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Adapting the product to market is an elusive concept for most startups out there, but Shreyas Doshi has achieved it repeatedly for incumbents like Google, Twitter, and Stripe.
Its secret is simple: make sure you try to solve an issue that is in the top three on the customers’ business priority list.
Shreyas left her position as a product manager at Stripe only recently and now works as a product consultant for budding startups. He says that the adaptation of the product to the market is highly context-based and there is no framework that all companies can blindly follow.
He elaborates the strategy to find a suitable product for the market by referring to his vast experience, with incumbents and startups in the initial phase. He says product managers generally ask companies about the problems they are facing at the moment and then create a product to solve that problem. Three months later, when the product is ready and the product manager presents the solution to the customer, the answer is generally: Oh, the product is great, but we are not trying to address this issue right now. This repeats itself six months later and the priorities of any company keep changing.
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Shreyas believes product managers should instead try to determine the main issues that have been plaguing customers consistently for some time.
I follow the customer problem stack classification technique to understand their top three priorities. I ask various questions to find out the general problems the client is facing and then rank them, based on the client’s business priorities. So, I try to build a product that solves one of those major problems, he says, about his technique for finding the product’s fit to the market.
No models available
Shreyas is clear that there is no specific model and that an entrepreneur should not have one because it shifts the focus from quality to quantity.
Basic questions such as how you are progressing with your job or what problems you encounter should start the conversation. From there, you need to pay attention to the most surprising thing the customer says during the conversation. This can become your starting point for building the right product for the customer.
It shares a unique insight into customer shopping habits, particularly in the context of B2B and SaaS domains.
I’ve seen that if you can offer an incentive with your product that makes the purchase decision easier, your product is almost always successful. For example, if your product can prevent the decision maker from being fired on the customer side, you’re almost always certain to make a sale, he says.
Achieve product adaptation to the market
Once the problem to be solved has been identified, building the product through to the product market adaptation phase is another journey.
Here, Shreyass’s strategy is to build a lovable minimum product rather than a viable minimum product. He does this by simulating a conversation between the customer and his friend.
Suppose your product customer is having a conversation with a friend in an informal setting. And the friend reveals a personal or professional problem that your product can solve. What is that statement your customer will say to introduce your product to their friend? he asks.
Once you have the answer, Shreyas advises you to build your product around this statement and try to get that description while addressing the table bets that you absolutely must include in the product.
To learn more about Shreya’s approach to getting the right product market fit, listen to the podcast here
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