Forerunner reports on consumer startup performance

Many tech startups fail to understand this, and it's killing their business. When I spoke about niching to my client, he said: “My product can be used across all verticals.” Yes, agreed. But when you’re really early in your venture, you want to move fast. Niching is not “only” about selecting a particular vertical.  It could also be about selecting a particular problem across multiple verticals. For instance, this was Shopify’s initial niche: “Easy-to-set-up online stores for small & medium-sized businesses without technical expertise.” It was not just any small business.  It was small businesses without technical expertise. When there’s pain, there’s conversion. This way, you get faster “yes-es” and faster growth. Your confidence level goes up. You’re no longer puzzled, thinking, “I’m not sure why it’s not working.” With this, you’ll become known and emerge as the market leader. And eventually, those outside your initial niche will begin approaching you. At that time, you decide what to do next (a story for another time). P.S. If your brain is screaming, “I want this for my business,” I’m just a DM away. __________________ I’m Maalinee Ramu. I help tech companies escape the high failure rate by developing a strategy for their brand and translating their technical complexities into engaging messages.

Build your first product for the few, not the many. When talking to early-stage startups, I often notice a common challenge: they struggle to pinpoint their target customer. Responses like "We do B2B," "We sell to supermarkets," or "We aim to sell to advertisers" reveal underlying uncertainties or choice overload. Here's a crucial insight: most successful startups initially build a product for the few. They focus on a small, dedicated segment of the main market with specific needs and a strong belief in the startup’s vision. In the early days you simply can't afford the engineering effort or time to create a product with every feature a mainstream customer might want. It would take years to launch and the risk to become obsolete by the time it’s ready. Instead, build your product incrementally and iteratively with a very small group of early customers. Yes, these early adopters will have different needs than the mainstream market, and you'll ultimately have to tweak your product to reach a critical mass, but their feedback will help you refine and improve your product rapidly. Remember, building a product for everyone pleases no one. Find the people who are passionate about your product. The hardcore customers. As Greg Isenberg says, "10 people who yell make more noise than 10,000 people who are silent." Hope this helps :)

The reason growing markets are good for startups is not just because they are getting bigger, but because it is easier to take share in a market that is expanding. In a flat or contracting markets, incumbents will scrap to protect their business, leaning on their inherent advantages and maybe even doing things that are uneconomic. In a growing market, there are always new customers, new use cases, and other attack vectors that are not as well defended. Many of the most successful startups didn't try to take existing volume at all. They simply became the product of choice for new businesses or new consumers entering a market, and rode that over multiple years to massive market share. Square and Shopify are both great examples.

Phew - consumer is not dead! But it did go out of favor for a while. For founders building consumer companies, it's hard to know which VCs are actively investing. So we were pumped to see the Headline Ventures market map that clearly identifies many of the active consumer VCs. Shout out to the Headline team for including Everywhere Ventures on the list and to our friend Zehra Naqvi for being such an advocate of #founders everywhere 🙌🏼 As technology changes the world, we recognize this often shifts consumer preferences and behaviors, manifesting in new trends that capital efficient brands can capture. Scott Hartley is a big consumer fan championing investments into Pair Eyewear, Fishwife, PlantBaby, which all reflect GenZ consumer preferences. Although we mostly invest into b2b companies, we see tremendous opportunity around #consumer, and behavior change. cc: Jenny Fielding, Eileen McRae, Conor Harbeck, Mikaz E.

Every single day I hear of startups failing to build a proper MVP... → Overcomplicating the product → Ignoring user feedback → Premature scaling → Neglecting core functionality → Focusing on the wrong metrics STOP making these common mistakes. → If this isn’t a wake-up call for startups to rethink their MVP strategy, I don’t know what is. Building an MVP is crucial. There’s never been a better time to learn from failed examples. Do it before you have to. → Quibi: Raised $1.75 billion, shut down in 6 months → Google Wave: $100 million spent, failed in 15 months → Beepi: $149 million raised, expanded too fast, shut down → Color: $41 million raised, lacked core features, failed → Fab.com: $330 million raised, focused on wrong metrics, sold for $15 million Focus on core value →  Collect and act on user feedback Whatever it is that you’re building. Don’t overcomplicate it. Start small, learn fast. Building a successful MVP means focusing on what truly matters. It will give you a solid foundation for growth. Do it before you have to. → Get started today. —--------------------------------------------------------------- Hey, I’m Mohit Srivastava Follow me for more tips on product development and technology. I offer valuable, knowledge-driven, and actionable advice on current trends. Want to develop your product and launch in 2024? I help Founders make their dream projects come true, by helping them with everything that is “tech”.

Thanks for sharing Inspiring stories and valuable resources Indeed, finding product market fit is essential. I’m glad (even experiencing turbulence as a VC shareholder) - that finally, currently, we are all in one boat, we are all “revenue-focused” instead of “take my millions and just show exponential user-base graph next week.” Founders finally started calculating UAC, Unit economy, actual conversions, and retention metrics. It is a much more healthy climate now. Much harder to raise now. But for the best projects with solid teams, it was always “OK.” The real example of Darwins theory. By the way (it is my role as EyeEye.ai CEO to utilize every single opportunity to promote our AI marketing intelligence SaaS, so take it as is): we spent two years of stealth R&D and infinite iterations, going to the market from the early beginning to get real real feedback, to check out tech on real pilot projects, with real competition, fighting for real ARR—two years of validating our PMF, not week, not month, two f*n years. Stay patient. Stay forward-thinking. Don't let Hype distort your focus. Stay True to Yourself

STARTUPS! Product Market Fit is critical and below is an excellent overview of the basics and worth taking a few minutes to review some related available resources and then figuring out some more dedicated time to spend on this when you have more time. MedTech Innovator MedTech Innovator Asia Pacific BioTools Innovator LSI American Heart Association MedTech World MedTech Startup Capital Factory Health Wildcatters Techstars Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth Accelerator Y Combinator MedTech Strategist Company Ventures

🔍 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐅𝐢𝐭 (𝐏𝐌𝐅) 𝐢𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐄𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬! 🚀 PMF without distribution is like selling the best coffee in the Amazon jungle—no one will find it! Building a great product isn't enough; you need to establish strong distribution channels. Learn from successful startups on finding PMF and building distribution, check below. #Startup #ProductMarketFit #Entrepreneurship #Growth #BusinessDevelopment🤖

Product Market Fit is not enough for startups to succeed. PMF without distribution = NO PMF There’s this understanding that building a great product will make it self itself but that can’t be further from the truth. You can sell the best coffee in the world but if your coffee shop is in the middle of the Amazon it won’t sell. Check out how startups found PMF and built distribution channels👇 1. How to get to Product Market Fit: what it is, step by step guide and success cases like Notion, Canva and Stripe: https://lnkd.in/dRqXZfPD 2. How to find your first 10 clients and not lose them in 1 month: https://lnkd.in/dXE9gevx 3. The $1M ARR Playbook and how HeyGen, Lemlist and Canny did it: https://lnkd.in/dYNayi59 4. The Customer Centric Go To Market Strategy: the simplest, most effective way to sell your startup's product + flywheel growth: https://lnkd.in/dwx56UVE 5. How to ship fast and create a customer feedback loop that grows your startup: https://lnkd.in/dM_zUBgW 6. The How to sell guide for the first time founder + how Notion, Hubspot & PandaDoc do it: https://lnkd.in/d9Q2p28Z 7. How to ship fast and create a customer feedback loop that grows your startup: https://lnkd.in/dM_zUBgW 8. The Product Market Fit Framework by Sequoia: https://lnkd.in/dHWu_wy9 9. The Four levers of Product Market Fit by First Round Capital: https://lnkd.in/dPfEEtHJ 10. How Linktree got from 0 to $37M ARR and 12M users with the simplest product ever: https://lnkd.in/dET-g-Gd

Why do most startups fail within their first few years? The answer might surprise you. It's not just about the money running out or market competition getting fiercer; it's often about a disconnect between what the product offers and what the market actually needs. I've observed that many startups focus heavily on developing a product based on their vision without validating whether there is a genuine demand for it. This lack of market validation can lead to significant issues down the line, including product-market fit problems that no amount of pivoting can fix. The key to avoiding this pitfall? Continuously engage with your target audience from the ideation stage all the way through to launch and beyond. Incorporate customer feedback into your development process, conduct A/B testing, and be willing to pivot based on what you learn. It's better to make small adjustments along the way rather than having to overhaul your entire product after launch because it doesn't resonate with users. There are so many easy ways to validate your market without spending much money: landing page tests, searching for facebook and google ads targeting your problem space, user interviews, user surveys, concierge models and more. This is the best thing you can invest in before spending your limited resources on dev time. Validate and eliminate your risky assumptions! Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://lnkd.in/gZRJCFAy