Many ecommerce brands I met over the last decade were desperately trying to solve problems with their Meta Ads, website, CRO, and so on.

They completely overlooked the fact that they didn't have a product/market fit.

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

“Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

*You can always feel when product/market fit isn’t happening.*

The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product,
word of mouth isn’t spreading,
usage isn’t growing that fast,
press reviews are kind of “blah”,
the sales cycle takes too long,
and lots of deals never close.

Pmarchive · The only thing that matters

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.
You’re hiring sales and customer support staff as fast as you can.
Reporters are calling because they’ve heard about your hot new thing and they want to talk to you about it.
You start getting entrepreneur of the year awards from Harvard Business School.
Investment bankers are staking out your house. You could eat free for a year at Buck’s.

<aside> 💡

“… market is the most important factor in a startup’s success or failure.

Why?

In a great market—a market with lots of real potential customers—the market pulls product out of the startup.

The product doesn’t need to be great; it just has to basically work. And, the market doesn’t care how good the team is, as long as the team can produce that viable product.

…

And when you have a great market, the team is remarkably easy to upgrade on the fly.

…Conversely, in a terrible market, you can have the best product in the world and an absolutely killer team, and it doesn’t matter—you’re going to fail.

You’ll break your pick for years trying to find customers who don’t exist for your marvelous product, and your wonderful team will eventually get demoralized and quit, and your startup will die.”

</aside>

<aside> 💡

Andy Rachleff, (formerly of Benchmark Capital) ‘s Law of Startup Success:

The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

Andy puts it this way:

When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
When a great team meets a great market, something special happens. </aside>

“Achieving product-market fit means that you have a strong value proposition, people find out about your store by word of mouth, you have a steady stream of customers and sales, and that your product solves a problem within a larger, lucrative market.”

The Invisible Ceiling on Your Business

https://x.com/SamMendelsohnW6/status/1970925460365418522

Most eCommerce founders believe they have a marketing problem. They think if they just had better ads, a smarter conversion funnel, or a stronger retention strategy, they'd finally break through.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: product-market fit is the invisible ceiling on your entire business.

Everything else—the ops, the media buying, the creative, the retention playbooks—only widens the aperture on a fire that already exists. If the fire is weak, even excellent execution grinds. If the fire is strong, imperfect execution can still scale.

https://x.com/MehtabKarta/status/1861161910126944632?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1861161910126944632|twgr^c64cf321d8cd6ea182b3e31f96954881a3d5adb9|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.notion.so%2Fsouravghosh%2FProduct-market-Fit-fd7baf8c7ed24aa7b7e69ec12917f66e%3Fpvs%3D25

The Fire and Gasoline Metaphor

Think of your business as a fire:

The Kernel = What creates the fire

Timing: Is the market ready now?
TAM: Are there enough buyers?
Product quality: Does it actually solve the problem?
Positioning: Are you clear about who it's for?
Problem-solution fit: Do people feel the pain urgently?
Price-value alignment: Does the price feel right?

The Aperture = How the fire spreads

Channel fit, unit economics, offers, conversion, retention, messaging, operations, availability, data loops, and operational limits.

The pattern everyone misses: Brand A launches, gets to $1M, then stalls. The founder grinds for years, often alone, unable to afford help. Brand B launches, the pull is obvious from day one, customers love it, margins are strong, word spreads—suddenly they can afford agencies. The agency steps in, rides the wave, writes a case study about "how they scaled the brand."

But the spark was already there. The agency just poured gasoline on a fire that was already burning.

That's survivorship bias in eCommerce. We reverse-engineer the tactics, but the thing we're trying to replicate was never really visible in the first place: the kernel of PMF.

Diagnose Your Kernel First

Use this checklist to assess whether you have the fire, or you're just pouring gasoline on cold wood:

The kernel — what creates the fire

[ ] Market timing: Would a real buyer care about this today? If ads paused, would anyone still look for it?
[ ] Enough buyers: Can you point to a group big enough to hit this year’s and next year’s goals?
[ ] Product works: Do customers say it actually solves the problem? Low returns. Few “didn’t help” refunds.
[ ] Clear who it’s for: Describe your best buyer in one simple sentence a friend would instantly get.
[ ] Real problem, real pull: When someone “gets it,” do they buy without a long convincing dance?
[ ] Price feels right: Do buyers say “fair” or “worth it,” not “too much” when they see the offer?
[ ] Tailwinds: Are trends this quarter helping you, not fighting you?