- If you're an early stage SaaS founder,
there's really one thing that matters.
It's reaching product market fit,
but here's the thing.
Product market fit, or as we lovingly call it, PMF,
is ever elusive.
No one quite really knows what it is
but when you're in it, you're like,
"Yep, this is it. We have product market fit."
And sometimes you can even lose
product market fit after getting it.
So, here's a big question.
How do you actually know
whether you are in product market fit?
How do you actually get to product market fit?
How should you navigate this Shawshank Crawl,
as I like to call it, to product market fit?
On today's episode,
I'm gonna dig into the three principles
that you absolutely need to know,
on navigating and getting to product market fit.
And when you follow these three principles,
you will be able to make sure that you don't lose months
building the wrong product, going after the wrong market,
hoping the product market fit is right around the corner.
Intro.
(dynamic music)
What's up, everybody? Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK.
And on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are new to this channel, welcome!
I drop an episode every single Sunday,
with actionable strategies on how to grow
your SaaS business faster.
So, if you're new and you haven't subscribed yet,
be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of this channel,
if you're part of this community,
if you're part of my coaching programs,
my people, welcome back,
it's really awesome to see you over here.
So, here's the thing.
Everyone's got a little bit of a different definition
of product market fit,
which is what makes it so elusive to actually go after.
Some describe it in a very scientific way,
like 40% of users surveyed said
that they will be very disappointed
if they couldn't use the product anymore.
That's when you know you have product market fit.
They'd be very disappointed. 40% of them.
On the other hand,
others will describe it more as a feeling.
They're like, "Well it's when you're not pushing uphill
into the market anymore,
when the market's pulling you."
That's when you know you've got product market fit,
because the market really wants what you're selling.
To me, the definition of PMF is pretty simple.
It's when you're selling a product
and the market really wants it,
they use it, and they tell other people about it.
When you start to see those three things happening
over and over and over,
that means you have product market fit.
All of a sudden, you're not pushing into the market
saying, "Hey, you gotta buy this," and it's a hard sell.
All of a sudden you're like,
"This is what we do and here's what we solve,"
and they're like, "Oh my God, please give me that."
And they use it and they love the product
and they tell more other people about it.
And they come to you and they say, "Hey,
I hear you have this product that solves this problem.
I want it."
That is product market fit.
Having gone through multiple companies
that hit product market fit,
having scaled them and exited them,
having helped countless founders
navigate their Shawshank Crawl to product market fit
and initial revenues,
I'm gonna walk you through the three principles
you absolutely need to know to actually navigate this pass.
So if you're excited, dig in,
go in and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
and let's dig into principle number one.
So, principle number one,
and this is the biggest, most important thing
I try to instill in founders that I learned the hard way,
and I'm sharing it here
so that you don't make the same mistakes,
is that you should ask people to buy as early as possible.
And this is one of the biggest mistakes people make,
because I meet a lot of founders
and I've been guilty of this as well,
it's like, "Oh, we interviewed a hundred people
and they all said that they would love this
so we started building it,
but now we can't sell it.
We need to go to market. We need a better sales person.
We need better marketing."
The truth of the matter is,
when we go and approach people and say, "Hey
if we were to build this thing, would you buy it?"
A lot of times, they don't wanna be mean,
so they'll just say, "Oh yeah, that sounds really cool."
But until, until you go to them
and ask them to swipe their credit card or sign the contract
or actually do a pilot with you and pay for it,
until you ask them to buy,
you won't really know
if you're gonna really hit product market fit.
And what ends up happening
is you do a lot of user surveys and customer surveys
and these discovery calls,
and people don't really wanna be on those calls
and they're thinking in theory,
they don't have any skin in the game,
they're kinda giving you their opinions,
but they're not really thinking about,
"Okay, do I actually want this or not,"
because they have no skin in the game.
They're not having to swipe the credit card.
And so what ends up happening is you do all of that,
and then you spend months building this product
that all these people say they would love to have,
and then you go back to them and they're like, "Yeah, no."
And that's essentially where a lot of the traps are
in navigating this path to product market fit.
So, my principle number one that I get founders
to think about right away,
is ask people to buy as early in the process as possible.
This means that if you're building,
if you're in the product development phase,
you need to have two streams running.
You need to actually be thinking about
how do we actually build out our go-to market?
How do we go after our target market?
How do we position this product?
How do we get people interested
in a pilot or an early trial,
or just a one-year deal that we give them as a discount
so they get into the product as soon as it's ready?
You can do that in parallel,
so that you can ask people to buy as early as possible
and stress test the market and stress test that idea.
And that way, one,
you won't end up wasting months building the wrong product
because you'll test early that people are not willing to pay
for whatever you're building,
and two, you may actually get to a better form of the idea
and your product will be better
because it's grounded in actual people
that have skin in the game
and are willing to pay for what you're building.
So, that's principle number one.
Ask people to buy and actually ask people to actually pay
as you're validating the idea,
and as you're getting into building the product,
because otherwise they may be lying to you
and that will throw you off in your journey
and you might waste months
in your product development process.
Principle number two,
is you need to be intentional about your target markets.
And I put S markets in parentheses
because you could have more than one market
that you're testing initially.
This is the market and product market fit.
And not to oversimplify this,
but I think that we get so caught up
in all these fancy definitions of things
and the measurements of these things,
and if you just look at the word and the phrase,
product market fit, what does it mean?
You have a product, there's a market, and it fits,
meaning that market really wants that product.
And so, what part of going about this journey
is being very intentional about who your target market is.
And this is not getting as granular
about your ideal customer profile.
That comes a little bit later.
This is really about getting clear
on what is the market we're going after?
What is the urgent and important problem we're solving?
And what are the markets that exist
where we could position this product?
Again, you'll notice that this is not
about building the product,
but it's about building the go-to-market around the product
and having a thesis around that and testing that,
so that you know you're building the right product.
And big part of that principle number two,
is being very intentional about your target markets.
Writing it out, like who are our target markets?
How are we gonna test into each of these?
Which one's better than the other?
How does that impact our product decisions
and what we're building?
What are we not doing? What are we doing?
What do we need to prioritize?
Do we need SOC 2 compliance because we're going
after the enterprise,
or do we just need to be self-service
and swipe a credit card,
and no one cares about the security and the onset,
we just need to get it done later?
These are the kind of things you'll think about
because that'll be part of you figuring out
if you're gonna hit that product market fit or not.
So, that's principle number two.
Now, I have a third one,
but before I go to principle number two,
let me just pause here for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this? Right?
So much of what we talk about in product market fit
sits in the product part,
but really the market and the go-to-market
is just as important in these early stages.
And if you don't do that,
you may waste months building the wrong product
because you're like,
"Well, I had this problem
and those five people told me they would love this product,"
but you didn't ask them to actually pay
so you don't know if they're telling the truth
or if it's an important and urgent enough problem.
And also you're not being clear
about what the target market is.
Whether that five people is part of a meaningful market
or it's just five rando's that just lied to you?
And that's the power in this.
If you're starting to see the power in this,
can I just get a yes in the comments below!
Also, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
Now, if you're in this stage where you're a pre-founder
you're trying to figure out this product market fit,
you haven't quite generated revenues yet,
nothing significant,
or maybe you haven't gotten to that 10K MRR,
then I run a webinar every single week
that goes in-depth into how to navigate this
Shawshank Crawl to product market fit and initial revenues.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video.
We don't have to go anywhere right now.
Let's go to principle number three.
You also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
Principle number three,
is you actually need to measure your progress
as you test and iterate.
So, I was looking at our metrics,
Mondays are metrics days for me
for everything we do here at Unstoppable,
across our coaching programs, our clients,
the software we have,
and one of the things I noticed was
we had this landing page for this webinar,
this webinar I just told you about,
and one was completely outperforming the other.
One was a 70% conversion rate
and the other was a 16% conversion rate.
And the thing was,
I forgot that I put that variation in place.
And this is what happens a lot of times.
When you are navigating the Shawshank Crawl
to product market fit,
you're testing and iterating, testing and iterating,
you're changing the messaging,
you're positioning it a little bit,
you're going after, trying different markets.
And the truth of the matter is,
us as humans and our human brains,
aren't very good at remembering
all the tests that we've done and all the permutations.
And sometimes, things can actually outperform,
but because it happens over such a long period of time
you tend to forget about it,
and you over index on something that happened yesterday,
so you have this recency bias.
This happened to me also until I looked at the numbers
and this is why I have time set aside
to look at the core metrics
and the key experiments I'm running,
because it helps me understand,
hey, things happen over time and when we collect enough data
then we can really see what's moving and what's not.
And that's my message to you,
because this was very real for me earlier
when I was reviewing this,
you need to actually establish what your metrics are
and measure your progress as you test and iterate
on the path to product market fit.
And if you don't do this,
then you'll miss a turn, essentially.
And so, as you're thinking about,
am I asking people to buy?
How many people did I ask?
How many of them said yes? How many of them said no?
What did they say? Why did they say no?
Am I actually being intentional
about the people that I'm talking to
and what markets are they part of?
How many of them are converting? How many of them are not?
What's the feedback we've gotten?
All those things,
you need to put it all down and measure it in a certain way.
'Cause if you don't measure these things
over a period of time,
you'll miss the forest for the trees.
And what you won't be able to do
is really see the differences,
these wiggles that happen
and where you're like, you know what,
that worked better, let's try more of that,
and let's cut this one out and double down on it
because I think this will actually be more effective.
So, if you're a pre-founder
and you're getting to this product market fit phase,
you're working towards that,
you're going into initial revenues,
let's recap the three principles
you absolutely need to know.
Number one, ask people to buy as early as possible.
Don't just ask them for user research.
Half of them are lying to you, if not more.
That's the truth.
You won't really know until they say,
"Hey, would you do a $1,000 pilot or a $10,000 pilot?"
Number two,
you wanna be intentional about your target markets.
There could be more than one
that your product could be a good fit for.
There could be subsets of the market
so think through that and be intentional about that.
And number three,
as you are bringing your product to the market,
as it's being built,
start to think about the go-to-market
and start to engage these people, ask them to buy.
And keep track of who you're engaging,
and what they're saying, and what you're learning,
and what you're tweaking?
Are you changing the landing page?
Are you changing your value proposition?
Are you changing how you position the product?
And look at what's actually moving as you do it
over a period of time.
Only then will you actually be able to tell the patterns
and you'll be able to make decisions based on data,
instead of just saying,
"Well, the guy yesterday really went for it
so let's go find more of those people."
And whereas, maybe that person is just a snowflake,
meaning a unique person that no other like that exists
and it's not part of a key market.
So, you will never reach product market fit
even though you got a dollar.
And so, those are the three principles.
Number one, ask people to buy.
Number two, be intentional about the target markets.
And number three, measure the progress as you go.
Those are the three principles you absolutely need to know.
What you may not know is, well, how do I ask people to buy?
What is my value proposition?
How do I communicate what our software really does
as we're building it?
What you may not know is, how do I think
about the key markets we can go after?
How do we position ourselves and what part of the market?
Which market do I pick between the options that I have?
What you also may not know is what metrics matters?
How do I actually measure the right metrics?
So, if you're in that stage,
if you're a pre-founder and you're building out the product,
you're trying to get to product market fit
and initial revenues,
then you're probably wondering these pieces.
This is why I run a detailed webinar every single week.
Inside of this webinar,
I go in-depth into exactly what it takes
to go from zero to initial revenues,
and drive to product market fit.
It's completely free. There's no strings attached.
All you need to do is just go to tkkader.com/webinar.
When you go to this webinar,
I'll go in depth into exactly the process I follow
to actually go from zero to some revenues,
how I think about the key components, how I flesh those out.
So just go to tkkader.com/webinar,
and over there you'll be able to register
for the next session.
And we'll go in-depth into exactly how I think
about getting to product market fit,
and I'll go deeper into these principles.
Now, if you also got value from this video
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
Also, I drop an episode like this every single Sunday,
with actionable strategies
on how to grow your SaaS business faster.
So, if you haven't already,
be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
so that you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode.
If you have a fellow founder,
of if you have a fellow team member
that will get value from this video
and other videos we have in this channel,
please share it with them.
My team and I put a lot of love into these videos
and it means the world to us
when we can help as many SaaS founders as possible.
And lastly, remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be Unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you in the next episode
or inside of that 45-minute webinar
where we go in-depth into how to get to initial revenues
and product market fit for your SaaS business.
The link is below or just go tkkader.com/webinar.
See ya.
(dynamic music)