Finding Product / Market Fit: introducing the PMF matrix

15 03 2010

These slides were used to facilitate a discussion of entrepreneurial MIT alums, mainly from the MIT Sloan business school. My intention was to introduce many of the newer, leaner concepts of early stage start-up development, since MIT tends to see a lot of “technology-in-search-of-a-problem” start-ups, in their early stages.

This presentation centers on the concept of Product / Market Fit: what it is, why it’s important, and how to achieve it. I propose my “Product Market Fit Matrix” that helps to characterize the issues of the start-up and presents various frameworks that can help guide development. In a sense the Product / Market Fit Matrix is a meta-framework.

For MIT alums 0-15 years out, in the Boston area, we’d welcome you to join in on our monthly meetings at the MIT Sloan Entrepreneurs Breakfast Club.


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Categories : Innovation Architecture, Product-Market Fit

10 places to look for mobile’s next killer app

4 03 2010

Inspired by Dharmesh Shah’s last post that outlined 10 categories of software start-ups, I was thinking what would be the equivalent for the mobile web? With many proclaiming the mobile year or decade upon us (including me), as well as contributing factors like falling costs, better handsets, pervasive connectivity, and emerging standardization it seems we’re upon a new era of mobile development. I’m reminded of Jeff Bezos’ quote from 1999:

“I liken it to the Cambrian era 550 million years ago, which saw the development of multicelled life. While nature tried every kind of experiment possible, the creation of new species was offset by the extinction of others.”

Searching for the next killer app
So, as Bezos implies, the explosion in the hundreds of thousands of ’smartphone’ applications, may imply we’re just at the beginning of finding a killer app. Originally, it was voice, then text messaging, then e-mail; but what’s the next major application that will really spur the next phase of adoption and determine winners and losers?

So, I offer a classification taxonomy of how to think about various application forms, which may help determine where to look and think about what’s next. Rather than take a ‘genre-based’ approach like every other app catalog, or a technology-based organization, I’ve tried to build a framework based on customer needs, or as Clay Christensen would put it, the ‘jobs they do’, for people.

Here are 10 categories of where the next killer app may come from.

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Categories : Business Ideas, Innovation Architecture, Technology

Balancing short vs. long term priorities

2 03 2010

One of the toughest things in a start-up is to figure out when to invest in initiatives that take a longer term to payoff (e.g. channel partnerships, brand building) vs. those with immediate revenue generating opportunities. On the one hand you feel that optimizing for immediate revenue always trumps anything else; however, on the other hand, if you don’t invest in longer term market development initiatives, you can starve the customer pipeline.
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Categories : Musings, Start-up Life

Working with MIT’s E-Center

18 02 2010

Brian and I are flattered and humbled to join the Entrepreneurs in Residence at the MIT E-Center. Hopefully our war stories can help other aspiring student entrepreneurs launch successful ventures, and let the cycle of innovation continue.

There is a stellar crop of EIRs that we hope to learn from as well:

Other newcomers

  • Reed Sturtevant (Microsoft, IdealLab, Eons, Lotus) & Katie Rae (Microsoft Startup Labs, Eons.com, Lycos, AltaVista, Zip2, MirrorWorlds)

Existing Crop

  • Jean Hammond (AXON Networks, Quarry Technologies, Spider Systems, ZipCar, HubAngels)
  • Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot – and classmates of ours)
  • Susan Whoriskey (Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Whoriskey Associates)

It’s really something to be back at MIT on a regular basis, and to be on the other side of the room. Also note, that for MIT alums, we’ve started a regular breakfast series for networking and discussing pressing issues – if you’re interested you can join our LinkedIn group.


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Categories : Entrepreneurship

7 Decision traps of effective customer listening

8 02 2010

I’m continually fascinated at how good product design & development can come down to basic psychology. I’ve previously written about how to use Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory for product design by understanding consumer decision biases. However, customers and developers alike can fall in to the same “decision traps”, as my friend and former business partner Professor J. Edward Russo, would put it.

Here we’ll look at some of these common decision traps, and how they can become roadblocks to qualitative customer research, on the road to finding product/market fit.
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Categories : Innovation Architecture, Product-Market Fit

Three phrases that drive entrepreneurs nuts

31 01 2010

When you’re deep in the trenches, these are often heard phrases, which if you don’t take with a little humor, can drive you nuts:

  1. “Why don’t you just…” This also crops up under variations such as: “What you need to do is…”. To me, this one implies that you aren’t doing something obvious, and that obvious thing is simple to execute. This phrase is most uttered by current MBAs who just read a case study, or management consultants.
  2. “That was my [friend/aunt/cousin's] idea…” Now I don’t mean this as they actually started a business, more that they had a tangentially related idea in the shower, or over beers, and never did anything with it….Kind of like how I “thought of” LinkedIn in 2001.
  3. “Since you work for yourself, can’t you take today off?” Uttered by those who don’t understand your internal sense of urgency driven both internally (your desire to change the world), or externally (customers, competitors, or distaste of Ramen noodles).

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Categories : Entrepreneurship, Start-up Life

Necessary feature for today’s tablets: simple, cross-device copy & paste

28 01 2010

I too am underwhelmed by yesterday’s iPad launch, and found it neither “magical”, nor “revolutionary”. I really hoped that leveraging the tablet form factor would actually solve a real problem for me. To me the tablet is begging for a pen-and-paper augmentation application suite…although I’m sure as I’m typing this someone has already developed an “app for that”.

What I want
With that application comes my needed, enabling feature: simple, cross-device cut & paste. That is, to take a hand drawn sketch from the tablet and seamlessly “beam it” over to a laptop or mobile device and have it ready for use immediately, just like you can across applications on a single platform.

What I don’t want
What I don’t want is to take a picture –> send it to a holding application –> pull it down on the other device –> insert it where I want. There are tools like Evernote and Dropbox for that. Nor am I relying on the long-held promise of “Pen Computing” where I have to add another expensive device to the mix.
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Categories : Innovation Architecture, Product Management

The Engineer’s Paradox

26 01 2010

When wrestling with finding Product Market fit, via a Minimum Viable Product, (MVP), I constantly find myself referring to an issue I call the Engineer’s Paradox:

Engineers want to build for adoption, that is a carefully designed system that accommodates user adoption with the requisite features and performance they require, or else they will risk losing customers. Yet, to truly understand what users want, and how they will use the system, one needs to release a “suboptimal” product in order to gain customer feedback.

So, if you release junk early, no one will ever want what you build, but if you release a fully operational system too late, it may not conform to what user’s want. So, let’s see how we can find a happy medium…
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Categories : Innovation Architecture, Product Management

5 Tips for Building Great Products, for non-product start-up executives

20 01 2010

I gave this talk last week to the members of the TiE Leadership Program, aimed at helping to frame what it takes to develop a product organization — aimed at an audience of non-product start-up execs, and existing / aspiring start-up CEOs. Take a look at the slides for the specific “tips”, but here’s a brief summary of the areas I covered, along with specific references I made to concepts, ideas, books, and people that I have learned a lot from along the way.
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Categories : Entrepreneurship, Product Management

Why a good product manager is like Avatar’s Jake Sully

7 01 2010

I recently came across the blog of a former classmate, Gummi Hafsteinsson. While always insightful, Gummi’s post, entitled “What makes a good product manager for software development?” is particularly noteworthy.

Gummi’s keys to excellent product management
In his post Gummi argues that to be successful, one needs the following core traits:

  • Deep technical understanding
  • Speed of execution and juggling skills
  • Obsessive enthusiasm about the product experience

While I wholeheartedly agree with Gummi (and I would highly encourage you to read his post to fully understand his perspective), here’s another way to think about what it takes to be a great PM…

My take: Be like Jake

Yes, shamelessly capitalizing on Avatar’s popularity, I think the core traits a good software product manager needs are well embodied by Sam Worthington’s character in Avatar: Jake Sully. These are simply:

  • Brains
  • Guts
  • Charisma
  • Character

Here’s how good product managers use each of these.
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Categories : Product Management, Start-up Life

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