Product-Market fit: the key to startup success

How to create a successful startup that will be popular among customers? Meet – Product-Market fit - one of the key indicators of a startup's success! This concept allows companies to create valuable products for potential buyers. Product-Market fit consists of 3 main categories - customer, problem and solution. In the beginning, you need to clearly understand who your customer is. Try to personalize the target consumer and describe him in detail. The second step is to understand the client's problems. For example, what brings him the most discomfort? Then you need to determine the value proposition. How to solve the problem most effectively? Once you find such a solution - move on to prototyping and testing. ?? A little of our experience: When we started developing a marketplace for clothing and footwear companies - UTEX, we had an initial task - to create a catalog of companies. As it turned out, no one knows what is produced in Ukraine. And even if you managed to find the name of a certain company, likely, you will not be able to find relevant contacts. Before starting the development, we identified target groups (manufacturers of materials, sewing shops, brand owners). Then, we found real representatives of the target groups and started the interview phase. We asked about their problems and needs and, unexpectedly, found similarities in the wishes. The main challenge was to verify the partner to see if he was trustworthy. Having developed the first prototypes of our solution, we showed it to everyone we interviewed. So you can imagine our joy when business representatives asked: when the product will be available and whom should they pay. As a result, we have created a single marketplace where industry participants can easily negotiate services and coordinate workflows. The launch of the test advertising campaign was the first test on Product-Market fit - and we immediately received a large number of added profiles and traffic on the platform. So we realized that UTEX makes it easier to solve customer problems, save time and money, and produce a quality product. More about the project at the link: https://bit.ly/3mVJ4MK This story shows that it is extremely important to communicate with all stakeholders at the stage of product development. After all, you can even create a space rocket, which customers will not need, and your company will burn out. Have you achieved Product-Market Fit? What approaches have you used? Share your experience in the comments!