Product Zeitgeist Fit: A Cheat Code for Spotting and Building the Next Big Thing | Andreessen Horowitz

Product-market fit works in both directions. The perspective of the builder is always toward what they can do to change their product, what features and functionality to add. But with a long enough lens on successful and failed technology launches, you see that things like market context really matters. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t see as many ideas t... See more

Attempting to define, quantify and strategize around the zeitgeist is a game of tag. That’s what we’re after. That’s the Sisyphean task. It’s utterly daunting and exhausting, but that challenge is also where the opportunity (and fun) lies.

We are in an age of noise.

The frameworks that got us here, of jobs-to-be-done or product-market fit, will be insufficient going forward. For founders to have extraordinary outcomes, they will have to find alpha in markets that aren’t easily understood.

Which is to say, technology alone won’t be enough. The other essential ingredient will be taste.... See more

When investors are looking to make bets on companies, they look for product-market fit. I think we can and should use that same framework to make bets on talent. That same magical spark that ignites when a company finds their perfect place in the market happens when a person finds the right problem to work on. Let’s call it person-problem fit.

We are in an age of noise.

The frameworks that got us here, of jobs-to-be-done or product-market fit, will be insufficient going forward. For founders to have extraordinary outcomes, they will have to find alpha in markets that aren’t easily understood.

Which is to say, technology alone won’t be enough. The other essential ingredient will be taste.... See more

The problem you solve for customers is increasingly one they can’t even articulate for themselves . The ones that are easy to understand have already been built and funded over the last 20 years. Building something of true excellence will require a hungrier engagement with the world—and that will have to start with developing superior taste.