) who are involved in any way in the decision to buy. We will look at the decision making process for buying this product. We will look at go-to-market strategies and business models / pricing strategies that allows you to monetize your product. We will in particular look at the importance of having a recurring revenue stream for hardware products that have a connected things / IoT component.
This lecture discusses how to build and deliver an effective pitch to help you find financing for your entrepreneurial venture or to sell your product to customers.
Product Management - Successful products, Strategy, Finding a job, B2B vs B2C...Rahul Deshpande
Product Management Training for University of California (UC), Irvine students from Rahul Deshpande of www.productmanagementclub.com. We train people to become a product manager. We train people for interview and also do placements for product manager jobs. We also train companies who want to introduce Product Management to their non-technical employees (ex. HR). Please visit www.productmanagementclub.com to schedule free sessions with any Product Management related questions.
Now is the best time to start a company… Now what?Brian Kelly
It used to take years to launch a new software product. Now you can create, launch, and have paying customers getting value from your product in just a few months. This presentation explains why it's never been a better time to start a software company and what you need to consider to make it a reality.
Should you start with a side gig? Should you raise venture capital? How should you think about your cap table and employee options? What's your exit strategy? This presentation tackles these questions.
David Corcoran, cofounder at Third Rail Group, gave this talk at Do it Best Corp.'s annual Techapalooza on March 14, 2017.
What is marketing & why invest.
Knowing your customer and how to reach them
B2B – marketing to consumers – why bother?
Creativity and responsiveness – how and why?
Measurement and tracking – how to maximise the ROI
Re-marketing – what, why and how
PLUS Blippa technology from Sphere Digital
Lean Analytics - Communication Layer into the World of BusinessBen Yoskovitz
Lean Analytics is more than just understanding what to track and when. Lean Analytics (and data in general) is about communication within an organization. This is a 1-day workshop I conducted at CrunchConf 2016 in Budapest with a group of data analysts and data scientists to help them understand their role, through the use of analytics, within a larger organization.
2. Who Am I?
• Mentor at Microsoft Ventures
• Entrepreneur – Entertainment discovery startup with a batchmate
• Former Director – Consumer Electronics at Flipkart
• Former APAC lead for mobile banking products at Citibank
• Held roles in strategy, product, operations & marketing globally (US, SE Asia)
• MBA from Kellogg School of Management
• CA (a long time ago!!)
Twitter: @chetan226
Email: kumarchetan@gmail.com
3. Why the fuss about PMF?
•Over 40% startups fail due to lack of a good ‘market’ - That’s more than any other
reason (including funding, team, timing, etc.)
•I think of PMF as a concept to guide the limited Time, Money and Resources
towards a focused solution-oriented objective.
Marc Andreessen “Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product
that can satisfy that market.”
What we will cover in today’s session
• Breakdown the product-market fit components
• Address key questions for each component
• Discuss case examples
• Summarize takeaways in a self-evaluation worksheet
• Q&A
These are my views and are neither exhaustive nor conclusive!
4. Who came first?
THE PRODUCTTHE MARKET
• In my view: The market is the ‘why’ and the product is the ‘how’
• The market may be evident or latent, but exists!
• The product therefore, is a solution to an….
Articulated
problem
Unarticulated
problem
OR
5. The Wrigley’s Story
Started as a soap
salesman
Offered baking soda cans
as ‘premiums’ to
merchants
Baking soda was so
popular, he switched to
this business
Gave an offer of free gum
which was a hit
From soap to baking
soda to chewing gum,
Wrigley’s followed the
market!
6. Defining the Market
•Some approaches to Defining the market:
• Industry reports
• Me too’s globally
• Bottom’s Up or Top Down
• Drawing a parallel
• Innovating on a market created by some other product
• Defining a new market (less used)
No perfect answer, but one must have a point of view.
TODAY TOMORROW
$5Bn
$12Bn
$10Bn
$20Bn
*Illustrative based on public reports
7. So what is the question?
A NEED A WANT
….To which your product is the solution?
ARTICULATEDUNARTICULATED
Your
Idea?
Lower
costs
8. Types of solutions
•Cost
•Efficiency
•Convenience
•Transparency
•Information sorting (Search,
Discovery, Reviews, Listings)
•Other? (List your own……..)
Example Core solution
Uber, Ola All of the above
AirBnB Cost
Twitter Information
Zomato Information
You improve your chances by solving deeper for a few things at first
Shared
Economy
Marketpl
ace
Crowd
Sourced
Platform Other
Manifestations
9. MVP & Positioning
Rome wasn’t built in a day………..
Early stage Current Positioning
Air BnB Stay, B’fast @low
cost
Photography, insurance,
home cleaning, Key
mgmt., etc
More than a place
to stay at a low
cost
Slack Corporate
messaging (search,
sync, file share)
Full CRM, support for all
channels, easy
integrations, etc.
Reduction in cost
of communication,
less email
Uber Solved taxi hailing
experience
Luxury cars to
Helicopters to grocery
Makes it easy not
to own a car
Snapchat Private messaging
with photos
Stories, Advertising, etc Social app without
the history
Flipkart Books Everything! Online megastore
The ‘Viable’ in the MVP is perhaps more critical than the product itself
Source: growthhackers.com, web
10. Competition & Other factors
Competition:
“If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on
the customer, ultimately we'll turn out all right.” – Jeff Bezos
“You can only avoid competition by avoiding good ideas.” – Paul Graham
Timing: Too Early or Too Late?Funding: Raise enough money to get to PMF
and each time until you do, after that it should
get much easier
Team:
“When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.”
-Marc Andreessen quoting Rachleff's Law of Startup Success
11. 3 mini Case Studies
Problem/
Desire
Market
Product
Approach
Competition
Hard to find good
Japanese food
News in local language
for migrants unavailable
Recharges meant
physical visits/ coupons/
cash
Urban rich: 1% of
urban popl. ~ 1MM
Literate migrant
workforce ~ 100MM
Urban mobile
subscribers ~ 400MM
Sushi delivered at
home via App
Content aggregated on
App
Mobile wallet
Target the market via
special partners,
advt., quality, etc
Launched across mobile
platforms; got word of
mouth traction
Initially, targeted only
recharges, then products
and services. Mass Advt.
Target the market via
special partners,
advt., quality, etc
Launched across mobile
platforms; got word of
mouth traction
Initially, targeted only
recharges, then products
and services. Mass Advt.
All illustrative figures
12. Worksheet
What problem are we solving?
What is the market for this solution?
How will the product address this problem for the target market?
What is the degree to which I must solve (MVP to next version)?
What do I know about competition and other factors?
My biggest area of work in the next 3-6 months is:
My two most critical resource requirements are:
13. Summary
•PMF is a process, a journey not an event!
•Address a need or a want, but one that is not a
marginal problem
•Have an going in hypothesis of the market size
•Build as deep a solution as possible (MVP)
•Be ready to iterate, change, pivot
•PMF doesn’t mean perfection
•Goal is to get to that ‘fit’ in shortest time!