Launching Tech Ventures: Product Market Fit – Useful or Theoretical?
3 comments:
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Shavi: your comment about "borderline crazy" entrepreneurs reminds me of Fred Wilson's remark that "ideas that most people derided as ridiculous have produced the best outcomes." If we accept this, I think your are right to ask whether PMF is a useful or strictly theoretical concept. (By the way, a good theory in the management arena IS useful, but let's save that discussion for BSSE...). The question is whether the audacious vision can be reduced to a series of falsifiable hypotheses, and if decisive tests fail to validate one or more hypotheses, if the vision can be adapted. I'd argue that Cake Financial was on this path, but ran out of runway.
ReplyDeleteProf. Eisenmann: I agree this can be done. I am still exploring whether entrepreneurs who are strongly driven by their vision find it feasible and useful to take the small steps approach with falsifiable hypothesis. I am getting converted as I am talking to entrepreneurs for my second blog. Please stay tuned.
ReplyDeleteI would look at this a different way - PMF can be useful to entrepreneurs _because_ it is (at least somewhat) theoretical. For an entrepreneur with a strong vision who is looking to create completely new markets and address needs that in his opinion the customer does not know she has, it helps to step back and have a way to look at his reality in a different way. In doing this, a framework like PMF can serve as a way to (like Tom says) break down the grand solution into smaller bits and see how the customer would like them to be. Thinking of PMF as a tool may help resolve the useful v.s. theoretical question.
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