Skip to Content
Running Lean, 2nd Edition
book

Running Lean, 2nd Edition

by Ash Maurya
February 2012
Intermediate to advanced
235 pages
5h 47m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Running Lean, 2nd Edition

Chapter 14. Measure Product/Market Fit

The first step is to define a metric to measure product/market fit. Once you have that, you can systematically iterate toward achieving it.

What Is Product/Market Fit?

Even though Marc Andreessen did not coin the term product/market fit,[22] his blog post on the topic remains one of the most popular descriptions of what product/market fit feels like:

Product/Market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of “blah,” the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close.

And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it—or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account. You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can. Reporters are calling because they’ve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it.

Marc Andreessen, “The Pmarca Guide to Startups”

Unfortunately, Marc ended that post with more questions than answers and didn’t offer any guidance on how to achieve or measure product/market fit. Sean Ellis makes the concept less abstract by offering a metric for determining early traction that is a prerequisite ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Running Lean

Running Lean

Ash Maurya
Leading Lean

Leading Lean

Jean Dahl
Basiswissen Geschäftsprozessmanagement, 2nd Edition

Basiswissen Geschäftsprozessmanagement, 2nd Edition

Kim Nena Duggen, Andrea Grass, Christian Weiss, Tim Weilkiens

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449321529Errata Page