It’s a pretty sobering fact that 90% of start up’s are going to fail. The good news then is that one in ten succeeds.
That said, these are close to the odds that you get at a casino, and at least at the casino, you walk in knowing you are likely going to lose.
Even more sobering is the fact that it takes time die – 20 months after getting funding, that is 20 months of effort, 20 months of investing your money, 20 months of investing your friends and families money, 20 months of investors money. 20 months on a roller coaster all for nothing, 90% of the time.
And the number one reason start-ups fail is that there isn’t a market need for their product. They had a solution for a non-existent problem. There isn’t a customer pain point that needs fixing or the customers already have a better way of fixing it.
Ergo, problem identification and market validation is a critical step in the start-up process.
That’s where Market Fit comes into play. It can help you identify if you are solving a market need from the beginning.
With Market Fit you are going to learn one of three things:
Is your idea or product going to be a:
- Absolute success– you have nailed the customer pain point and have a way to solve it in a way that customers are willing to pay for
- Flawed success – you are close, you are onto something but you haven’t quite hit the sweet spot. Get a deeper customer insight, make a small pivot and a retest and you will get there.
- Efficient failure – so this is code language that your idea isn’t going to fly its current state. This isn’t the outcome you want to hear, but it is better to find this out now rather than three years down the track? This is the ultimate fail fast approach.
You can validate your idea now or you can wait and find the hard way much later – the choice is yours
KS
