Very hard to quantify this. I personally believe many companies fail to find product market fit due to poor execution (bad code being a common culprit) but we don’t say they failed due to bad code. We say they failed to find product market fit.
More broadly there is this idea in tech startup internet bubble land that you just need a novel idea to get you to product market fit. In reality you need to execute. Starting a car company isn’t a bad idea simply because many competitors exist. But you better build great cars. If you don’t, you might be inclined to say “we couldn’t find product market fit”
But you better build great cars. If you don’t, you might be inclined to say “we couldn’t find product market fit”
I think this is close but not quite right. There are many "great" products that nobody wanted to buy. Sure building a great product gives you a chance to succeed, but building a product people want to buy is the real goal.
"Great" is also just too vague to be useful. Is a great car one that's cheaper than the rest? Better mileage? More dependable? More beautiful? More luxurious? Safer for kids to ride in? More fun to drive?
I've always liked the Donald Miller Storybrand framework for figuring out these kinds of puzzles:
Yeah, but did they fail to build the right things...or did they just write bad code that didn't work? I would assume the former, but you're right, it's hard to quantify.
My CEO said something the other day at an all-hands, someone asked what concerns him and he said velocity and then followed it up with not that we're moving slowly but rather he's worried we're building fast just in the wrong direction. I think this happens a lot.
I can't think of a single company that failed because they didn't have unit tests, or they chose the wrong DB. I'm sure they're out there, maybe, but it's more common you're going to fail because you built the wrong thing vs the code wasn't tested, no?
I worked at a SaaS company which was just complete shit. They handled a lot of critical B2B data. They frequently went down, together with prod. They had an incompetent lead programmer who would disappear often and take a long time to fix things. They had no processes, they'd store source code in email.
But they have product market fit, in that they operate in a huge market with plenty of suckers. They were good at sales. They could only keep a handful of customers at any one time. Plenty of sales stuff were straight lies - they'd make up clients, used an intern for testimonials, etc.
They're bootstrapped and still around. A VC commented that they were resilient, cockroach like, all the sexy words you use during a recession.
But it's likely they just never grew into a unicorn level because they kept bleeding customers.
Comments
Very hard to quantify this. I personally believe many companies fail to find product market fit due to poor execution (bad code being a common culprit) but we don’t say they failed due to bad code. We say they failed to find product market fit.
More broadly there is this idea in tech startup internet bubble land that you just need a novel idea to get you to product market fit. In reality you need to execute. Starting a car company isn’t a bad idea simply because many competitors exist. But you better build great cars. If you don’t, you might be inclined to say “we couldn’t find product market fit”
I think this is close but not quite right. There are many "great" products that nobody wanted to buy. Sure building a great product gives you a chance to succeed, but building a product people want to buy is the real goal.
"Great" is also just too vague to be useful. Is a great car one that's cheaper than the rest? Better mileage? More dependable? More beautiful? More luxurious? Safer for kids to ride in? More fun to drive?
I've always liked the Donald Miller Storybrand framework for figuring out these kinds of puzzles:
https://www.amazon.com/Building-StoryBrand-Clarify-Message-C...
Yeah, but did they fail to build the right things...or did they just write bad code that didn't work? I would assume the former, but you're right, it's hard to quantify. My CEO said something the other day at an all-hands, someone asked what concerns him and he said velocity and then followed it up with not that we're moving slowly but rather he's worried we're building fast just in the wrong direction. I think this happens a lot. I can't think of a single company that failed because they didn't have unit tests, or they chose the wrong DB. I'm sure they're out there, maybe, but it's more common you're going to fail because you built the wrong thing vs the code wasn't tested, no?
I worked at a SaaS company which was just complete shit. They handled a lot of critical B2B data. They frequently went down, together with prod. They had an incompetent lead programmer who would disappear often and take a long time to fix things. They had no processes, they'd store source code in email.
But they have product market fit, in that they operate in a huge market with plenty of suckers. They were good at sales. They could only keep a handful of customers at any one time. Plenty of sales stuff were straight lies - they'd make up clients, used an intern for testimonials, etc.
They're bootstrapped and still around. A VC commented that they were resilient, cockroach like, all the sexy words you use during a recession.
But it's likely they just never grew into a unicorn level because they kept bleeding customers.