Heard of "Lean Startup" (Lean Startup) knows minimize the feasibility of the product (MVP, Minimal Viable Product) philosophy - that is, through a minimal, but to meet the core needs of products to test the market response. The core principle behind the MVP is to reduce the time cost.
But in the Internet industry, many entrepreneurs develop the Lean Startup is equivalent to the MVP on their own, then quickly trial and error.
The fact is that the product is just one idea into a structured, automated tools and services. Before you ideas into automated service, you should do first is to determine the feasibility of your idea by artificial means, that is looking for Product-Market Fit: Products - Market match, entrepreneurship is the most important concept of Lean is also One.
In other words, before you decide to sell drinks in the subway in the development of a vending machine, first standing on the subway to sell drinks for a week to see if anyone foot the bill. This principle sounds simple, but too many entrepreneurs these two steps reversed.
"Startup life cycle can be divided into two parts: Found - before the market matching, and find product - after market match" - Mark Anderson (reading project numerous famous serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, Silicon Valley, Great God)
What PMF that?
Products - Market matching (Product-market fit, PMF) Although Lean Startup is one of the most important concepts, but also the most vague a concept. ? In 2007, Mark Anderson in his blog created this concept and is defined as: "In a good market, with a product able to meet this market."
In short, there are millions of products available in the market, there are ten million kinds of market demand, both of which coincides with the place, that is, those that meet the market demand.
PMF, which has several?
The first PMF, is a better product experience to meet an existing market. In this case, the market has been clearly defined and there, but the current market products to meet the experience still is not good enough, and the user (whether or not they perceive) in a more convenient way to find the additional functionality or use to solve their presence and known problems.
A typical example is in line with the first PMF Slack. Before the user experience of the more astute Slack advent of long ago we are already many products attempt to occupy the internal communication and collaboration market --Skype, HipChat, Yammer, IRC-- Although these products experience is not bad, but they are no good to some bright spots, or bring about "a way of life" like change.
The second PMF, is a product to meet the needs of an existing but some unmet market. Startups seize a market segment in this market, the direct introduction of products to meet the needs of users in this market segment.
Uber is a typical representative of the second line with the PMF. Uber's initial business just use a lot of companies hire drivers match the user labor market. These drivers usually just pulled executives or airport shuttle in different cities, the more spare time evenings and weekends. So Uber these drivers with another existing but unmet market match up: those who want to complete a taxi ride with a credit card payment. Uber again after this type of market and users have a car and want to earn extra money ordinary people match up with clever solutions to the entire travel market pay bigger and bigger plates.
The third PMF, is a product to create a new market. Do these products will no doubt encounter many obstacles, because before the birth of the product, users do not know they need this product, so the demand is not there, the market is non-existent.
To microblogging, for example. Popular microblogging, so most people never imagine to interact with the celebrity or brand, you can "look @" to achieve.
In the end, many start-up companies will adopt an integrated form of the above three PMF. For example AirBnB, the first and third combined: to serve an existing market (private travelers and business travelers), but they've never experienced before to meet the needs of (ordinary people living in the home rather than hotel ).
Why should the product - the market is divided into three categories match it? Well, because the definition of PMF they belong, in order to understand where you should focus on.
Existing products to meet the market need very good user experience and heavier marketing investment to gain market share; market already meet part of the demand unmet product needs to ensure that products can still be able to service the core of users in the development process but it requires more sophisticated marketing and promotion strategy, because new users are often recommended discount this type of promotional activities to attract; and the unique challenges of creating new market products is not only to provide a valuable user experience, but also first convince users to experience it.
Find the benefits of PMF?
For any start-ups or companies in the early growth of the product - the market matching is the most critical issue.
If you ask any entrepreneur or venture capitalists, they will tell you, once they realized the product market positioning, their company will start growing like crazy. Because it proves their product or service and user resonate, these customers will strongly recommend our products to friends and family, they become free salesman.
When the PMF does not occur, the user does not have full access to the value of your product, and did not cause word of mouth effect, and did not lead to massive subscriber growth, the annual review as a chapter of the nonsense, far more than expected sales cycle, there are a large number of the order is not complete.
When PMF occurs, users scrambling to buy your product, your subscribers with the amount of service you provide massive growth, money is very easy to go to your company's pocket from the consumer's pocket, you have to as soon as possible recruit more people to provide more customer support. Because you hear so hot products, the media have come to want to interview you ...
Before Marc Andreessen to start-ups in the life cycle is divided into two parts, found after PMF (subscriber growth was flat), and find the PMF (subscriber growth is coming you can not imagine)
how do you know your product has reached the PMF?
One way is to judge by Andrew Chen recommended standard user data:
- User-level product standards:
- The number of days per week over 3 days
- The new daily active users over 100 DAU
- The next day retained 30% of new users
- 100,000 subscribers
- Saas Standard:
- 5% conversion fee
- LTV / CAC> 3, that is, the lifetime value of a user / user acquisition costs> 3
- Monthly churn rate <2%
- Water monthly sales reach 100,000
- The user back to the time of acquisition costs <December
Another approach is to questionnaires, by asking the user (preferably used the past two weeks, at least twice a week, and experienced users of the product core functions) a question: "If you can not continue to use this product, you there will be more disappointed? "The options are" very disappointed "," a little disappointed "and" disappointed. " If more than 40% of respondents were selected "very disappointed", then the product will have a play!
2015年初一份关于Slack用户的问卷调查显示，731个Slack用户中有51%的人对不能继续用Slack表示“非常失望”
然而，定义一个产品的PMF是充满挑战的，因为这需要时间和你对目标市场的深刻洞察。
PMF为什么那么难找？
当你有一个产品创意时，如果要在产品开发之前调查市场，一般简单明了办法是：直接问用户或者观察用户行为。
当你向潜在用户问问题时，通常都会遇到令你沮丧的答案。你总不能问，在使用XX服务方面，“你遇到什么困难/障碍/瓶颈”之类的大而无边的问题吧？所以只能挨个痛点来问用户“是否遇到过这样的问题？”另外一个就是观察法，观察潜在用户做某个行为。
但即使这样，人还是可能撒谎的——不管是因为虚荣心，还是因为不忍心告诉你这个创意很烂的一片好心，还是潜意识的原因。
当然还有方法是像文章开头所说的，在开发一个自动贩售机在地铁里卖饮料前，先站在地铁里卖一个星期的饮料看看是否有人买单这样做MVP的。或者是像张小龙说的，瞬间把自己变成“傻子”来体验产品。
无论是哪种办法，对于创业者来说可能都太慢了，谁都想快速调研、快速开发和快速测试。这对于面向企业用户的SaaS产品来说，做调研尤其“昂贵”：你还要花时间找到那些公司相关职位的人，建立联系，然后才能问问题吧？
一旦创业者跳过了寻找PMF这一步（或许是抓住了自己或者几个朋友对某类服务的痛点故事），挽起袖子就往产品开发这个环节杀上去，在做好产品之前没有识别出真正的用户需求，那其中花费的时间可都成“沉没成本”，越来越高了。毕竟时间是每个创业者都拥有的一项宝贵资源。
如何提高找到PMF的机会？
首先，这是一项能力，像肌肉一样可以被锻炼，只要尝试多了，找出PMF的机会也必然增加；
其次，对于大部分是做开发出身的创业者来说，对开发产品这种体验的热爱可能会令他们更喜欢去开发产品，而不是去调研用户需求，这只是时间上投入不够而造成寻找PMF的机会不高；
Finally, do not put your creativity as confidential, and companies should ask industry veterans and listen to their views, maybe they can help you from a macro point of technical and creative industries top-down view of a lack of clear place. Because your creativity in just conceived when he reached the probability PMF minimal, others may not be able to fancy your idea and copy the past, even if the copy may not be successful in the past.
So when you have an idea when you think should not be gambling that it can Biechu a home run, but rather how to verify that it is not a bad idea in the pile with the fastest way.