Refine Your Approach to Product-Market Fit with Salmine Sassi

But PMF is not marketing, is not your marketing mix. It is not promotion. It is not sales. It is not marketing strategy. It is purely the market. So the demand, the customer, me knowing them, me iterating. Let's jump right into it because we don't have plenty of time. So what is PMF? Product Market Fit. This is my favorite subject in the world to talk about, and I'm going to explain why, why I'm passionate about Product Market Fit. What is product-market fit? It's the degree to which a product satisfies strong demand, strong demand in a specific market. And I say specific market, right? It means that I am, me, my business is in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. That means that I can go to a market that is interested in my product and is willing to pay for it, and I am able to build that product for them. Yeah. And this is crucial for your growth. And when we say sustainable growth, of course, we always talk about impact, but we also talk about sustainability in your revenue and in your growth month by month or year by year, your customer retention, and just scaling your business down the line because we don't want to go too far too quick and then fall too deep. Yeah. We want to test and we want to fall fast. We're going to talk about that in a minute, so I'm not gonna dig deeper. So our process to get to product-market fit, right? First is the problem-solution fit. What I'm trying to do at the problem-solution fit, which you see here, number 2, is I'm trying to see if there is a problem that people are interested or want to solve, and my solution might be able to solve that problem. Essentially, what I'm trying to test for is desirability and then feasibility. Am I able to build this product. And I start with low-fidelity prototypes and then maybe hard prototypes, and I go into features of my MVP and my MVP, and then I'm developing my MVP better and I'm improving it. And throughout that process, I'm continuously, constantly talking to my customers. Then I move to beta testing. So now I'm trying to find the product-market fit. I'm moving from problem-solution to product-market fit. Product-market fit, sorry. So I'm looking at those 3 things that I talked about in a bit. Desirability, there is a problem that people are willing to solve and they desire this product or this product solves that problem for them. Viability is they are willing to pay for it. And this is something you absolutely need to test. Oftentimes people will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, this is great. It solves my problem, perfect. But I'm not going to pay for it. And you only know that 8 months after development, right? And feasibility is what I said, that we can— sorry, that we can actually build it. So why am I personally so passionate about PMF? Because this is why startups fail, at least in my own life experience, being an entrepreneur, working with entrepreneurs, working in venture building, both with startups, SMEs, and even corporates. It is all about the market need, all about the market need. Even when you look here, right? When you look at get outcompeted and not the right team, it is a lot related to the understanding and analyzing the market, even that, right? Even running out of cash sometimes. No market need at 42% here, I would say it's probably 60-something percent now. This is from CBS Insight. Oftentimes what startups do or what entrepreneurs do is that we fall in love with our ideas and solutions, and that's perfectly fine, but we fall so much in love with it that we go into this, this journey of building the product and building a perfect product that we think everyone is gonna love, but maybe not. Yeah, maybe no one is gonna love, maybe people are gonna love it, but they're not gonna pay for it. Maybe you're building something that is eventually is not feasible and you're trying to make it happen, or maybe it's a technology that doesn't even exist now and we're trying again to make it happen, and that's something else. It's a different type of research that needs to be done. I'll give you an example. The example of The Line right now, right? The Line in Saudi Arabia. A lot of the technologies that are needed to make The Line happen, that mega project happen, do not exist. So we're investing heavily into R&D, right? I'm a startup, I cannot do that. I don't have those means to invest in R&D. So feasibility is very important. What we're trying to do is we're trying to test it quickly, do it as fast as possible, hack the system. I don't have to go every time and knock the doors on 100 or 150 potential buyer customers. I need to find a way that will make that journey faster, and we're gonna talk about it. Fail early and fail fast. This is very important. I need to know that this is not the right segment for me. Maybe I should look into a different psychography or geography, or maybe I need to target a different type of customers, or maybe this is not the right product for that problem, but this product solves a different problem that's close to that one. So we really need to dig deeper and be analytical even with our choices and thought process. Don't marry your ideas. I think anyone will tell you that, and I just talked about that. Eliminate uncertainties. All we're trying to do in the first few years of our entrepreneurial journey is to turn the unknown into known. That's all we're trying to do. There's so many unknowns, moving pieces, factors that can, that can turn my startup into a direction that I don't want. To happen, maybe, then I need to eliminate those uncertainties, then I need to test and test quickly and talk to as many people as possible, and not only my customers, but my stakeholders, potential partners, potential influencers that could influence my business or influence customers who will buy from my business. I need to talk to people who can champion my business and what I'm doing, right? So it's not only my customers, but that's the most important, stakeholder, let's say. Building my MVP, and I think you're all, almost all in your MVP stage, so perfect. We're not gonna go too much into that. And validate, validate, validate, validate. Today we're gonna talk about the 3 types of validations that are important for PMF. So validating the market, the demand, and the, sorry, the problem and the solution. So one of my favorite failure cases of PMF is Google Glass. And Google has a lot of failed products, by the way. But they have the R&D to fail multiple times. Uh, Google Glass are these, uh, augmented reality glasses that just did not work. They thought these are targeting tech enthusiasts and early adopters. They didn't look particularly aesthetically nice or attractive, um, but they had even more issues even for tech enthusiasts that understood what these glasses are for. Uh, there was privacy concerns, uh, there weren't enough, uh, use cases, and it costs them a lot to produce these glasses, right? And it's a different case from, from Apple, by the way. I think you should look at both because it's very interesting. So the outcome, it's failed to widespread acceptance. So I mean, even within the tech enthusiast, uh, community, they did not really like it. A lot of the YouTubers' reviews were not very, um, optimistic. They weren't, uh, supportive of what these can bring to the tech space? Are they really disrupting the market or the industry? Not really, right? So not only did they spend a lot of time in R&D, they probably targeted the right or not the right targets, but they built a product that people did not want at the time. Yeah. Airbnb is a different case and they continuously do that. This, it is a successful case of PMF. Initially started for budget travelers, right? So I'm gonna match you with someone who has a house, a room, or whatever, in Barcelona, there you go, it's cheap traveling and you can get a place to stay and you don't have to spend a lot of money or break the bank on a hotel room. It worked. They tested with early users. They, Airbnb is very good at gathering insights from the platform, from their users. They use NPS scores almost everywhere. And because of how good the platform and the user journey is, the user experience is very optimized. Customer support is very, very, very well done for Airbnb, then oftentimes us as users do end up taking those quizzes and these NPS scores and giving Airbnb insights about our experiences aside from everything that they gather analytically from their platform. And they kept on doing that even during COVID and they managed to pivot very fast, very quickly, even though they lost a lot of money during COVID they still figured it out essentially. And this is what I really like about a company like Airbnb, because they know the market really well. They're studying the market continuously. And so they're ready to pivot and change whenever the industry or the world as we are in today, what we call VUCA world, is continuously changing. Then they're ready for that change. And this is very important for an entrepreneur, adapting to change. Achieving PMF, you have to experiment, dig deeper, be open to pivoting and changing. Experimentation is my favorite thing in the world. Use a lot of the tools that are available for you online to experiment, but please, please go ahead, even if it's running an ad on Meta with like $10, that's enough. Just get the information, get that piece of insight as early as possible. So with that, about feasibility, viability, desirability, throughout our PMF journey, this is what we're trying to validate. We're constantly trying to validate these three circles, essentially. I can build it, they're willing to pay for it, and they are interested in using it. So essentially, the problem that I'm solving is actually a pain point for my customer who would pay to solve that pain point. Yeah? So this is it. I think probably you've seen this a lot. This is the perfect framework to go from where you at, whether that be exploring to a product or launch or pre-launch, right? Because what this teaches us, which is design thinking lean and agile, it teaches us to go from trying to understand the problem, empathizing, learning about the customer, learning about the market in order to come up with some ideas, a couple of ideas that I can take into my lean startup circle and try to test. And I can test with low-fidelity prototypes. It can be wireframes, it could be pages, it could be prototype, video prototypes. It could be anything, right? As simple, as fast, as cheap as possible in order to then, the more I get user feedback and I'm changing and now I know better, now I'm more confident in what I'm bringing to the market, and I'm more confident in the projections that I'm selling to my VCs and angels that are invested in me as well, right? So I'm going to these investors and I'm asking them to put money in my company, and now I'm more confident that I will make them that ROI because I have I have done the work and I have validated my demand and I have validated the market. Activities involved in my PMF, in my product market fit, and I'm only gonna talk about testing your hypothesis because I feel like I already talked about the rest. Testing your hypothesis is exactly what I was saying, but instead of testing absolutely everything, I'm building hypotheses about my assumptions. So let's say I have assumed that Gen X in the West Coast in the US are interested in using Botox at home services, which is your solution. Or let's say I have tested that a version of BlaBlaCar carpooling in Toronto for students will be successful, for example, right? It's a dumb example. So what I'm trying to hypothesize is, Are people even facing that issue? Is there demand for it? Is my solution solving that same specific problem? So I'm hypothesizing the tests, the experiments that I'm trying to run. When I'm trying to validate demand, and we're gonna go through it, we're trying to do desk research, sitting behind my laptop and learning about that market as much as possible. I'll try to talk to industry experts, I'll try to talk to my competitors if I can, I mean, one of the things that I do, which I don't know if it's ethical or not, but I do it, is I reach out to a competitor and say, hey, I'm doing this for a client, can I ask you some questions? Sometimes they do answer and they book a call. Sometimes they're like, no, you're working with the competition and we don't want to talk to you. So try your luck, maybe they will talk to you. And Google Trends, of course. Validating the problem is, uh, what we call primary research. So I'm not sitting behind my desk, I'm going to my customer. So I'm running surveys, I'm running interviews, I'm doing usability tests. I'm trying to analyze all of these feedback insights, data that I've gathered and curating information that I can implement in my offering, in my business, in my product. And with validating the problem, by the way, these, surveys, interviews, da da da da da. It's not only for validating the problem. You can use it even when you're trying to go grow to a new market, to a new geography, right? It's still the same experiments, and you need to find the best way to go to your market or to talk to your customers, right? One of my favorite tools, and maybe you can type it out, called Lyssna, L-Y-S-S-N-A. It saves me a lot of time, especially when I work with clients in Europe and North America because there is a bigger base there. And I can test everything. I can test my locability prototypes, I can test web navigation, I can test problem or solution, problem-solution, whatever fits. And I can reach even 500 users, specific users by the way, and I can target it in a very specific way, and only that persona will answer my questions. So I get the answers that I need to make an informed decision. Validating the solution is when I try to build my solution and put it in the face of my customers and annoy them as much as possible. So I'm building landing pages or pitches or video prototypes work very well because you're not building the product, but in video format, it looks like the product is already built and done, and you can just upload it to Lissner, this tool, and then They will watch the video, you will ask them a couple of questions, your persona, your target, and those questions will, will try to gauge interest, willingness to pay, correlation between interest and willingness to pay, and then they can even give you feedback about what they think is missing in that product, right? So this is what we're talking about. When I'm trying to validate the demand, what I'm looking at is studying the market, the competition, and where I'm at in terms of my product. Right? Have someone in your company who's continuously, constantly, frequently studying the market. So it's a strategic foresight. So I know everything that's happening in my market and in, and in my comparative market, right? Not only for the PMF, forever. These are things that work forever, especially when you're growing to a new market. Same thing for competitive landscape. I need to be In the know, even if my main competitor or the person, the company that I use in my benchmarking analysis at day one is in the US, but I'm operating off of, let's say, Amsterdam, then I need to know everything that they're doing because the minute they come to Amsterdam, maybe they will eat me out of the market, right? So I need to know, and I need to know how to do things better than them if I can. And the product is me trying to continuously position my product in the right way. How do I know this? Market research, secondary and primary. Validating the problem is— and this is— I love this quote. If you don't understand your customers' pain points, how are you going to solve their problems? But at the same time, how Ford puts it, if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. So it's a slippery slope, right? I really need to know my customer— sorry, my customer's pain. I really need to ask them all of these questions and get as much information from them as possible. But when I'm trying to design my solution or product or offering to them, I need to have done my research related to my competition, benchmarking analysis, technologies that are driving this industry or this market right now. My comparative market, what are they doing in a comparative market? So it can be as silly as like Uber to the Airbnb world, or you know what I mean? So it's a comparative market, it's not the exact same, but the technology is driving that market, and that market are very similar, um, and how it's operating. So look at that. So when you are ideating or building the solution or adding features or trying to innovate, then you have also the perspective of the industry, the market, and where it's going in the next 10, 20 because your customers do not know that. All they know is their problem. So hypothesize it. We want a problem statement. You'll probably know this. I'm not gonna go into it. The hypothesis is how might we, how might we solve this for the customer, and how might we retain that customer, for example, if you are in a growth stage. We need to be able to ask Everything that could be— about everything that could be annoying or troubling my customer. Everything and anything that could allow us to drive sales. If you are— for the people who are earlier stage, right? You are really starting to build a prototype. Please run a lot, a lot of interviews and have as many open-ended questions as possible when you talk to your potential customers, right? Find them where they at, and go and talk to them. Open-ended question, it can be, how was your day? How have you been? Don't ask leading questions. Don't ask them, do you face, um, do you face any issues in, um, buying your groceries, for example? Don't ask a direct question, don't ask a leading question, right? Ask questions that can let them open up to you and build a relationship and tell you all about their pain points and problems. Why customer gains are important. Gains are going to describe exactly what outcomes the customers want from using your, uh, your product in the future. What benefits do you need to give them so they would buy your solution or product or offering, uh, and how you can retain them? So this is also as important and Knowing, getting these insights from your customers continuously is very important. At a certain point, you don't have to go on an interview to know these. You get them through your analytics, your platform, your NPS scores, so on and so forth. But where you at right now, you really need to spend time talking to the customers, right? And find the right people to collaborate with to help you run these interviews or surveys or tests. Your buyer persona is what we talked about, is exactly that specific person. When we ask the question in Mentimeter, exactly that specific person who will, who will buy your product. Do you know that segment? You have 3 segments. You like all 3 of them. You have 3 personas, but probably there is one specifically who is willing to pay for your product or maybe willing to pay a higher price for your product. Right? A higher ticket for the same product. It's a bigger pain point for them than segment B. That's where your marketing efforts need to go. That's when we talk about the ARRR funnel. If you remember the ARRR funnel, the pirate funnel, awareness, acquisition, retention. That's where your efforts need to go. Now you know exactly who you need to target, and you're not spending $10K, $20K in marketing efforts on a segment that would not care as much or would not bring you as much revenue. Or sales into your business. This is what I was talking about with the segments. And this is what we're trying to do. Yeah, it's very important to have segments. It's very important to have one that's very specific to us. And essentially, when we're considering our segment or our persona, we're looking at, again, demographics, psychographics, background, their goal, of course, the challenges, because I'm offering this to them. And specifically, what can we do for them? When you see here real quotes, common objections, and marketing messages, one good question I ask when I do interviews or even in surveys is, if you had a magic wand and you wanted to solve this X issue, what would you do? So at the end, right, I've asked everything, what would you do? Just so to see what do they have in mind. Maybe they come up with something I haven't even thought of, right? Another open-ended question in a survey that I like, again, at the end is related, what do you think about this product? Just like, just that. And it's an open-ended question, which we don't like in surveys, but that tells you about your message. Is it coming across in the right way or not? Is it sold? Am I buying your message as your customer or not? Listen much more than you talk, not like what I'm doing right now, which I hate talking too much. I wish I could bring you in and you can tell me about your businesses and we can take you as an example, but it's not the setting for that. Do not pitch your product, pretty, pretty, pretty, do not pitch your product to people, because sometimes we don't care as a consumer. You know that consumer loyalty to brands have been going down, down, down, and we're just going for better quality or better price. So if you pitch your product already at the beginning, then I'm losing you. And pitch your products also when it comes to your website or landing page, right? When the first sentence is what your product is, that's not what I want to hear. What I want to hear is what you're solving for me. Yeah, no ice cream questions, no leading questions either, no Yeah, no leading questions, no ice cream questions. Ask about the past, the present, not the future, because, um, what we're trying to understand is what they have faced, what they're facing right now. And, and like I said, one of the questions that I like, which is the magic wand, it's a future question, but it goes at the very end and not at the early stage. It comes a bit later, right? And that's related to me trying to identify what would be, what can we build that would bring me more customers or would retain the customer. Ask for their stories, so build relationship. This goes from the beginning, from the first conversation I have with them in customer interviews, not in surveys, of course. And ensure one person takes notes, guys, use AI to transcribe, it's fine. In terms of validating the solution, it's— now we're moving into the agile world. I'm trying to learn, and I've probably learned as much as I can about my problem. I know everything that needs to be known. Do people still trust my product to solve their problem? Will they exchange value or money for my product? Can we continue to deliver the solution? This you've already answered when you're trying to validate market or demand and problem, right? You've already done this. Now, what do you need to do now trying to validate the solution? I'm building my business, I'm building my product and offering, and I'm taking it to my customer and I'm asking them for insights and feedback and I'm reiterating and reiterating again and again and again, a billion times. Even when I'm in the market launch to my businesses out there, and people are buying it already. I can still do that. Some of the tests that you can run— this should say test, not build— is pre-order experiment, which I really, really like. That is, if people that are in your persona, in your target segment, are signing up to your pre-launch signup, or they're pre-ordering your product, or they're pre-subscribing for your service, then you can tell that you have achieved product market fit. You have achieved those desirability, viability, feasibility elements because people are already signing up or taking time to answer your questions, to preorder, to so on and so forth. And of course, ads are very good to test very quickly, right? I do, I test with ads constantly, even within my own business, with my clients, and I find them very, very good to give me, to give me a, like, give me an answer within 2-3 days, right, without having to spend hundreds of dollars on a marketing campaign. So that's me. I think I took a bit more time than I should have. I tried to go as fast as possible, but I'll take your questions now. Please do reach out on LinkedIn, uh, or via email, um, and I hope this was valuable to you guys. And thank you again, Sanaa and Founder Institute for having me.

Yeah, pleasure is ours. It was a pretty insightful session. Honestly, thank you, Selmin, for all the resources. This is very helpful. I think everybody's, everybody's, every startup founder's pain is to achieve this product market fit thing, I guess. Yes.

Yeah.

So let's— you have some pretty good questions on the, on the audience. So let's take the first one here from Christie. I've got mixed feedback from founders that PMF is marketing effort, not lean design agile approach.

Thank you so much. Beautiful question. Beautiful question. PMF comes before the marketing effort, right? So when I am trying to plan for my marketing budget and I'm trying to put money and efforts into marketing, I know exactly where that's going. But PMF is not marketing, is not your marketing mix. It is not promotion. It is not sales. It is not marketing strategy. It is purely the market. So the demand, the customer, me knowing them, me iterating. So, you know, that beautiful design thinking, lean and agile. For me, that's what PMF is, is I'm continuously experimenting to meet product-market fit. Because imagine this, imagine, Christy, if you have not done any of the research, do not know your market, do not know your problem solution, have not achieved even problem solution fit, but you posted a video about a product and it went viral and people shared it on Instagram, da da dee da da da, and then within 2 weeks, No one talks about it anymore because it went viral for 2 weeks. People talked about it. There was nice music or nice aesthetic, and that's it. And it's gone and we forgot about it, right? That happens a lot for entrepreneurs, or we talk a lot about exponential growth, but exponential growth needs to come with a lot of research in the background. Right. Does it make sense, Christy? If you could give me a thumbs up if it makes sense to you, otherwise post another question.

Okay, let's take another question from Dan. Um, he's asking, how do you organize and get the most out of the data generating from customer validation interviews?

Then, poor me, I used to use SPSS. I used to use SPSS a lot, but now thanks to all of these IT and software and AI folks who are creating tools for us business people to use and make our lives easier. So there are a lot of AI tools, maybe I can share with Sana and she can share with you, or, and not only AI tools, but softwares that makes, that make your life easier, where I would download the CVS file, upload it to that tool, and I can study correlation, I can get the numbers, I can get the graphs, all of that, and it will help me clean the data as well. The old way I used to do it is through Google Sheets, and I would have to clean the data myself, and I had to do pivot tables, and I have to do all of that. I used to use SPSS, but again, I'm not a data scientist, so sometimes I make mistakes and I don't get the right data. And so these AI tools have been— for the past, I think, 3, 4 years, I have been exclusively using soft— sorry, low-code, no-code platforms. To analyze my data and clean my data. Where I get my data is different thing, right? So I need to get my data and I need to check it before I can upload it to these platforms.

Great. Well, thanks, Salmin. We have a question from Victoria here. She's asking, how do I validate demand if the product does not exist? No direct competitor or direct research yet.

So Victoria, no direct competitors, I, Do not say that to an investor. Do never say that to an investor. I don't have direct competitors because you probably do. Because guys, if I thought about it, then 1,000 people thought about it before me and 1,000 people will think about it after me, right? And your direct competitors do not have to have the same exact solution. It can be serving the exact market, but it's not this exact solution. So go and study them. How do I validate the demand? Is by creating low-fidelity prototypes and going to that customer and asking them. Yeah, so that's, that's how we do it. Low-fidelity prototypes, Victoria was the name, right? So low-fidelity prototypes, Victoria, can be through Figma pages, it could be, uh, Canva. Guys, Canva is a super powerful tool. They have everything now. Canva has everything now, and you can even create a your product demo without having a product. It's only images, but it's a product video demo, and it looks like it's the final— it is a product, essentially. So you build low-fidelity prototypes. You don't spend too much time or too much money on them. Sometimes with no-code or low-code platforms, there is a learning curve, but better spend 3 days trying to learn to build an app, an app on Bubble, than spend €1,000, thousands of dollars to build an actual app that no one wants.

Yeah, we did that once in an event. We like, we built the whole prototype on Figma and then we pitched that to investor and they actually liked it. So it's a pretty, it's a good strategy, guys. I also recommend it.

Love it. By the way, Sana, a VC, thank you so much, Mr. Kostman. He said, I'm a VC, please never say you don't have any competitors. This is it. Like, if you say this to a VC or an angel investor, or they will literally not talk to you.

So never say that there's always a competitor, because no competitors means there is no market.

Exactly.

Yeah. So they have like a lot of questions about, um, like here from Mal about the asking about the ice cream question. I believe you mentioned in the presentation.

Yeah. So I'll explained a little bit about the ice cream and the leading questions, right? We don't wanna, when we talk about the customer, what about to the customer in customer interviews, we don't want to ask them questions, uh, which is the mom test. I don't know if you heard of it, but I can add it in the chat in a bit. We don't want to ask them questions that are leading. It's like, uh, Sana, do you like my product? Do you like my presentation? Do you, would you use it? And I'm gonna feel awkward and I'm gonna say yes. Right? Or questions that are too cute, too kind, too nice in a way, where it's like, "How was your day?" and "Is this a challenge that you are facing?" So these are the questions that are leading, they are ice cream questions that don't get us anywhere or give us the wrong information. What we want to ask is that, "Yes, Sana, how was your day? How have you been?" Build the rapport, build the relationship, Try to get their story. If I'm gonna ask about a problem related to online conferencing, Ermita is an online conferencing thing, have you been to an online conference before? How was it? How did you feel? How did you navigate the platform? Was it interesting? You know what I mean? So let's give them— not was it interesting, that's the wrong question for me, not was it interesting, but how was the experience for you? So you give them time to tell you stories and to share about their experience, not to ask them, have you faced a challenge in this thing specifically?

Cool. So we have a couple of questions that look the same. I'm gonna take one of these. So, uh, it's from Brian. He's asking, where can I, where can I find, connect with people experiencing these pain points as well as the decision makers in this area for the interviews?

Right. So here are what I do. I do venture building, right? So I work with companies that ask me to do all of this, to reach PMF for them, essentially, or go-to-market. The first thing that I will do is that I will go to Google and I would exhaust Google. Google would be like, leave me alone at the end of the day. So I would spend 3 days on my laptop reading every single report, every single article. And do you see that person who wrote the report or the article or who is a co-collaborator or a PhD on a specific topic and their name is there? I'm reaching out to them on LinkedIn. And if they don't answer me on LinkedIn, I'm reaching out to them on email and I'm definitely finding their email. There are a lot of tools. There's Hunter.io. If you don't know it, it's a very good tool to find people's emails, people's emails and reach out to them. And it's fine to follow up, by the way, right? You're not actually knocking on people's doors. So that's the one first thing I would do. The second thing I would do is to go on these forums. So I would go on Reddit, I would go on Facebook groups, I would go— unfortunately, I don't do social listening with Instagram and TikTok and these places yet, but that's something you should do. I would go— yeah, exactly. I would go on LinkedIn groups as well, and I would try to find these people and ask them what they think and if they want to have a conversation with me. And I would be very honest, hey, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm running research about XYZ, I would love to have a conversation. That's it. Um, and then the last thing is to use AI tools— not AI tools, softwares that are out there, solutions that are out there that are made for you to run these tests and find these people. So do you know when sometimes these YouTube finance gurus tell you, uh, you can do this and make $1,000, uh, a month for like 2 minutes of a survey? Those are the people that will take your survey essentially. There would be— there are a lot of people on platforms like Usability Hub. I'm gonna send you these things because I'm afraid I will forget. Lyssna for testing, Usability Hub. Oh, did they change their name? Okay, apparently Usability Hub changed their name. So they have their own panels and it's a panel of people and you can pick your segment, by the way, you can pick your segment specifically, like what they do, who they are, where they are, everything. And you can even have an initial question that would say only recruiters can take this, this, this question. Are you a recruiter? If it's yes, they will take your survey. If it's no, they won't. With user usability hub or usability interviews, I think that's what it's called. It's the same thing, but they schedule interviews for you. So you can use their own panel or you can use your own network, but you can do it through their platforms and it's, it is really, really great. And there are a lot of tools like that out there.

And guys, these are also events, these kind of events that we host here at Founder Institute can be also made for that purpose. So for example, you have the networking lounge later on. So if you have an idea and you'd like to have feedback on it, just leverage the opportunity. People, most of the audience here are early-stage founders. We have also VCs, we have mentors, experts. So you should leverage these kinds of online events as well. It's a great opportunity for you. So I'm gonna take another question here from Petal. He's asking, I don't know if it's a she or he, but how can we define ideal customer fit if a product can work multiple industry?

I am so sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding the question.

I believe he's asking about, uh, for example, if the— of your product has like— can target different customers, for example, P2C and B2B at the same time, how can you find like one ideal customer, like one ideal persona? Or if that— and if it's targeting, for example, the African market and the European market Sure, so perfect, thank you, Sana.

So the answer is in the question, it's the ideal customer, right? So that's what I'm trying to test for, I'm trying to find that ideal customer. If it's businesses, then let it be businesses. If it's consumers who are Gen Z in rural area in South Africa, then let it be Gen Z in rural areas in South Africa, right? That's all I'm trying to do when I'm trying to validate the demand, problem. Sorry, I'm trying to find the customer that faces this problem. Is such a need for them that they will give you their life to— I'm kidding, but you know what I mean— to solve that issue.

Cool. We have a question here. Hello, thank you for your presentation. It's considered good practice to start with a product that only partially meets the user's needs with the intention of improving it later.

Hmm, partially meets the user's need. Well, your product should— your solution should not partially meet the user's need. It should meet the user's need. This is all we're trying to do, and improving it later is not the right way to go because all we're trying to do right now is to validate that my customer would want my solution and would be paying for it. The improvement later are about making it— making— creating a better experience for the consumer, diversifying in terms of my product offering, adding more features that make it even better, even more appealing to my persona, to my ideal customer, but also to segment B, C, and D that I segmented before, right? So that's what I'm trying to do in the future. So I'm trying to improve. I'm trying to also have, be ready for change or for pivot, so on and so forth. But if I start on what I'm gonna call the wrong grounds, which is it's not, it doesn't really solve the issue, but partially, then maybe I'm gonna fall in the trap of I'm building something where no one want, no one would want. So the no demand issue, right? So when it's okay, because I saw you're from Tunis, and it's okay to use if it's the market is very small, use it as a testing bed. But when you're doing your research, please do it with your actual target market. Oftentimes in, in smaller geographies or smaller markets or enclosed economies where it's not easy to do financial exchanges, like in Tunisia, people would think, oh, Tunisia is a testing bed, but I'm gonna go to, to sell in Algeria, for example. But you don't end up actually doing that. So testing bed is one thing where I'm testing my low-fidelity prototypes, but I really need to test with the people I'm trying to sell to, right? So Tunisia would be for your operations, for your feasibility, for your product development. But if you're trying to build this for Nigeria, then please go talk to Nigerians. Just, I wanted to mention that. And you can talk to them online now. See, power of the internet.

Yeah, so there's a question about also talking about talking to customers, and it's asking what are used— no, that's the— okay, we can take this question anyway. I just displayed the wrong one. So this question says, we are used to hearing problem-solution, how about solution-opportunity?

Um, so elaborate in the, in the comments, Ibrahima. If you can elaborate in the comments. But a problem is not always— and I hope, I wish I had that slide which it says opportunity push, opportunity pull, right? Opportunity push, like the problem is not always a problem, right? It could be an opportunity in the market. I see an opportunity in the market, and either it's a push or a pull where I can enhance something that already exists, I can optimize something something that already exists, digitize it, transform it. It already exists, and I'm— and it's an opportunity push, right? Um, but there is still a problem that, that makes it, um, unwanted or makes it archaic or makes it hard to use. And this is why I'm trying to optimize it or solve for that industry. Uh, for example, in the world of transportation, right, we're continuously building businesses and startups to make it, uh, optimized better and easier every year, by the way, continuously. That issue is never going to be solved, and the issue is still the same. It's I'm trying to go from A, point A to B, to point B easily, fast, and without any hurdles or issues on the way. And we're gonna be solving that issue for the rest of, of time, I believe, unless we start having flying cars. Then that's gonna be another issue. But if you want to elaborate more, if I didn't answer your questions, please go ahead.

Thanks, Helmine. We have a pretty good question from Daniel here. He's asking, what would make a PMF fail so we don't continue iterating on that? And how long should we spend money, time, etc.?

Oh, I love this question, Daniel. Brilliant question. Can you put it back, Sanaa? I'm sorry.

Yeah, sure.

So I can, so I can make sure I tackle every single thing. Daniel, um, if you— so if you have done low-fidelity prototype tests and you realize you either cannot build it or you— this is not what your customers want, then you didn't even reach problem-solution fit and you should kill what you're doing right now. Right. So speaking about the beginning, right, the very first thing is I'm trying to learn about desirability, then viability, then feasibility. But it's again, it's circular. I'm always doing that, but I don't even reach PMF. I'm still at the problem solution fit when I kill my idea because I realized, well, it doesn't solve the issue, or well, my customers, this segment is not interested in it, or my persona is not interested in it. Or maybe it's just not feasible for us right now. So that's about pre-PMF. Now I am, I have validated desirability and viability, and now I'm moving into PMF, right? I'm moving into product market fit. So these same customers are interested in it, willing to pay for it, and I can build it, and I can build it, sorry. What would make PMF fail is if one of these these three things does not fit. And in a lot of cases, if I reach PMF and I've done my research, again, I've done my research, I'm talking to my customer, I have, I am very sure that I have problem solution fit, that I'm testing, that there is desirability and viability, and people are willing to pay for it for this price point specifically. I have validated all of those things, but then I, I come to feasibility and I'm moving from hard prototypes to maybe MVPs, and I realize Whoops, we cannot build that. Then that's when it fails and I need to kill it, right? It can be also the other way, right? There is a feasibility, I can build it, they desire it, I have validated everything. And then I go to my customer again in a meta campaign, let's say Facebook or an Instagram campaign, and I ask them if they're willing to pre-subscribe for a 50% discount to buy my product. Which costs them $50. So they will get the discount. So they pay $25 out of $50, but then you get a bad conversion rate, right? So let's say out of 100 people who viewed it, only 5 people clicked and only 2 people bought your discounted product, essentially. Then here we have an issue and we need to learn what the issue is in order to kill what we're doing right now and not kill, mostly pivot. So I'm trying to pivot. I'm not— I'm trying to figure out what I'm— what I did wrong. Hopefully I kill at problem solution fit, not at product market fit, right? That product market fit, I'm pivoting, I'm changing, and I'm adapting to, to the changes and to the market and its needs and what I can do. In terms of the money, um, I know that a lot of you are pitching to investors I work with startups and VCs as well, a lot. Um, and I absolutely disagree with the fact that you have to raise funds at pre-seed stage. And I absolutely think you can bootstrap from FFF, from, uh, your own savings, from a lot of things. I also am the one person that you will meet at Founder Institute that will tell you that I, I'm also okay with you being an 80% entrepreneur and then 20% working on something that will make you a little bit of money so you can spend on that, on that business for the first 3 months. So not a lot of money, Daniel, not VC money, not angel money, because you have not validated PMF yet. I don't believe that you should raise funds if you have not validated PMF yet. Yet there are a lot of entrepreneurs that get, that get major investments from VCs and angels at very early stages of pre-seed without product market fit, and with VCs specifically, not angels. And, and I think that does not help the growth of the business down the line, but that's just my opinion. That last part is my opinion. And is not the truth. But I hope I answered your question about when to kill and when to pivot.

Yeah, thank you so much, Selmin. I think it's, uh, we should close the event now. Um, so, um, I wanted to thank you for this insightful session. Everyone, for those who did not attend the event, everyone will receive recording as long as you are registered on the, uh, URL on the page. Uh, please keep an eye on our, um, events page. I'll, I'll be, I'll share it now in the chat. We do have like— we do host these kind of events on a weekly basis. Uh, I'm so happy to have you, Selmin, today. Uh, if you can dedicate extra, uh, minutes in the networking lounge, so if you want to talk to Selmin directly, make sure you add her on LinkedIn. You go and add me as well on LinkedIn. So, um, yeah, so thanks everyone, and, uh, I hope to see you in other events.

Thank you, Selmin. Thank you everyone. Thank you, Sana. See you in a bit. See you.