I owe you an apology. Talking heads like me have taught you something fundamentally flawed, and I’m sorry. We didn’t intent to lead you astray. Our hearts were in the right place. But the truth is, our single-minded focus on MVP got in the way of your growth, and it’s time to address the elephant in the room.
Last week, I had lunch with a founder who was struggling to find product-market fit. His dedication to building a customer-centric, product-driven company is commendable, but it’s highlighted just how blind our industry has become.
We’ve focused on MVP like it’s some holy grail or magic bullet. If you can build a product with enough features to get user adoption, then you’ll hit the big time. We tell you to “talk to your customers, build an MVP, test it, find p/m fit, and watch user adoption take off like a rocket.” But here’s the hard truth: widespread user adoption is not the same as a scalable business model.
Just look at Vine – an early predecessor of TikTok. The two apps did essentially the same thing, but Vine always struggled to monetize. It had 200 million users within 4 years. 1-in-4 US teenagers were on the app, but it was was forced to shut down in January, 2017 because the company couldn’t figure out how to effectively monetize their business model. TikTok did and is now worth over $50B.
True p/m fit means you have you’ve got lots of customers who love your stuff, consistently pay you a fair and profitable price, and stick around and a company that can profitably support them. Scalability and growth isn’t just about use; it’s about sustainable value creation. This means you’ve got to start with the end in mind.
Focus on profitable business model fit: • Identify customers you can profitably serve • Build solutions to their real problems • Price your product reasonably and profitably • Ensure your model can support growth without breaking,
Shifting from a narrow product-focus to a more holistic view of business viability will build you a stronger foundation for long-term success, which benefits you, your team, your customers, and your community as a whole. It can revolutionize how we think about SaaS growth as an industry.
I promise that I will always do my part to ensure you’re building business models and companies that don’t just attract users, but scale profitably and sustainably. Let’s start a conversation about redefining success in SaaS. What’s your experience with balancing product development and business model viability?
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