the.com/market fit
the moment strangers start paying you for solving their problem, not your idea's charm.
means product market fit is when enough real customers want what you built badly enough to pay, use, and tell others.
from coined by marc andreessen in a 2007 blog post, who defined it as being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.
andreessen's testcustomers buying as fast as you can make it
sean ellis metric40 percent very disappointed if product vanished
before fitmost startup effort is educated guessing, not scaling
common trapfounders mistake polite interest for real demand
for instance
slack — pivoted from a failed game, exploded via internal tool word of mouth, 2013
airbnb — took years of manual hustle before demand clicked in 2009
instagram — stripped burbn down to photos, growth followed within weeks, 2010
superhuman — used ellis's 40 percent survey to systematically engineer its fit