How to get to product-market fit on shoe-string budget
Tough times call for creative measures. So how are you supposed to even get started when there’s virtually no venture capital available? Well, the good news is that times like these are cyclical, they may last months or even years, but they're certainly not forever. So your #1 objective as a founder is to survive and progress as much as possible until the markets improve. Here’s how
Step 1: Don't build a product; instead, talk to customers first. Resist the urge to go out and build; instead, go out and talk to customers. Think about who your ICP (ideal customer profile) is and create a list of at least 30. If you’re B2B, approach your friends from college who work at companies that fit your ICP. If you’re B2C, talk to friends and family. Don't do a survey, instead, do a Zoom call so you can see how people react to your questions. Ask about their experiences with the X problem and how they are solving it today. How painful is it? How much would they be willing to pay to solve it? Think like a detective, asking the same questions in different ways so that you can get to the truth
Step 2: Build a crappy MVP - Once you have enough data points from your customer interviews, you can build an MVP. But since you have no money, you’re going to have to go super lean. One of my favorite tools is bubble.io, which is a no-code tool that you can launch an app with. Remember that you’re not trying to impress; rather, you’re trying to gather information. So don't feel bad if your first version looks like crap, it should. If your product has a really long sales cycle (i.e., enterprise software, or you’re building an airplane), just build a mock-up
Step 3: Put it in front of customers. Now that you have your embarrassing MVP, you can put it in front of customers. Send it to the same people you interviewed and ask them to try it. After a few weeks, get ready to hit them up on Zoom for a second round of interviews. If anyone tells you that ‘they like it’ or ‘it's a good idea,' ask them to pay for it. If they say no, then ask them why. That's when you’ll get to the nuggets of truth. Remember, you do not want to waste your time building ‘nice to have’ products, you want to build products that solve ‘hair on fire’ problems
Step 4: Measure what matters. Make sure that you can track certain data points, i.e., active users, monthly churn, and paying users. You want to track quantitative data with qualitative data (i.e., customer interviews). Remember that at this stage, you’re not a small business owner, you’re a small business scientist. Putting things out there, observing and writing about the findings
Step 5: Rinse and repeat. Once you have measured your findings, it's time to tweak your MVP. You will repeat Steps 1 to 4 over and over again. So how do you know that you’ve got a product-market fit? People are actually paying you, customers are coming back every month and are referring other customers
