Jason Knight 0:00 Hello, and welcome to the show and the first and possibly only ever episode of One night in product live. Well, what do we mean by live? Well, earlier one, a couple of friends and I were supposed to be meeting up on Twitter spaces to have an open chat about whether product market fit is really dead. But it turns out the only thing that was really dead was Twitter spaces itself, which was an awful experience with terrible audio quality. Nick kicked us all out, we would like to take our ball and go home. But we decided to be undeterred. We didn't want to disappoint our legion of fans. So we decided to go to plan B, do an as live recording on the podcast, get it out there straight away, no cuts, no edits, just a quick clean up, push it out the door, and everyone get all those great insights as soon as possible. So without further ado, if you want to find out if product market fit really is dead, or if it's just resting, stick with us on my naughty product Jason Knight 1:03 well, thanks for coming everyone and joining us on what was a Twitter space. But Twitter unfortunately under the auspices of Elon Musk seems to be basically the worst performing app in the world. Audio quality was terrible. It kicked us all out. So we're we're now going back to Plan B, which is knockout as a podcast. So going back to basics, I am delighted to welcome again, Andrea Syers, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Trent and content writer, an advisor for right to left consultancy that aims to help organisations build and scale products their customers need and want. And coincidentally, we also have with us, Dave Martin, the founder of Right to left and the creator of the momentum programme, and the product value creation plan. They recently released a white paper with the somewhat spicy title, product market fit is dead. So let's find out if it's really time to read it the last rites, or if they're just trying to get some clickbait attention. Hey, folks, how you doing? Andrea Saez 1:56 Good, good. Thanks for having us here. Dave Martin 1:59 Yeah, great to be here. Jason Knight 2:01 No worries, it's good to have old friends around the table talking about some important topics. So before we get started, let's get down to definition. So product market fit. April Dunford says it's not a useful concept. Marc Andreessen says it's the only thing that matters, you're saying is dead. But before we talk about whether it's dead, how do you even define product market fit in the first place? Andrea Saez 2:24 Well, first of all, I like a spicy title. I don't know about you. It gets the conversation going, doesn't it? I think that like many other terms and products, product market fit is one of those things that has gone misunderstood. Just not well defined in general. So I don't like the term PMF. I think it's absolutely dead. It's a myth. I'm gonna side with April on this one. You don't just find fit. And that's the only thing that matters. It's a continuous thing that happens. And it also has context. So I like to think of it as product context fit. So what is the context in which your product is able to provide value in which your product is helpful? And we need to approach it as such? It's not a black and white yes or no, this is it? We're done. It's it's a bit more nuanced than that, I think. Dave Martin 3:23 Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, when we when we all we really want to do and all every company strives to do, whether it's in its early days, or whether it's a large scale up, is we want to satisfy our customers needs. And in doing so we want to create them value of some sort. And the phrase PMF is an attempt to help us focus on that problem. And that focus is great and really positive. But, you know, there's an agreement with Andrea, as she's saying, it's not, it's not binary. It's not like it either fits or it doesn't. It's really fluid. It's continuous, and it's linear. It's, you know, it's either it's not on or off, it can be good, it can be bad, it can be on the various, various degrees in between. So I think the phrase is, the idea of PMF is a good direction, a good drive a good lead, but it's not necessarily a good thing to help us make business decisions and drive prioritisation. It's more of a more of a nice paradigm to focus people's minds. Jason Knight 4:30 But just to push back on that a little bit. I mean, are we really saying that product market fit is dead in that case? Or are we really kind of saying that it's alive and kicking in but just kind of misunderstood and that basically, people are using maybe that binary thing that you're talking about as a like their understanding of product market fit, but actually product market fit is fine. It's just a more fluid thing that they have to pay attention to. Like, is it really dead or just misunderstood? Dave Martin 4:57 Well when you know in few kind Read the book from Sean Ellis who was involved in coming up with this phrase. He very much defines it as you've got it, you know, it being if you haven't, you know, he definitely defined as a binary thing. And if you've got it, you know, the inbound inquiries for your new thing, there's going to be nonstop, the phone will be ringing off the hook, you won't be able to get away from all the people signing up. And you know that, I think that that specifically shapes it as binary as either on or off. And in that that's the problem, we need to redefine and rethink about this in a less binary way. Jason Knight 5:40 But does that mean it's just evolving, then like, again, it's not died? It's just become a new thing, a more modern definition? Or does it mean that the old definition was kind of dead on arrival shouldn't really have been no, in the first place? represented a reality that wasn't actually real in any way, shape? Or form? Or was it something that was okay, back then, when they first came out of it, but that time has moved on? Like, where does it fall on that spectrum? Andrea Saez 6:08 That's an interesting question. I'm gonna be diplomatic about this, give the most product the answer that I can, which is you can only define things, which is much evidence as you have at the time. And I think at the time, it was an OK way of trying to add focus to something. But as we learn, as we evolve, as we, you know, educate ourselves about how things work and how SAS businesses work. It's become more and more obvious that it was never really a thing. But it was a good starts to being able to define this thing, right, this this ability to say, are we able to provide value? And what is the context in which we can provide that value? And can we monetize that value? Because at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do. Right? We're trying to build businesses. But I looking back at it, I don't think it was really something that should have been defined as a yes or no. But it was a good start at trying to focus the conversation, if that makes sense. So I would still classify it as DOA, go to town, but didn't quite work. Dave Martin 7:20 Yeah, it's I mean, to me, it needs to go we need to move on and look forwards and find a better way to think about these things. There. Even when we think about the period, when these this came up, when this first was used, new cloud was a brand new thing, we're going back quite a while. And the idea, we're in the journey of modern product management focused on outcomes, instead of IT projects delivering features we're on we're at the very beginning of that becoming the preferred approach. And I think PMF as a phrase helped, help solidify that as approach and helped investors understand. But we need to move on, we need to think about the value drivers that make it up, make a bit make up what's known as PMF. Today, we need to look at it more granularly and understand the gauges in a bit more detail that are moving you so that we can make better business decisions so that we don't accidentally scale too early, or scale in the wrong way, and miss our opportunity because of misunderstanding this. Jason Knight 8:33 But one of the things I guess we do have to at least agree on is the fact that there is still this perfectly valid notion that there are unmet needs out there or poorly met needs, that one or more groups of people, let's call them a market, that they need to have met and are looking for ways to meet and delight them in fixing those problems, whatever it is that they have the struggling moments in jobs to be done terms. And there are companies out there that could build, say, products to serve those needs, and hopefully continue to serve those needs in a scalable fashion that can serve those needs for the many. So that does still sound like product market fit. It doesn't sound like a binary on or off thing sounds like that's something that they're going to need to keep an eye on and make sure that the ends aren't changing. But like it's still kind of sounds like we're talking about the same thing. And maybe it's just a terminology that's wrong. Is that fair? Or Dave Martin 9:22 yeah, that's been on its head. Let's ask it the other way around. What if we have two products that solve exactly the same problem for exactly the same audience? Do they both have PMF? Does that mean they're both equal? Or is one better than the other? How is better? If one is better than the other? Then PMF? Can't be binary. Jason Knight 9:42 Absolutely. But the core concept, I guess, is what I'm getting at is there's still this idea that there are unmet needs that needs to be met by a product. And if you're doing that at a substantial scale, that people are continuously buying you then there's some kind of something fit there but what will Dave Martin 9:58 definitely yeah, I think And that idea of problem solution fit, I think fits the product well with a little bit better. Jason Knight 10:07 Well solution that has a bit of a funny angle that the solution could also mean stuff that's not part of the product as well, which is called light. But yeah, obviously in the VC world, like things that have solutions and services on the back of them as well aren't really that trendy. So Dave Martin 10:22 I think there's a better way of thinking about this. Andrea Saez 10:25 Yeah, I like to refer to it as product context fit. Right? So what is the context in which your product is valuable? And when that context changes? Are you able to adapt to that change? Because even if you have, quote, unquote, PMF, in a market, in a segment in whatever we want to call it, inevitably, that segment, those users are going to grow and evolve and have new problems. But is the company is the product gonna be able to adapt to those things? And that, I think, is the real issue. And many companies can have product context fit, and many companies can lose product context fit. And there's countless examples, let's take Netflix, they have product context fit, and then they lost product context fit, because they made a lot of really bad choices that provided zero value to their customers. So they started losing it. Same with peloton, right? They had a context in which they fit. And when that context ended, they weren't able to adapt. So that I think is a better definition for what we're looking for. Jason Knight 11:35 So we keep coming back, aside from context to this kind of idea of continuous pneus, like this idea that it's something that you have to continually monitor to make sure that whatever it is that we call it, that whatever it is that you're aiming for, or optimising for that that's something that you're keeping on top of and making sure that you don't lose. But how do you even measure whatever we call that again? So someone like April Dunford will say that you can't measure product market fit. It's operationally useless for her because she can't measure it in any way that helps her to define any kind of marketing strategy, or anything along those lines. Some people are going to be out there saying, well, it's just a feeling like, you know, if you've got it, and if you don't know, then you probably haven't got it. And you know, there's all kinds of really interesting woody phrases, which don't really tell me anything as someone that's maybe trying to optimise A or B to try to get wherever I'm going. But what do we measure if we are trying to measure some measure of success about where we're going and what we should be optimising for and concentrating on? Dave Martin 12:35 Yeah, I mean, I think the, it's worth pointing out before talking about what we think we should measure. That leaves Sean Ellis as the Sean Ellis test, and some people saw a presenter. Yeah, I'm not suggesting guy buy into it. But it's, there are some people that will point to that. And I would agree with April that that that that that equally isn't going to help her anymore, it's still still not very useful in the business context for decision making. But if we can get to the value drivers, if we can get under the covers, and think more about the score more about scoring, and understanding the assumptions for how we think we create value, and being able to score those assumptions and understand how well we're delivering on those assumptions, then, then we start to get to a place where we start to measure whether we're achieving the value we set out to achieve. And either way, it's finding a way to measure our strategy, rather than rather than only looking at the end result, which is slightly laggy. For many companies, if you're in a b2b company with a 12 month sales cycle, and three year contracts. Jason Knight 13:43 All right. So whether we call it product market fit or product context, fit or problem solution fit or whatever type of fit that we're actually talking about, there's still this general need for companies to find problems to solve, and then sold them in scalable ways and go and find a big market of people to go and sell that to and solve those problems for and obviously, then continue to develop that market, develop their product and make sure that they're setting themselves up for success and setting themselves up to scale. And, you know, getting that hyper growth that everyone's always after. So again, whatever we want to call that, there is a kind of almost a first inflection point, we're saying that it's not binary, but it's, it's there certainly a tipping point where they can start to think that at least they're starting to have some kind of traction. And there are lots of barriers that get in the way of that. So what are some of the key barriers that you've seen for actually getting to that first inflection point, where again, whatever we want to call it, Andrea Saez 14:36 Dave answer this one. Yeah, sure. Dave Martin 14:38 I mean, I when I help companies with this problem, well, I regularly see is probably two key areas. Not understanding the root cause problem correctly, getting it to an abstract level where they are beyond the symptoms. Fixing the symptoms often doesn't achieve solving the problem about invaluable Why. And then the second one is not clearly understanding as an organisation what those value assumptions are, between how the company is about what we want to sell to the customer versus the value the customer is going to get, and how the user using our product, how their behaviour is going to change in order to create value for the customer. And those assumptions are often half written down on the one side on the customer value side, very rarely defined and explored properly on the user behaviour side. And without that clearly been understood it, you can't iterate and be testing your hypotheses properly of whether you're actually solving problems. Andrea Saez 15:43 If I may add one thing, I think on my side, what I would add is a seen way too many startups try to build products when their company strategy or their business strategy is the same thing as their product strategy. And that's dangerous, because their business is their business. And the product should be focusing on providing that value that Dave is referring to. So business strategy, product strategy are two different concepts. And when we try to think of them as being one, that's when you run into issues like, oh, yeah, you know, one of our goals is to make more money. Well, that's great, but making more money as a business school, the product should be focusing on how do we provide value to our customer, that obviously in turn that loops back to them. But it's very difficult as a team, when you provide them with a goal or an OKR that just says, you know, increase arr? What does that mean? How do you work with that? It's, it's very difficult. Jason Knight 16:53 Well, arguably, increasing ARR would be quite a nice little OKR. Because there's, you know, you're getting totally into outcomes, and there's no guidance at all. But obviously, on the other hand, it's also pretty broad. I think another thing that I've seen as well, from my experience, and people I've spoken to is this idea that you've maybe got founder with a little little Rolodex of people that they can get in touch with, you know, some passionate early adopters that they can bring on board, and they can start to get some kind of solution together that they can then take out to those types of people, and they almost get this mirage of let's call it product market fit because they sit there and they say, Oh, well, x amount of customers already buying it. And that's cool. So now we can just keep turning a handle on that ongoing, but actually, what they've done is they've just proved that they've got a good network, or some early adopters, and some companies that are really excited about just about anything, you know, go for your Crossing the Chasm type thing, you know, like the really early people that will literally just spend their money on anything just to see if it looks good. But they fail to cross that chasm, because they never actually do any of the thinking that's needed to work out how to take that out into primetime. So I think there's yeah, there's obviously a number of different reasons. But some people, when they're trying to get to that stage, who will just sit there when they maybe hit a stall, or they sit there and say, Well, yes, it started to slow down, I'll put up market fit that we thought we had is now starting to maybe lapse or start to subside a little bit. And again, that touches a lot on your binary like, it's not that you've got it and you never lose it like you've got it and then you might lose it, depending on conditions. And it's very common for people at that point to sit there and say, Yeah, just one more feature, just one more feature. And then, I think one of the most interesting things and something I heard on another podcast recently from Andy Rackleff, who I think actually invented the term product market fit, apparently, and then Marc Andreessen stole it off him. But the thing that really resonated with me is that you don't really just want to add more features, that's not actually going to help, what you need to do is be really flexible about the market side, maybe more flexible about the market side than the product side, and maybe find an audience that your product does resonate with, rather than continuously piling on and piling on, and piling on new features to try and get it back. Like do you agree with that? Andrea Saez 19:12 Yeah. But yes, I think that's just the solid. Yes. From both of us. Let David speak. Dave Martin 19:20 Yeah, I was gonna say the, I think about it in a slightly different way, I think about it and call it the product momentum gap. And you've got that traction, and you believe you're onto a winner. And it may well be as you say, you're just a mirage. Or it may be you were on tour in a into further small niche subsection of the market that you were dealing with. And as you start to scale, the reality is you start to sell to people who aren't in that core market. They're slightly out of it. And unfortunately, because you think you have fit and this binary mentality, instead of recognising when sales are slower, and things aren't going quite as As fast as you'd hoped, as you start to scale, funny thing happens very counterintuitive. People go broader. They then go, well, we sell to even wider market. And then you go further ranked. And as that happens in order to close sales from for now a completely different market, rarely, it might still be the same sector or category, but it's a different set of problems now. Now we're then faced with all those requests for these individual customers who are in these wider sectors, wider, wider versions of it further away from the core, from sales to close deals. And we ended up then in that stuck place where we're adding feature after feature thinking it's for the market, but really, it's for the individual clients, who are now we're serving an undefined market, we've lost that we've lost that focus. And I see that happening all the time. Jason Knight 20:56 Yeah, I think it's always interesting when you see people's personas and the market segments that they are going after, and they start to try to work out in some cases, like what the connections are at all. And I think another really interesting thing that you can see on people's websites, for example, is like almost different packs of go to market materials for these very different markets. So they've kind of here's our one for this type of market. Here's I'm not gonna name any names, obviously, but is one for this type of market is one for that type of market. And like, a lot of it's the same core concept, because obviously, the products are broadly the same, but they just almost had to spin like five different stories for all of the different types of people because no one story fits everyone. And it just feels to me like, as you say, like that focus, the drifting of the focus means that it's really hard to be actually good for any of them, because you're always spreading yourself thin the across all of them, because no one's going to staff, the company with like, five segments worth of people to build that stuff, it's gonna be the same team building it, there's gonna be building stuff really spread thinly across all those different markets, and probably never satisfying any of them. Andrea Saez 22:02 unpopular opinion, but I think personas are a terrible idea. I have no idea Congress conversation for another day. But yeah, just to add on to what you said, and what Dave has said, I think if we want to, like have a real world example, or, you know, use case case study of this, it's figma, I think they did a really good job, but understanding their quote, unquote, market and creating value for that market specifically. And instead of adding feature after feature after feature, they understood that they had to niche down, like Dave said, and build something that provided value for designers. And inherently, once there was value there, non designers also starting finding value in it. So I'm not a designer, and I use figma. And it's one of those things, right? Like they were able to really understand what value meant to the customers they were serving. And by doing that, then they were able to expand on that value organically. Jason Knight 23:07 And then get acquired for lots of lots of money, which is obviously everyone's dream, honestly great for them. Yeah, I'm hoping they're enjoying their yachts. But a key part of all of this stuff is, and we've kind of touched on it a little bit earlier as about the alignment, and the cross functional alignment within the company so that everyone in the company knows, broadly speaking, what they're going after everyone's got the same view of the strategy, the vision for something I've seen in the past is that everyone in the company has somewhat of a different idea about what they're going after. So again, whether we call it product market fit or the we're talking about a product or the market, whatever part of it we're talking about, they all think that they're attacking maybe a different market, maybe they're specifically working on one of the sub markets or these unrelated markets that they're serving. And they just have that kind of blinkered vision of like, well, yeah, we're just serving this, or we're just serving that, like, you can speak to all these different people in the company, and they just have different ideas entirely about what the what even the purpose of the company is. So if we're going to try and avoid that situation, what are some of the key ways that you've seen that we can drive more better alignment throughout the organisation so that we're all actually pulling in the same direction, we're going for the same price. Dave Martin 24:19 The way I think about this and work with clients on is getting back to those value drivers. We talked about those value assumptions. And if you can define those into a measurable set that has like five key value indicators. And the assumptions behind them of why they're important written down and shareable. It's much easier to create that alignment and everybody paddling in the same direction, especially from the product and engineering team when they're able to see this product strategy, which is often in some of the companies I work with. It might be a 14 page document. It might be a 200 page report. It's often super hard how are they mended? simulate that and understand that, in that in that situation, if then get it down to articulate it to five user behaviours, that there might be high level but five user behaviours that as a product and engineering function we're trying to change and improve for the better or creative, they're new ones, then then we can understand the strategy. And it removes the ambiguity, because ambiguity is always between what the customer value is and what the behaviour of the user is. And if we define that and agree it with the assumptions, then we really get everybody aligned, we also get to empower teams in a much bigger, better way, if you're empowered with your job is to make this your OKRs to make this behaviour, improve for the customer, it could be then got lots of different ways you can innovate to achieve that goal, rather than something more widely, where half of the job is first trying to work out what the strategy means, and what the objective means before trying to work out how you're going to address it. Jason Knight 26:02 Alright, so your white paper that you both put out together, stuck a stake in the heart of product market fit. But you've also written about your solution to death, or at least somewhat of the solution to the death of product market fit and like what comes afterwards, and this is the product value creation plan or VCP. So elevator pitch time, what is the VCP? And how does it fit into all of this? And how does it solve for or replace the now rotting product market fit? Dave Martin 26:33 I'll jump in. Andrea Saez 26:34 And yeah, really let Dave, pick it up. But if I would have to, like, try to describe it in one very short sentence or a question rather, because I'd like to ask questions, you know, me, it would be? Do you really understand how you're providing value? Mike drove Dave Martin 26:52 you to do for me to describe what it is, it's in the easiest way, or more importantly, why you want it, it makes your strategy operational, it makes the product strategy operational. And that means you can now go and track strategic value. Focus on whether you're making moving the needle, avoid the tactical things that keep getting in the way that are distractions, and focus on that 10x stuff to Barack and Nolan's phrase, the 10x things, not the 10% things. And by operationalizing, your strategy, we get to empower teams, it's like the missing link between OKRs and strategy. Jason Knight 27:36 bold claim. So what are some of the key questions that VCP answers and like some of the key inputs that you put into it to get that result that you just talked about? Dave Martin 27:45 Sure, yeah. I mean, you start with understanding what your business goals are. And then day, that's our job, you know, we're here, as much as I prefer to think about the customer. First, we are here, we are spending the business's money to create a return. So we start with the business objectives. From there, we mapped down to what the customer values are, what the key high values are, we think the customer we're trying to achieve for the customer, that will are big enough and important enough that they'll support our business goals, wherever they may be. And then from there, we go to the final stage of the value chain, what are the user behaviours are user actions that we need to impact in order to create those customer values. And once we've articulated that, agreed it collaboratively done this in an inclusive way. based on informed by the product strategy, we're not trying to rewrite the strategy, we're just trying to re articulate it. So we're not we're not trying to change what has been worked out already. Then we ended up coming up with the last piece, which is coming up with lead indicators, which we call value indicators come up with the value indicators that help us understand whether or not those behaviours are going in the right direction. And those indicators are the VCP. So we ended up as product people send me with a table with five numbers on that we can track just like our marketing counterparts. And just like our sales counterparts, that we can use in stead of the roadmap to our to see whether we're going in the right direction. So we can stop thinking about the only way to measure our performance at the minute is on whether we delivered something on the time we said we would, instead of that we were focusing much more on actually, we're measuring our performance based on whether we made the figures we said we would go up or not and our objectives or our way to then to to actually deliver that and do that. Jason Knight 29:37 So what sort of figures then, are we talking about with regards to not measuring so much? Like whether we're just delivering stuff? I mean, obviously that's the old feature factory thing, but like we're saying that this is almost like a scorecard that we can keep referring back to to say, well, this is how we're doing this is how we're tracking. But how does that then translate to specific value that you're delivering to the business scalability, the kind of because one of the big goals of product or saying that you have product market fit is you just want to sit there and say, Well, we're ready for primetime, give us loads of money, because we're going to scale scale scale. So what types of values are going to be coming out of this VCP, that will tell you that sort of thing. Andrea Saez 30:17 So sorry, I just wanted to touch on a really important thing that you just said, which is, oh, we have product market fit, we can now go get lots of money. That is a terrible way of approaching everything, particularly product market fit. And second company strategy. I, when I said earlier, company strategy is not the same as product strategy. What are the most obvious examples and horrible examples that I've seen, when things go really wrong is when as part of the company strategy? You know, they have, oh, we have to get funding? Like, that's not a strategy, like, what are you trying to do? Really, like that is an output of something that is a result of something but your sole purpose of existing is not to get money, it is to provide value. And I think that is where the VCP is crucial is because it's connecting company goals, with customer benefit, and customer value. And I think the strategy kind of skips a little bit over that. So it's a way of connecting almost like the three of them, right? So you've got your your business goals and your company, strategy, your product strategy. And then you have the VCP, which kind of ties all that stuff together really well. Jason Knight 31:32 How many people are using this already? Then? Dave? I mean, you're obviously taking this out to potential customers, or maybe even customers that you're working with? Have you got anyone using this yet? And got any early kind of indicators of success? Or is this still something that needs to be proven out? Dave Martin 31:46 Yeah, I mean, I know of direct person leaks, obviously, we've published this stuff, and made it freely available. So I don't know any everybody's using it. But I personally know of at least 40 companies who are using it. I've worked directly with probably half of those hands on, and the companies I've worked with, because other ones I can only talk about those really big companies I've worked with it's what it's done is it's completely changed how they prioritise, it's changed. And the people I've worked with are at all levels of the business, the investor, the VC, the chairman, all the way through to the you know, the C suite, the CPO and then the product team and, and the engineers along with the other parts of the organisation. And for the investors, it means that they can then measure whether the strategy is working, that can feel much more confident whether the strategy is working, they're always knew that focusing on delivery of a deadline wasn't going to prove it would work. But at least it proved there was momentum. But now they have something that lets them understand whether the the actual things we're building are actually moving the needle in the way we thought they would, it changes the conversation and C suite to focus on those value assumptions. And once they're understood it complete that once they're agreed and discussed, or better still, if they're really improving them, and they would have changed them because we've learned they're wrong, we're able to be be truly agile, and it aligns marketing and sales with product in a much stronger way, when everybody agrees on those assumptions. And for the product teams, it means they can clearly look instead of trying to evaluate whether a particular problem set or number of features to produce is going to somehow magically make ARR go up on its own. Instead, they can see whether it's going to make the user behaviour go improve the behaviours that we believe we should be influencing and supporting to improve the lives of their customers. And that gives them a focus, it means they're then working on something that they directly impact, rather than something that's very indirect with lots of other parameters, which makes makes it much easier for them to do their job and be the fail fast conversation suddenly becomes much quicker, because they can see those leading metrics easier, and seeing if they're failing, move on. And because the commitment was on the VCP, not the roadmap, no one gets too upset if bits of the roadmap swap and change because it was the that was the value assumptions and the user behaviours we committed to improving, not that feature x was going to be the winner to do it. Jason Knight 34:23 Alright, so let's assume that that's all true. But there's going to be some people out there working in organisations that are so far from accepting that type of thing, and that they are going to keep wanting to dump out these features in the order and get these commitments as soon as they can. Like, what's one thing that you would recommend that these people, people working in these types of environments that are maybe going through a bit of a transformation journey to get anywhere near what you just said? One thing that they should start by doing to try to move along that path and go a little bit closer to perfection? Dave Martin 34:54 I mean, the very first thing and I don't totally agree there's so many companies at the start of that journey to it. It's a long journey for some walks, big culture change. The first thing is writing down the value assumptions. Nobody's gonna get upset the idea of documenting and agreeing and debating whether what they are, and whether your features are supporting them. It's to help you focus those features and deliver them better. And that conversation soon as involves the right key stakeholders becomes really interesting, really fast. Andrea Saez 35:27 Yeah, I agree. And I've always said, always ask why. And that applies to new features and solutions, new ideas, like do we understand why a better question is, do we understand how this might provide value? And that is where you need to start is, do you understand if it's providing value in the first place, how it might provide value, what is the user's perception of value, and I've seen in more than one situation, where the company believes that their product provides a certain value, but the perception of the customer is completely different. So you can either adjust and cater and understand their perception of value. Or you can keep you know, driving against a wall, and trying to convince that you're somehow something else. And that is almost the definition of quote unquote, product market fit, right? If there is no fit, why are you insisting that there is a fit? If the fit, quote unquote, isn't there, the context isn't there, then stop trying to drive it? But understand what it is that that your users need? What problems are having? And most importantly, like I said, what what value are you providing? Or might you be able to provide? Jason Knight 36:41 Excellent advice. Now, this would be the point where we'd have some time for questions from our Twitter space participants. But unfortunately, we lost those now and 10 minutes ago or so. So I guess ultimately, if anyone does have any questions, what I might do is put a little slideshow up on the show notes so people can submit them. And then maybe we can do some kind of ama session afterwards. Or just do it all online. Because I was really looking forward to getting deep and meaningful with some of our participants. But sadly, they've all gone to bed or haven't had dinner by now or whatever it is that they do with their lives. So just remains to be the Thank you, Dave. And thank you, Andrea, it's always a pleasure. sure people can connect with you on LinkedIn or Twitter after this if they want to. But where can they find more about the value creation plan, the depth of product market fit and all the other resources that you've got available? Andrea Saez 37:30 Right to left.co.uk. UK, that was very professional. Can I try that? Again? Jason Knight 37:37 No, this is live. We're not We're not editing any of this. Now, this is going out exactly as Dave Martin 37:44 we've if they go to the homepage of right to left, the we've literally just released a Tim post the XR 10 article blog series, the four of which explain all the concepts and the other six, explain exactly how to do it. And you can, they're free, you can read them, you don't have to register and defend. If you want to download the templates, you can put your email address in and we'll send you those along with some other extra goodies to help you. So there's quite a lot of content just landed it goes, it will be there by the time this is live. Jason Knight 38:18 Well, there you go. Well, you hope so I mean, I might even put it out tonight. So don't be better gets you better start getting typing and releasing stuff just in case. Well, I'll obviously write that all up, put it all in the show notes. Throw this out to the world. And hopefully they'll all start to administer their own few nearly all rights to the concept of product market fit and come and work out to do it a little bit better. Well, Dave, Andra, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for hopping on after the unmitigated failure of the Twitter space. And yeah, let's chat soon. Andrea Saez 38:50 Thank you for having us. Dave Martin 38:51 Thanks very much. Jason Knight 38:54 As always, thanks for listening. I hope you found the episode inspiring and insightful. If you did again, I can only encourage you to hop over to white knight in product.com. Check out some of my other fantastic guests, sign up to the mailing list or subscribe on your favourite podcast app and make sure you share your friends so you and they can never miss another episode again. I'll be back soon with another inspiring guest but as for now, thanks and good night.