How to Find Product Market Fit - Stanford CS183F: Startup School

[@georgeb8637]

10:41 - building a platform (data inside of your platform - allows other businesses to build a business on top of yours) 18:34 - the response we should get 'wow this really solves our problem' 22:48 - on the journey for 1.5 years 27:17 - product market fit - where the customers are running away wanting to use the product (achieved via landing page, hacker news and github) - beta list 45:49 - at the beginning its just hustle - cold calling, emailing, speaking to everyone you know, intros 46:14 - at the beginning no one is going to help you, you just got to go out and find customers

[@vikramadhiman536]

This was by far the best lecture of the series. Peter Reinhardt is prepared but not rehearsed and there is an honesty to his talk without doing the shenanigans of modern presentation - no theater, no inserted jokes and made up stories. Thank you.

[@MrRsheeler]

This is definitely one of my favorite videos of the class, especially since a lot of the recent ones have been lacking. I really appreciated that in this video, Peter used his past experience to create actionable items for us as students (something that the most recent videos haven't been doing). Loved the speaker - very smart while still being humble. His lecture really added a lot to Startup School.

[@jesusmiguel1560]

"create actionable items for us as students" You must have missed it. But, the students didn't care about the product. All the speakers, thus far, have give great previous past experience examples.

[@MrRsheeler]

Hm.. I beg to differ but to each their own! I absolutely LOVED the following videos - Startup Mechanics - Kirsty Nathoo (definitely amazing takeaways on incorporation, finances, and equity) - How to Get Ideas and How to Measure - Stewart Butterfield & Adam D'Angelo - How to Build a Product I - Michael Seibel, Emmett Shear & Steve Huffman - How to Build a Product II - Aaron Levie (great insight on how to get started on enterprise software and how to capitalize on major players downfalls) - Live Office Hours with Adora Cheung and Avichal Garg (mostly for answers given by Adora) But the last two videos (How to Invent the Future I & II) were essentially Alan Kay going on about his accomplishments along with a lot of random quotes (although I really respect the guy). Both of Mr Kay's lectures ran together a lot for me. And the others I have not mentioned have been a lot of "this is what I did" with a gem every now and then; however, the videos I listed above have been crammed full of actionable items and that's what I meant by saying this was getting back to the amount of value some of the first videos provided.

[@nathanbanks2354]

This video is far more pragmatic. I also didn't find Kay's lectures as useful, though I suspect this is because I don't have enough time and money. If I had ten years and millions of dollars, Xerox PARC does seem like a valid model and could lead to hugely innovative ideas. Perhaps Google X is the closest modern day example...at least Waymo should be successful and I hope Project Loon will work. Maybe one day when we can afford to make our own Google X we'll reflect on Kay's video because the examples were truly amazing technologies for the time. Unfortunately, I can't see how to use the content of How to Invent the Future in a startup because time and/or money is always lacking, but I wish there was a way to bring the ideas to a startup.

[@semiproductive]

Sam asked Alan to talk about invention (what ambitious research labs do) not innovation (what startups do) so that's what he did. Alan's talk was useful from the standpoint of perspective. Many people think that startups / markets do all of the innovation and Alan wants to remind people that startups / companies are good at the last leg of technology / product but usually not at the hard first parts. Both are challenges, but they're different challenges. Another great take away is that trying to commercialize research that hasn't been explored enough may be difficult for startups to do (unless they have financial resources / patience to iterate for many years like pharma startups sometimes do). Lastly, a lot of developed research isn't commercialized and his talk may push some people to look at those as avenues for inspiration for starting companies.

[@new.yasemin]

That was really eye opening. So grateful that I have found this video.

[@johan7487]

My favorite lecture so far, including the ones posted back in 2014. Funny presentation that was easy to understand and to get something out of, especially thanks to the variety of relatable, real life examples he used. Love how we also mentioned the Lean Startup book, proving how useful and gamechanging books can be.

[@jaikumaran7852]

Mind blowing talk! Forces you to rethink. Love the way he emphasises on product market fit is something you 'feel'

[@markgabbidon5127]

This is the best and in my opinion the most important lecture from this class.

[@artemtestrigor]

The best explanation of product market fit I've ever heard.

[@PankajKumar-qb9ic]

The best video I've ever got on Product market fit. It's awesome👍.

[@reclearning558]

He's really thoughtful, and I like the idea of showing postitive examples of product market fit

[@Dan-xl8jv]

One of the best lectures at YC.

[@arthurgopak]

Thanks a lot for such an insightful lecture, Peter. So far, this is the best lecture out of the whole class.

[@reinpk]

Thank you for the kind words Arthur

[@YazinS]

Phenomenal talk. This guy knows his stuff

[@reinpk]

Thanks Yazin!

[@EvanKozliner]

Such a cool video. His cofounders proposition to double down on the analytics library was very perceptive!

[@ACCA2016]

I really appreciate “the feel” of product market fit. We have a product is doing okay but never feel like the product palling the whole company forward. It might be the size of the market need to solve the particular problem or we are just not capturing the problem correctly. By talking to the customers in a precise way (like jtbd type interview) help us to re-identify the customer problem.

[@jamesmcginn6291]

Just excellent. He really dramatized the importance of product market fit.

[@berdgg]

Very good talk! Lot of great takeaways from the lecture.

[@hoodasaurabh]

Summary of the lecture: 1. Keep your startup alive for a long as possible by keeping your expenses bare minimum. 2. Talk to users and keep trying. (Trying new startups/features/tweaks/etc.) 3. "Hope" that you'll find product/market fit. How do you know that you've achieved P/M fit? You'll get a flood of need-met users & market will extract features out of your startup.

[@parnchable]

love this talk, well prepared and a great presenter!

[@UnicornLaunching]

39:38 "The size of the business problem has almost nothing to do with the amount of code written [to solve it]." - Reinhardt

[@ajudicator]

Many comments are missing the key point, which in my mind is being honest with yourself and focusing on working through the problem tangent as compared to the solution tangent ...

[@amareshgangal7]

One of the best i have ever heard.. on topic…

[@rajapurva2012]

This one was amazing and super helpful. Thank you, Peter and YCStartupSchool. #group35

[@ultronsam1214]

From this class, one of the things I learnt is that: Finding PMF doesn't just happen once, as you grow or move forward, you tend to get into other layers of finding Product-Market Fit. I hope I'm correct with that.

[@agustincortes1236]

Love this. Fantastic judgment

[@kevinpham5896]

I''m learning so much holy crap

[@rp2312]

Very good and awesomely detailed talk! Always resonate with real life examples! And agree 💯% that Be clear what market/customers want! Validating your hypothesis is an absolutely must-do crucial phase! By the way, I hate cockroaches 😖 and the slides with the images of cockroaches made me squirm !!

[@JS-tg4zp]

Awesome lecture!

[@Goeinavund]

Just a small reminder Segment got bought by Twilio for 3.2 B in 2020. 💰

[@emotuonimowo6161]

Great study .. Market fits

[@AndyIvan74]

Very good presentation. Thank you.

[@jisanson]

Awesome video

[@perfectlycontent64]

Wish I found this 6 years ago, thank you! Quick question, for those success rates on finding product market fit. Does anyone know how many pivots the typical founder can attempt to find product market fit? I'm actually surprised the follow on success rate is only 50% higher at 32% or so. I'm aware of serial entrepreneurs who've built multiple successful businesses with product market fit, they are rare but I suspect this is a learnable skills. That's not to say luck doesn't play a major role, but if you're much faster at taking shots and you know what product market fit looks like I imagine that's a huge advantage.

[@yossimolcho841]

Just great. Thank you.

[@Nooneonearth2.0]

Is that Sam Altman moderating? 😊😊😊

[@danilk8625]

How did you survive on 30K in the Bay Area?

[@michaelwongso6689]

Main takeaway 1. Product Market Fit feels like customers are pulling your product from your hand, they arre going to run with it. 2. Always talk to your users, when you are in the room with them. Dig information then Listen, rather Selling your Idea. 3. You cannot know the value of your product before you start pricing it. So start pricing it, if you want to know your value. 4. How to know when you hit PMF ? Easy. Your team focused only on scaling everything instead of looking for the next feature to build. 5. If you are questioning whether or not you have PMF, you don't have it.

[@512types]

This video is more about how to recognize product market fit than how to find it. Any more particular advice on the topic?

[@NistenTahiraj]

Yes, find a damn problem to solve.

[@jsr7599]

did you find market fit

[@jsr7599]

if so show it to me pls

[@Lee-ii9mk]

so after finding their idea they went straight to marketing (on Hacker news)?

[@yuvrajoberoi7834]

I don't understand that wayne Gretzky game diagram, can someone explain?

[@vitaliygladkiy733]

Thanks a lot

[@mikemasi967]

Anyone know who the "Sales Consultant" was?

[@cityowltypes]

Why has Alan Kay’s lecture been removed??

[@ShubhamYadav-tc1mr]

Akshay Madan kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5WUiIaer9-AebM

[@ShubhamYadav-tc1mr]

Here it is!!

[@christopherhorton1995]

Why did he not iterate on the first product with the students? I think there’s something in that idea and was kind of disappointed that he gave up before evolving and trying to find “fit” with the product

[@reinpk]

Regardless of the application, we found that laptops and mobile phones in the classroom were incredibly distracting to students. So it wasn't really a question of iterating on the product, we felt any version of the product was dead on arrival simply by being web/mobile.

[@fintech1378]

so good

[@JonnyOnTheRise]

Who is the guy giving the introduction, he looks oddly familiar. Is that Sam?

[@rahul7187]

Yes he is Sam Altman

[@Greg_Chase]

The way to get product-market fit is figure out what the potential customer is doing and what they actually WANT. EXAMPLES: - customer has a moped to get to work. Rainy season hits. He still drives the moped because he can't afford a car. SO YOU GIVE HIM A CAR. Will he take it? Bigtime. That is product-market fit. It's not economically viable but it adheres to the steps to discover product-market fit: 1) what is the prospective customer doing NOW 2) what do they actually WANT to do - customer lives in a 1 bedroom apartment with 3 kids and wife. He wants a bigger place. 1) what is the customer doing now? living in a 1-bedroom apartment 2) what does the customer actually WANT to be doing? living in a 4-bedroom apartment The DISCOVERY - how to FIND product-market fit in the above 2 examples - is the same. But let's start with the typical entrepreneur's first move: "I want to create a successful startup. How do I find a good idea?" If you want to find quick product-market fit like above, you have to 1) study someone's current situation 2) figure out what they actually WANT to be doing. They may not tell you. In the moped example, as you were driving your car to work every day, you saw the guy on the moped. "Look, he's riding a moped to work - it's sunny out." and "Look - he's riding a moped to work - in the rain". THE MOPED RIDER WILL NOT STOP AT A STOP LIGHT, KNOCK ON YOUR CAR WINDOW, AND TELL YOU 'I wish I was driving a car' - YOU HAVE TO FIGURE THAT OUT YOURSELF. In the apartment example, you lived down the hall from the 1-bedroom apartment with the husband, wife and 3 kids. The husband IS NOT GOING TO STOP YOU IN THE HALLWAY and tell you "I want a 4-bedroom apartment" - you have to figure that out yourself. The reason I present it this way: it's clear that there are many problems to solve. But you have to get close to someone, learn their situation. They may not tell you they want something other than what they have. You have to discern that, you have to learn enough about what they're doing so you can say "if I was in their position, having to tolerate their situation (moped in the rain, 1 bedroom shared by 5 people) - I know what I would want to be different." 1) zero in on someone 2) figure out what they're up to 3) ask yourself "if I had to do that, what would I want to be different?" 4) provide that - the car for the moped rider; the 4-bedroom apartment. THEY DIDN'T ASK YOU TO PROVIDE IT. But if you offer it to them, they will snatch it out of your hands so fast you'll know you have product-market fit. EDIT: to make this more realistic, before anyone says "the two examples - the moped rider in the rain, the family crammed into a 1-bedroom apartment - are obvious problems and would not take any search effort." Not really. You might have to 'move into several apartment complexes' to find the one person with the huge problem of 5 people crammed into a one-bedroom place. You might have to take different roads before you find a moped rider who rides the moped in the rain to work. A willingness to examine more than one person's situation is required before you might stumble on a problem you can solve. Set your expectations in that regard - 'may need to try several different roads to find a moped rider in the rain' etc. You could make a list of 20 different types of jobs and go down that list, finding people doing that work for each of the 20 cases, before finding a person who is doing A but WANTS to be doing B. Or it might take a list of 100 before you find a problem. Or maybe a list of only 5. Point being, patience is called for in the search for a problem to solve. In each case though the method is the same: 1) what is the person doing NOW 2) what do they WANT to be doing, or what would I want to be doing if I was doing that job THE ABOVE is an attempt to 'systematize' the discovery of problems. When you find problems, product-to-market fit is possible if you deliver a tech solution. We have tried several 'technology push' startups - and it is a learning experience and a waste of time. "Here's a cool tech product idea" no, don't do that. You can spend years trying and failing that way. FIND SOME PROBLEMS *FIRST* - don't write a line of code. FIND PROBLEMS. . .

[@josemora7288]

Does anyone know what is "Today's code" for?

[@libertarianspirit]

Why Alan Kay videos deleted from stanfordonline?

[@enhex]

What I don't understand is why companies pay huge amounts of money instead of letting one of their developer spend few weeks top implementing these 580 lines of code in-house?

[@scottwhittle6319]

Because the 580 lines of code didn’t fully solve the problem. Also, remember the Engg team already has their roadmap...better to buy than build

[@yeeitmete]

14:00

[@soches7426]

Well

[@yanja640]

14:39

[@JosephProsnitz1]

annoying lecture starts by referencing previous lecture which is a private video

[@mikejones3560]

6:27

[@sorcererstone3303]

It is wrong to state using Wayne Gretzky strategy for predicting market/development direction is wrong @1:34. All hockey players use this strategy successfully - past and present. Presenter idea is correct but used the wrong example.

[@djbutterchicken]

ouch my ears the clapping at the end

[@mitya777]

I put together a thread with highlights from the video: knovigator.com/quest/peter-rheinhart-s-find-product-market-fit-5gn6q52o?sort=vote

[@Sondre7]

Very interesting talk. But he has thrown the baby out with the bathwater on the value of vision. Like, with Sam's question: how do you know which ideas to test. He answers it like: not an issue, just kill bad ideas fast enough. But that is wrong. if you test ideas at totally random, you can suggest absolutely anything. Pick your nose, paint the house purple, eat rocks for a week. Of course ideas has to be constrained, and ideally constrained towards some goal. And that is your vision. So, it actually is impossible to know which ideas to test, unless you have some way of constraining the ideas you test.

[@MrPvijayaraghavan]

Good lecture! Would appreciate deleting the cockroach part which is quite repulsive and doesn’t fit well into great lecture. It’s a suggestion!

[@wdai03]

Sounds like this guy shouldn't have been the products guy at the company, he shouldn't have been talking to the customers in the first place unless his co-founders were even worse

[@Kenvx0]

8:24

[@yanja640]

35:35