Market Fit?
More Like Learning How To Nurture Your Community!
Whiskers are out - that means we’re ready to explore all of the information
from our community interviews!
Dear Diary,
This has been a whirlwind of a week. On the business side, not so much. But on the engineering side there was a whole rollercoaster! 🎢 From running code where nothing worked to almost turning my development laptop into a very expensive brick while installing a new operating system, hearts raced as we fumbled our way to the other side. And why did we have such problems? Two (but really three) words:
Windows OS
IYKYK.
This makes more sense if you’ve seen this conversation on AI from Saturday night.
On top of correcting my previous poor operating system choices, we also found out one of our pieces of hardware we were working with (the camera) will not work for the project. 😢 However, this setback led us to find a kit that will work even better for us! Computer vision developers - if you haven’t heard of this Tiny ML Kit from Arduino (partnered with edX and TensorFlow), do yourself a favor and check it out! 🛠️
With the proof of concept development work moving forward, we also had to take some time to focus on getting the word out for summer. AUVSI Xponential, one of the largest gatherings for people in the UAV industry, is happening one week from today. While I won’t be there roaming the exhibit halls and listening to talks, my cofounder will be meeting old connections while making new ones. Thus, we need to be prepared with materials for him to spread the word and find pilots to help us out over the summer. So in parallel, we’ve been working on getting a landing page up for the company that will help us with two big tasks:
🧑🔬 Getting people signed up to help with data collection over the summer
💼 Getting people signed up to help us with market validation and product fit
Now this idea didn’t come out of thin air - we were inspired to get something like this set up because of our guest speaker from week 2 of the accelerator program! On Thursday last week, we heard from Qiana Patterson who introduced us to the topic of Market Validation and Market Fit. This topic is one of those things you hear about being incredibly important in the beginning stages of building a business. I mean, why put the time and effort into building something that no one will use? But for me, it was one of the most confusing and mysterious topics to figure out on my own. The pain points I had before Qiana’s talk:
What about this information is actually important?
What do investors care about?
What should I care about as someone trying to build a successful company?
What is the why beyond the surface level why?
Looking on the internet, I found a lot of information about how to execute on evaluating market fit - but I personally could never figure out how to construct those exercises purposefully. And for me, that’s because I couldn’t figure out what pieces of information were truly important. Luckily, in Qiana’s presentation, she very clearly laid out what is important and, most importantly, why it is important.
So - what do we need to know? According to Qiana:
☝️ Do people need my product?
✌️ Is there enough real and sustainable demand for my product?
🤟 How large is the market?
🖖 Who is my ideal customer persona?
🖐️ How much are people willing to pay for my product?
🖐️☝️ Are there ways to improve the product to deliver more value?
These six questions are the why behind the why. From her point of view, this is what the investors care about, this is what you need to know as a business owner, and this is what matters for the success of an idea (aside from execution of course). Let’s think about each of these a little more:
👭 Do people need my product? What happens if no one needs your product? Is your product a need or a nice to have? Does your product or idea already exist without improving on what is available today? If you aren’t creating something with enough new value, it’s better to be able to pivot in the beginning than after you’ve invested time and resources into building it out.
💰 Is there enough real and sustainable demand for my product? This comes from understanding where your demand is going to come from. This will help inform things like the TAM (total addressable market) and how you define the actual problem you’re solving.
🌎 How large is the market? Similar to above, this helps you understand who/what you’re actually building for and if there is a large enough need to create success. Imagine if you did everything right and dominated the market, but the market itself was so small that you couldn’t make enough to keep things going?
🐸 Who is my ideal customer persona? In other words, who is the perfect candidate for what you are making? And, more importantly, who’s adjacent to them? Can you spread your product reach to bring in less ideal candidates into your definition of ideal? Is it worth doing that?
💵 How much are people willing to pay for my product? This is a big one - will people be willing to pay for what you are making? And will they be willing to pay cost + labor for it? What happens if you build the perfect device and the amount people are willing to pay for it only covers half the materials cost? 💔
🛠️ Are there ways to improve the product to deliver more value? Value is what will drive the current and future development of the product. Ideas for value will come from better understanding the pain points of current and potential customers. Your community matters.
She laid this out so clearly and so thoughtfully that it makes the why much clearer:
Learning from your community ensures that you are actually doing something that helps your community.
It’s not just about making your company successful - it’s about genuinely listening to others in the field and finding ways you can improve their lives. It’s about putting your assumptions aside so you can hear what will help make their world better and then putting in the effort to make that happen.
So if we understand the why, what is the how that will make this happen? There are a variety of things you can try (each with their own pros and cons). Some suggested during our presentation:
🔍 Analyze google keyword trends and internet searches
🎙️ Interview potential customers with surveys and conversations
🧑💻 Create a landing page for people to go to to learn about your company
📊 Invest in a competitive analysis to understand the current market and identify gaps
🚀 Launch ad campaigns, generate traffic with blogs, and create attention on social media or otherwise
Each of these are valid methods (and there are others outside of this too). However, when you understand the why, you better understand which of these methods would actually work for you to answer the questions outlined previously.
In need of a little more structure than this? Here’s a framework neatly laid out by Qiana that reinforces solid execution of these exercises:
Define a Problem: Avoid solving a problem people are not willing to pay for.
Identifying Target Customers: Link to specific customers and their needs - how big is the market?
Identify the Current Competitors: How are people currently solving the problem, what are the current gaps in the solutions available?
Set the Goals for Validation: Set measurable goals for what you need to see in order to determine a viable solution.
Develop your Hypothesis: Validate or invalidate your hypotheses’ with real customer feedback. Process the feedback.
Refine and Adapt: Make necessary adjustments based on feedback and market changes. Pivot if necessary.
So now we get to look at our business problem through the lens of the scientific method. With an engineering brain like mine, this is music to my ears. We have our why, we have our framework, and we can use this exercise for finding market validation that tests our assumptions with community feedback. But most importantly - we can do these exercises with purpose and intention.
✨TLDR ✨It takes a village to build something as big as a technology startup. The process of discovering market fit and validating your market requires you to lean on the community your startup is going to breathe life into before it fully makes its way into the world. While it is important to listen to what your community says, it’s even more important to nurture it in the same way you will nurture your business. Because when you feed your community with what it needs to grow, it will give back to you in ways you wouldn’t expect, especially when you need it most.
Leila Kaneda
Co-Founder and CTO
she/her/hers
