To hire, test out product features, and grow, startups need money before they start making profits—they need investment. Investors want to have confidence that a startup they invest in will be able to grow enough so that they get a return on their investment. As a result, a concept was established called product-market fit, which is when a startup’s product is useful to one or more customer market segments and competes effectively with other products in that space. 

However, most startups are not able to achieve product-market fit. There are several reasons for this, but a key aspect of it is that their product does not does not serve the needs of any potential customers. In other words, their product does not solve an actual problem. A term to describe this problem is not having problem-solution fit. This is a bit misleading for products that offer novel interactions rather than solving a problem, but it could be said that not being able to interact with people as much, or as effectively, is the problem such products are solving. 

Therefore, all startups must reach problem-solution fit.

To do so, they need to empathize with users and/or customers in order to understand what they are thinking and feeling, both in their existing work and with a startup’s new product. This can be done with easy or “lean” methods like signup forms on landing pages or created content on blog sites like Medium. Then, if these methods show some promise, more serious or formal research can be done to confirm that they have a problem that a startup’s solution addresses, and then that a large enough number of them have this problem for similar reasons. The first step in formal user/customer research can be done by observing people doing their jobs and interviewing them, while the second step can be done with online surveys or focus groups.

Then, after identifying some potential users that the product solves a problem of theirs, a startup should find a subset of them or their managers that are willing to pay for it (customers). This is the first step toward achieving product-market fit.