December 16, 2009 — If you combine Paul Graham's "make something people want" advice with Sean Ellis' product-market fit advice (you have product-market fit when you survey your users and at least 40% of them would be disappointed if your product disappeared tomorrow), you end up with a possibly even simpler, more specific piece of advice:
Make something 40% of your users must have
Your steps are then:
Only when you hit that 40% number(or something in that range) should you be comfortable that you've really made something people want.
Does this advice work? I think it would for 3 reasons.
PG and Sean Ellis know what they're talking about.
I made a list of my "must have" products and they are all largely successful. I suggest you try this too. It's a good exercise.
My List of Must Haves:
I've worked on a number of products over the past 3 years.
One of them I can tell you had a "I'd be disappointed if this disappeared" rate of over 40%. We sold that site.
All the others did not have that same "must-have" rate. We launched Jobpic this summer at Demo Day. People definitely wanted it. But we didn't get good product/market fit. If we had surveyed our users, I bet less than 10% of them would report being disappointed if Jobpic disappeared. Our options are to change the product to achieve better product/market fit, or go forward with an entirely new product that will be a must have.
I don't know if this advice will work. But I'm going to try it.
Startup advice can be both exhilarating and demoralizing.
On the plus side, good advice can drastically help you. At the same time, if it's really good advice that means two things:
That can frustrating. I've spent a few years now in the space and to realize you've been doing certain things wrong for a few years is...well...painful.
But you laugh it off and keep chugging along.