How 7 SaaS Founders Discovered Product Market Fit - Focus

How 7 SaaS Founders Discovered Product Market Fit - Focus The narrative goes that when youre first starting off, your business will feel like youre pushing a boulder uphill, one SaaS founder shared with me. But once youve found product market fit, youre holding onto a rocket ship. In reality, scaling your business, and jumping from boulder-pushing to rocket ship-chasing, is not quite as simple as making a few small changes. In this article, Ill share my experience, and the lessons of 6 other SaaS Founders, on how we found the elusive product market fit. Finding MeisterTasks Product Market Fit When we set out to build MeisterTask, we knew that we were creating a task management tool in an overcrowded market. To win our share of the market, we had to make a product that was better than everything already out there. We needed to be careful to ensure our product market fit addressed real needs, in a market where everyone thought they had the answer. To create MeisterTask, we combed through the features of all our competitors, but actually found great inspiration from products that weren’t in the same market. Slack, for example, became our gold standard for a user-centric and professional app. Looking back, we followed a three step process for finding our product market fit: Evaluate what is out there to understand what makes other products in the market “successful.” At this point, playing with other apps also familiarized us with what they were missing. Start creating by reducing features. It might sound counterintuitive, but getting rid of features that some of our competitors considered a ‘core’ feature helped us to refine MeisterTask. For example, we tossed out having multiple assignees on one task and were able to build in a task-based time tracking feature now a user favorite. Be your own guinea pig! Granted, if you’re not part of your target market this is harder, but it really worked for us. No focus group will ever be able to give you the insights you have yourself by using your own prototype daily. Whats more, experiencing a problem yourself will help you to come up with an elegant solution to fix it. In-house testing has become a mainstay of our product development process. Our three-step process enabled us to come up with a product that we know our target niche wanted. By refining MeisterTask since its launch, according to feedback from our user base, weve managed to make MeisterTask into a product that our target niche needs. 6 Lessons from SaaS Founders on Discovering Product Market Fit There isn’t only one good way to find product market fit. After a few conversations with entrepreneur friends, I had the idea to compile their experiences into a blog post. Check out these lessons from 6 successful SaaS entrepreneurs on how they found their own product market fit: 1. Test if your product is needed by getting out there and selling Will Fraser â€" SaaSquatch Whatever youre building, get out there and sell it first. Pick up the phone, meet in person or setup a landing page. It can seem daunting to ask to be paid for a product that doesnt yet exist, but selling first allows you to test what you think is your product  market fit. Plus, youll then have at least one committed  user, who will provide you with real feedback and demand real results for their money. “ 2. Trust and follow your agile processes to a T Simon Lorenz â€" Klara Finding product market fit requires testing, tracking, and transparency. For a SaaS environment, your KPIs may change over time as you look towards your fit, but the process remains the same. Your processes are your most important asset in a SaaS start-up environment. They allow you to be agile in finding, testing and reinforcing your niche. Efficient product development Discover MeisterTask Its free! Discover MeisterTask 3. Keep cutting back on unnecessary features Jói Sigurdsson â€" Crankwheel We found our product-market fit through relentless sales pitches to prospective customers and customer feedback following sales.  We discovered that many of our intended features were actually unwanted by our prospects (wed hear the phrase can we turn off that feature), so we did and ended up building a much simpler, more targeted product than we would have otherwise. 4. Your customers know best â€" seek their wisdom early on Jeroen De Wit â€" Teamleader What we got right is that we went to the market very early on. We didnt go to the media or approach VCs before we had product market fit I see a lot of founders who ventilate more than they validate. Instead, we used feedback from early customers to adapt our tool to the needs of our sweet spot customers service SMEs. Helping your customer is the key goal and it’s still our strategy for product changes. 5.Build in an established market to scale more quickly Daniel Nathan BidMotion Selecting the right industry in order to capitalize on market efficiencies is key in deciding which sector to enter. Fight the desire to create a new market, and instead opt to strategically choose a mature industry. If you have the right product to revolutionize an already-established industry, it will be far easier to reach profitability, without wasting time and funds first building awareness. 6. Dont rush to grow until youve defined your niche John Doherty Credo When youre searching for the right product to solve the problem youve identified, the best advice I can give is to not worry about scale but to instead keep your business small, so that you know your customers and solve their real needs. Keep a running list of things people ask for, then dig deeper and build what they need to solve their problems. Thats how you find the product market fit. Then you scale. So thats how we at MeisterLabs and 6 other successful SaaS Founders established our product market fits. Weve all taken different approaches but one message that runs throughout is the importance of listening to your user base. Your (hopefully paying) customers provide a great indication of the direction you should be going in, so draw on that resource. Pitch to them, consult them, thank them. Hopefully, then, youll find your niche  and your rocket. Have any suggestions, questions or lessons of your own? Please do share them in the comments section below! Product Management Made Simple Discover MeisterTask Its free! Discover MeisterTask How 7 SaaS Founders Discovered Product Market Fit - Focus The narrative goes that when youre first starting off, your business will feel like youre pushing a boulder uphill, one SaaS founder shared with me. But once youve found product market fit, youre holding onto a rocket ship. In reality, scaling your business, and jumping from boulder-pushing to rocket ship-chasing, is not quite as simple as making a few small changes. In this article, Ill share my experience, and the lessons of 6 other SaaS Founders, on how we found the elusive product market fit. Finding MeisterTasks Product Market Fit When we set out to build MeisterTask, we knew that we were creating a task management tool in an overcrowded market. To win our share of the market, we had to make a product that was better than everything already out there. We needed to be careful to ensure our product market fit addressed real needs, in a market where everyone thought they had the answer. To create MeisterTask, we combed through the features of all our competitors, but actually found great inspiration from products that weren’t in the same market. Slack, for example, became our gold standard for a user-centric and professional app. Looking back, we followed a three step process for finding our product market fit: Evaluate what is out there to understand what makes other products in the market “successful.” At this point, playing with other apps also familiarized us with what they were missing. Start creating by reducing features. It might sound counterintuitive, but getting rid of features that some of our competitors considered a ‘core’ feature helped us to refine MeisterTask. For example, we tossed out having multiple assignees on one task and were able to build in a task-based time tracking feature now a user favorite. Be your own guinea pig! Granted, if you’re not part of your target market this is harder, but it really worked for us. No focus group will ever be able to give you the insights you have yourself by using your own prototype daily. Whats more, experiencing a problem yourself will help you to come up with an elegant solution to fix it. In-house testing has become a mainstay of our product development process. Our three-step process enabled us to come up with a product that we know our target niche wanted. By refining MeisterTask since its launch, according to feedback from our user base, weve managed to make MeisterTask into a product that our target niche needs. 6 Lessons from SaaS Founders on Discovering Product Market Fit There isn’t only one good way to find product market fit. After a few conversations with entrepreneur friends, I had the idea to compile their experiences into a blog post. Check out these lessons from 6 successful SaaS entrepreneurs on how they found their own product market fit: 1. Test if your product is needed by getting out there and selling Will Fraser â€" SaaSquatch Whatever youre building, get out there and sell it first. Pick up the phone, meet in person or setup a landing page. It can seem daunting to ask to be paid for a product that doesnt yet exist, but selling first allows you to test what you think is your product  market fit. Plus, youll then have at least one committed  user, who will provide you with real feedback and demand real results for their money. “ 2. Trust and follow your agile processes to a T Simon Lorenz â€" Klara Finding product market fit requires testing, tracking, and transparency. For a SaaS environment, your KPIs may change over time as you look towards your fit, but the process remains the same. Your processes are your most important asset in a SaaS start-up environment. They allow you to be agile in finding, testing and reinforcing your niche. Efficient product development Discover MeisterTask Its free! Discover MeisterTask 3. Keep cutting back on unnecessary features Jói Sigurdsson â€" Crankwheel We found our product-market fit through relentless sales pitches to prospective customers and customer feedback following sales.  We discovered that many of our intended features were actually unwanted by our prospects (wed hear the phrase can we turn off that feature), so we did and ended up building a much simpler, more targeted product than we would have otherwise. 4. Your customers know best â€" seek their wisdom early on Jeroen De Wit â€" Teamleader What we got right is that we went to the market very early on. We didnt go to the media or approach VCs before we had product market fit I see a lot of founders who ventilate more than they validate. Instead, we used feedback from early customers to adapt our tool to the needs of our sweet spot customers service SMEs. Helping your customer is the key goal and it’s still our strategy for product changes. 5.Build in an established market to scale more quickly Daniel Nathan BidMotion Selecting the right industry in order to capitalize on market efficiencies is key in deciding which sector to enter. Fight the desire to create a new market, and instead opt to strategically choose a mature industry. If you have the right product to revolutionize an already-established industry, it will be far easier to reach profitability, without wasting time and funds first building awareness. 6. Dont rush to grow until youve defined your niche John Doherty Credo When youre searching for the right product to solve the problem youve identified, the best advice I can give is to not worry about scale but to instead keep your business small, so that you know your customers and solve their real needs. Keep a running list of things people ask for, then dig deeper and build what they need to solve their problems. Thats how you find the product market fit. Then you scale. So thats how we at MeisterLabs and 6 other successful SaaS Founders established our product market fits. Weve all taken different approaches but one message that runs throughout is the importance of listening to your user base. Your (hopefully paying) customers provide a great indication of the direction you should be going in, so draw on that resource. Pitch to them, consult them, thank them. Hopefully, then, youll find your niche  and your rocket. Have any suggestions, questions or lessons of your own? Please do share them in the comments section below! Product Management Made Simple Discover MeisterTask Its free! Discover MeisterTask