The most debated question. And the most difficult one to answer. Companies rise and fall solely based on this singular concept. Simply put, is your product able to find and address market demand?

I was reading up the internet to find the answer and came across great articles but one particularly stood out. That was Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman. It’s a new email startup that aims to deliver an intuitive and faster email experience to achieve what he terms as ‘Inbox Zero’.

The Golden Metric

As he puts it, Sean Ellis (Dropbox) proposed that if you want to focus on one measurable indicator that could help you decide how far away you are from product-market fit, ask your users the question: “How would you feel if you could no longer use the product?” and measure the percent of users who answer “very disappointed”. If over 40% of your users answer ‘very disappointed’, you have achieved product-market fit. If not, then the group that answered ‘very disappointed’ will unlock product-market fit.

The Superhuman product/market fit survey.

1. How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman?
A) Very disappointed
B) Somewhat disappointed
C) Not disappointed

2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman?

3. What is the main benefit you receive from Superhuman?

4. How can we improve Superhuman for you?

It’s not as simple as asking all your users what they want and building it. Because you will get mixed responses, a chaotic development pipeline and user experience filled to the brim with features that irritate rather than delight your paying customers. Instead, it’s better to drill down to that segment of users that really love your product and build features that they love. It will make you more streamlined and help you channel your resources better to achieve product success and growth.

For a detailed first hand account, I urge you to read Vohra’s article on First Round here: https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/

Read about Kano Model of Product Development to streamline and prioritize your product roadmap and ship features that your consumers value the most. You can also read Market Planning to ensure your offerings have revenue potential.

Featured Image by vectorjuice on Freepik