Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

Product Management

The KPI that measures Product-Market Fit

9 Sep 2020

Asking the users of your software, "How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use this product" is a great way to gauge satisfaction. It’s also a good way to measure product-market fit.

The answers aren’t going to tell you if you’re there yet. But the trend of answers will tell you if you’re moving in the right direction.

If you ask this question to a different small group of your users every week, you can measure trends over time in those that say they’d be extremely disappointed to lose your product.

The answer scale I prefer is a simple three-point scale. Users can answer "extremely disappointed," "somewhat disappointed," or "I don’t care." This makes it simple to answer and also makes it a simple metric to track.

Using this scale, the percentage of people that pick the "extremely disappointed" option is your product-market fit performance indicator. The larger percentage of your users that feel this way, the more likely you’re delivering the right product to the right market.

There’s no such thing as a good or a bad percentage. Comparing your numbers to another company’s won’t be useful. The only useful measurement is if your number is going up or down. As long as it’s trending up you’re achieving or retaining your product-market fit.

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