Comments on: The sultans of startup marketing

By: Nivi

Nivi — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 04:46:21 +0000

I don’t know anyone there — maybe you can ask Sean in his comments.

By: David Langer

David Langer — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:27:59 +0000

Nivi, have you come across anyone who you think comes close to ’sultan’ status in the UK (or anywhere in Europe)?

Also, Sean’s pyramid changed the way I think about marketing too. But can you explain how it added 75lbs to your bench? :)

By: Nivi

Nivi — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:09:12 +0000

The pyramid gives you metrics to measure fit at the first stage, i.e. “having a good product”. For suggestions on how to iterate your way to fit, I recommend Eric Ries’ blog; for example, see his post on pivoting.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:59:04 +0000

I did read it. “If you haven’t reached product/market fit yet it is critical to keep your burn low and focus all resources on improving the percentage of users that say they would be very disappointed without your product.”

This is in no way addresses my point. The idea of ‘Fit’ insists that some manner of tweaking or molding could produce a viable product. This is very often not the case, most product ideas are not viable in the market for reasons beyond ‘fit’, they are just not good products (think cuil vs google), or products that cannot compete, or products for which the market is not large enough etc. The majority of the time the game is already lost (or with the possibility of a win) before this pyramid is even relevant.

By: Nivi

Nivi — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:23:02 +0000

Ask your users how disappointed they would be if they could no longer use the product. Read Sean Ellis’ post on the startup pyramid and he explains how.

By: Mike Biostat

Mike Biostat — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:33:30 +0000

How can you quantify product/market fit? For example, how do you know when your product or service has a product/market fit of 40%?

By: Nivi

Nivi — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:59:39 +0000

That’s the first level of the pyramid. Read his post on the pyramid.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:09:36 +0000

Hmm, it might be just me, but Sean’s start-up pyramid appears to be missing something, I like to call it: “HAVING A GOOD PRODUCT”.

By: Nivi

Nivi — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:47:53 +0000

Check out Ash Maurya.

By: Teemu Kurppa

Teemu Kurppa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:35 +0000

Great stuff, thanks for bringing Sean to my radar.

As we are on the topic, are there other interesting thinkers writing about achieving product/market fit (under different terminology perhaps) besides Andreesen, Blank, Ries and Graham that I’ve missed?