Announcing “The Path to Product Market Fit”

Sunil Nagaraj

At Ubiquity Ventures, we agree with Steve Blank that a startup is “a temporary organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” The operative word here is “search” (as we’ve highlighted in our past Ubiquity University video on “Managing Early Customer Development”). 

The pre-seed and seed stages of startups are all about hunting to find product market fit. To that end, we’re excited to release our latest Ubiquity University video, “The Path to Product Market Fit” with Ubiquity Extended Team member Veronica Pinchin.  

Veronica has spent over a decade in product management leadership at Google, Mixpanel, Sidewalk Labs, and Wealthsimple. Her experience includes web products, hardware/software products, rich analytics/instrumentation, and consumer funnels. 

In this 18-minute Ubiquity University video (watch now), Veronica takes us through the following:

Problem/Product Vision

  • Start by becoming obsessed with the customer problem you are solving. Live and breathe it so you understand the problem BETTER than your customers understand it themselves.

  • Use this to develop a perspective on how you will solve the problem differently than other products in the market.

  • Fill in the product vision template to be specific about what you’re solving, who you’re solving it for and why you’re different.

Product Development

  • Begin by focusing on a small set of people who REALLY need what you’re building

  • Measure customer love with a disappointment metric: there is a free tool for this survey at https://pmfsurvey.com

  • Prioritize features on an impact vs. effort chart — start with low effort-high impact, then low effort-low impact. The goal here is speed.

  • Transform customer love into revenue and solidify product-market fit

Ongoing Product Management

  • Prototyping tactics and pitfalls 

  • Pairing rigorous metrics/instrumentation with regular qualitative feedback and observing users in their natural habitat

  • Neverending iteration to scope features, quality improvements and the disappointment metric

Ubiquity University: free, short videos for early-stage startups

We built Ubiquity University to unlock growth for early-stage startup leaders by sharing the latest knowledge and advice for pre-seed, seed, and Series A stage entrepreneurs. We have dozens of free, short (5-15 minute) practical videos that dive into key concepts, mindset shifts, and tactical advice to help startup leaders grow and develop. Our speakers include the sharpest technical and business experts from the Ubiquity Extended Team and beyond. If you know individuals who would benefit from Ubiquity University, please pass this along.

Ubiquity Ventures — led by Sunil Nagaraj — is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on startups building software that reaches into the real world. In a screen-obsessed world, we focus on "software beyond the screen" startups, which include technology companies that apply AI, software, and smart hardware to physical problems and systems that you can touch, hear, and feel.

If your startup fits this description, reach out to us.

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