Enjoyed the talk. Key takeaway for me was the need for explicit sequencing of product market fit and growth hacking (i.e, don’t bother with growth hacking if you don’t have PM fit). I suppose it is obvious intuitively, but demonstrating PM fit via retention metrics (“make sure your retention flat lines at the appropriate level”) was an interesting take. It can be easy to create work and activity doing growth hacking creating an illusion of progress. Keeping PM fit/growth separate and sequenced is a good lesson.
This needs to be better understood/accepted by startups, but it's a bitter pill to swallow for many entrepreneurs.
I wrote a book on growth hacking and now often get requests (sometimes casual, sometimes formal) on how a startup can "growth hack" or accelerate their growth. Then when I ask about the basics like target market, retention metrics, customer feedback etc - I get a bunch of blank stares.
It's no good driving more traffic or "virality" when people aren't interested in your startup in the first place. I'd say in 9 out of 10 cases, there's still a ton of PM fit work to be done by startups who think they are in the "growth hacking" stage.
The problem is, I'd say most first-time entrepreneurs just think the only obstacle they need to overcome is getting more people seeing their website, or downloading their app. It's hard to accept that your startup is not ready for growth because it's not providing any clear value yet.
Obvious as it seems, I never got a good answer like that from "experts" about how to define PM fit.
There were those guys talking about lean startup, measure everything and stuff; but when come to this crutial question they were all "well, you will know when you have PM fit" or an arbitrary question with an arbitrary answer "ask your clients how disappointed they would be if your startup would shut down now; if 60% answer very disappointed, you have PM fit".
So, similar key takeaway for me: "It is easy to be wrong about having Porduct/Market fit. Make sure your retention flat lines at the appropriate level."
