The Election And Product Market Fit

Yeah it’s been picked apart already by everyone and fingers have been pointed in every conceivable direction but its fun to view the recent election from a startup launch point of view. Primarily one wonders whether the Democratic Party achieved “product market fit”. Sure there were tons of surveys and of course there were clamoring crowds at rallies for both sides, but who really addressed the bell curve … which might be where elections are tipped.

To test for and achieve scale in the startup world, two factors are of great concern.

1. Is the product appropriate — meaning easy and somehow fascinating and sticky?
2. Which part of the bell curve does it fit — some small upper end of the population of potential customers or the big bell itself?

Years ago I remember being asked to dumb down my explanation of a software product I had engineered so that users could easily digest the user manual my explanation was basis for. I argued that anyone who wanted to use the product had to be at least intelligent enough to understand what I was explaining. A software documentation writer patiently asked me if I was willing to have only such people buy my product. It was a lesson learned.

A few more years later, as a speaker I learned that my propensity for precise and sometimes elaborate and perhaps…