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If you're trying to achieve product-market fit, a definition alone doesn't give you enough guidance. That's why I created an actionable framework called the Product-Market Fit Pyramid, shown in Figure 1.1. This hierarchical model decomposes product-market into its five key components, each a layer of the pyramid. Your product is the top section, consisting of three layers. The market is the bottom section of the pyramid, consisting of two layers. Within the product and market sections, each layer depends on the layer immediately beneath it. Product-market fit lies between the top and bottom sections of the pyramid.

Figure 1.1 The Product-Market Fit Pyramid

The Market

Given the pyramid's hierarchy, let's start with the bottom section, which is the market. A market consists of all the existing and potential customers that share a particular customer need or set of related needs. For example, all the people in the United States who need to prepare their income taxes are in the U.S. tax preparation market. You can describe the size of a market by the total number of customers in the market or the total revenue generated by those customers. For either of those two measures, you can refer to the current size or the potential future size of the market.

Different customers within a market choose different solutions to meet their needs. For example, some customers in the tax preparation market may use a professional service such as H&R Block. Others may choose to prepare their taxes themselves, either by hand or by using software such as TurboTax.

Within a given market, you can analyze the market share of each competing product – that is, what percentage of the market each product has. For example, you could compare the smartphone market share of Apple versus Samsung. Or you could segment the smartphone market by operating system (iOS, Android, and so forth). Browsers are another example where the market shares of each different product are closely watched.

As you walk down the aisles of a supermarket, you see products in many different market categories: toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, cereal, yogurt, and beer, to name a few. The life cycle stage of a market can vary. Many of the products you see – such as milk, eggs, and bread – are in relatively mature markets, with little innovation or change. That being said, new markets do emerge. For example, Febreze basically created its own market with a new product that eliminates odors from fabrics without washing them. Prior to its launch, that market didn't exist. You also see active competition in many markets, with companies trying to gain market share through product innovation.

The Product-Market Fit Pyramid separates the market into its two distinct components: the target customers and their needs. The needs layer is above the target customers layer in the model because it's their needs that are relevant to achieving product-market fit.

As you try to create value for customers, you want to identify the specific needs that correspond to a good market opportunity. For example, you probably don't want to enter a market where customers are extremely happy with how the existing solutions meet their needs. When you develop a new product or improve an existing product, you want to address customer needs that aren't adequately met. That's why I use “underserved needs” as the label for this layer. Customers are going to judge your product in relation to the alternatives. So the relative degree to which your product meets their needs depends on the competitive landscape. Let's move now to the product section of the pyramid.

Your Product

A product is a specific offering intended to meet a set of customer needs. From this definition, it's clear that the concept of product-market fit applies to services as well as products. The typical distinction between a product and service is that a product is a physical good while a service is intangible. However, with products delivered via the web and mobile devices, the distinction between product and service has been blurred, as indicated by the popular term software as a service (SaaS).

For software, the product itself is intangible code, often running on servers that the customer never sees. The real-world manifestation of software products that customers see and use is the user experience (UX), which is the top layer of the Product-Market Fit Pyramid. Beyond software, this is also true for any product with which the customer interacts. The UX is what brings a product's functionality to life for the user.

The functionality that a product provides consists of multiple features, each built to meet a customer need. Taken together, they form the product's feature set, which is the layer just below the UX layer.

To decide which features to build, you need to identify the specific customer needs your product should address. In doing so, you want to determine how your product will be better than the others in the market. This is the essence of product strategy. The set of needs that you aspire to meet with your product forms your value proposition, which is the layer just below “feature set” in the Product-Market Fit Pyramid. Your value proposition is also the layer just above customer needs, and fundamentally determines how well the needs addressed by your product match up with the customer's.

Taken together, the three layers of value proposition, feature set, and UX define your product. As shown in Figure 1.1, your product and the market are separate sections of the Product-Market Fit Pyramid. Your goal in creating customer value is to make them fit nicely together.

Product-Market Fit

Viewing product-market fit in light of this model, it is the measure of how well your product (the top three layers of the pyramid) satisfies the market (the bottom two layers of the pyramid). Your target customers determine how well your product fits their needs. Again, customers will judge your product's fit in relation to the other products in the market. To achieve product-market fit, your product should meet underserved needs better than the competition. Let's discuss a product that managed to do that.