This might be a too-fancy way of saying "we focused on what people wanted" (to put it in PG-speak rather than Andreessen-speak).
We started with a permission marketing campaign (before we wrote a line of code)-- showing a few screenshots and allowing people to sign up to hear about the launch. That helped us understand how much people wanted it (measured by traffic and conversion of traffic to sign ups). We were immedietely barraged by lots of people who had ideas about the product, and we listened very carefully.
We ignored lots of things that it might've been bad to ignore in favor of building features that people wanted and talking with users. We didn't incorporate. Didn't get a bank account. Didn't talk to a lawyer. Didn't worry about SEO or any other marketing (even though I'm a bit of an SEO nut). Didn't talk to investors.
Lots and lots and lots of focus on reducing frustration, reducing friction, and increasing value-- and lots and lots of communication with users (to understand that stuff better).
Boiled down-- lots of focus on understanding what the market wants (both individual lifehackers and biz teams that want to be more productive) and then building/iterating. Rinse, repeat.
If you are giving a product or service away I don’t think you can assert that you have “product/market fit.” You have a very compelling application, but until you figure out who is going to pay you for it, and how much it’s worth to them, I don’t think you can put a check in the box next to “product/market fit” since you don’t pass this test from the same Marc Andreessen post you reference ( http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the-pmarca-gu-2.html ):
And you can always feel product/market fit when it’s happening. The customers are buying the product just as fast as you can make it — or usage is growing just as fast as you can add more servers. Money from customers is piling up in your company checking account.
Well, revenue is a beautiful thing, certainly. You can define product/market fit however you like-- but by that definition, most consumer apps don't have it. A customer can "buy" a product with money or their time/attention. I'd say both YouTube and Facebook have found a great product/market fit. And Gmail. Andreessen found a great product/market fit with the Netscape browser, but monetization of it really only came in the form of a few bizdev deals (which didn't cover costs, I don't think). Money, in many of these iconic companies, was NOT piling up.
Regarding my company, we focused initially on a non-paying market (individual lifehackers), as that was easiest to build for and launch a rough beta for. They "pay" in blog posts, tweets, word of mouth-- they've driven every single business lead we've gotten. Now we've got a new market (teams) that we have to find a "fit" for. Wish us luck!
We started with a permission marketing campaign (before we wrote a line of code)-- showing a few screenshots and allowing people to sign up to hear about the launch. That helped us understand how much people wanted it (measured by traffic and conversion of traffic to sign ups). We were immedietely barraged by lots of people who had ideas about the product, and we listened very carefully.
We ignored lots of things that it might've been bad to ignore in favor of building features that people wanted and talking with users. We didn't incorporate. Didn't get a bank account. Didn't talk to a lawyer. Didn't worry about SEO or any other marketing (even though I'm a bit of an SEO nut). Didn't talk to investors.
Lots and lots and lots of focus on reducing frustration, reducing friction, and increasing value-- and lots and lots of communication with users (to understand that stuff better).
Boiled down-- lots of focus on understanding what the market wants (both individual lifehackers and biz teams that want to be more productive) and then building/iterating. Rinse, repeat.