One of the most difficult difficulties for early-stage founders is determining product-market fit, the elusive holy grail of business success. This significant milestone demonstrates to you — and possible investors — that your client base is actively buying, using, and discussing your product. In a nutshell, it decides your startup’s future growth and profitability. It appears to be a simple proposition. Find a market and develop a product to fulfill that market’s needs. It’s far easier said than done, and not just for early-stage entrepreneurs.
Quibi, a short-form mobile-native video platform, was co-founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman in 2020. The $2 billion private firms failed dramatically in less than six months, owing in large part to a terrible product-market fit. To our knowledge, no one has ever requested a short-form video on mobile. Achieving product-market fit is perhaps a company’s most important strategic goal. You won’t be able to tell if your product will make money without it, much alone focus on other important goals like growth or upselling clients.
You’re probably at the pre-product-market fit stage at this point in your startup career, or you think you are. Regardless of where you are on the product-market fit continuum, Terri Burns’ Finding Product Market Fit with Terri Burns at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 14 is not to be missed.
Terri Burns is a partner at GV (previously Google Ventures), where she invests in consumer firms and the future of work with the goal of assisting them in finding product-market fit. HAGS and Locker Room, which Spotify purchased in March and relaunched as Spotify Greenroom in June, are among her investments. Burns worked as an associate product manager at Twitter, focusing on user experience, until joining GV in 2017. She also worked for Venmo as a front-end engineer and developer evangelist.
Burns will go through the foundations of finding a product-market fit in this interactive discussion. She’ll set out and explain the steps needed, including how to incorporate customer feedback loops and the value of iteration, speed, consistency, and adaptability. TC Early Stage seminars provide you with plenty of opportunities to participate, ask questions, and walk away with a better understanding of the topics and skills that are critical to company success. Now is the time to reserve your seat before the price rises!
