#16 Finding Product-Market Fit with Kenny MacKenzie

Jun 12, 2020

Kenny MacKenzie, an expert in product-market fit, discusses the importance of understanding the target market's goals, obstacles, and negative emotions. He emphasizes the need to act like a scientist/private investigator, finding the right problems, experimenting, and learning from customers. The podcast also explores the evolution of marketing channels and the role of experts in validating ideas. It debunks the misconception that startup founders need to be genius engineers and emphasizes the focus on market need.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Reflection on Failed Business Venture and Learning from Mistakes

02:02 • 26min

Understanding Markets and Jobs to be Done

28:21 • 2min

Finding Product-Market Fit

30:10 • 23min

The Evolution of Marketing Channels and Target Audience Size

53:21 • 3min

Finding Experts and Validating Ideas

56:32 • 18min

The Misconception of Startup Founders

01:14:52 • 12min

Making Tough Decisions and Focusing on Market Need

01:26:54 • 3min

"Most startup founders don't want to prove themselves wrong. There's an inherent bias, they hear what they want to hear, and they go seeking the information to prove themselves right because they've attached themselves to their idea." -- Kenny MacKenzie

Kenny is an expert in product-market fit and market validation and has been mentoring startup founders for many, many years.

After creating his own startup, raising money, building a product, launching it and seeing it fail because of a lack of product-market fit, Kenny spent loads of energy trying to reflect on those mistakes so he could understand the causes of startup failure and the tactical and strategic frameworks and practices that will improve the chances of business success.

He identified very common types of cognitive biases that early-stage founders will face, such as a lack of product-market fit, false positives, and not knowing what problem you're trying to solve or who you're trying to help. These things lead to errors of judgment that will surely kill a startup.

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to act like a scientist/private investigator, find the right problems, experiment and learn from customers before you write any line of code or build anything. This will improve your chances of being a successful startup founder.

"You're not a developer, you're not an engineer, you're not an entrepreneur. You're a scientist/private investigator. Think of the market opportunity as a crime, there is a criminal out in the loose and they keep hurting all these different people. You're trying to understand that criminal's pattern of behavior. The criminal is the market need. You're investigating, not trying to force your will on the world. Once you understand a meaningful problem that people have, then you can start being the visionary." -- Kenny MacKenzie

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Links from this episode

Kenny MacKenzie on Linkedin
Find Better Problems Worth Solving - Ash Maurya
The Mom Test Book - Rob Fitzpatrick
The Value Proposition Canvas - strategyzer
Jobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice - Anthony Ulwick
Outcome Driven Innovation - Anthony Ulwick
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