Chris Muth

Well, first you start with the community. You find an underserved niche that you feel you understand them and speak to them in a way that resonates.

Then, realize that the holy grail is combining single-player and multi-player. For example, I first heard about Figma from a designer that had switched from Adobe XD. He had built significant trust with Figma as a single-player, recently moved to multi-player and the guy was literally screaming from the top of his lungs on rooftops about how... See more

Growing without product-market fit robs you of agility. Agility allows you to iterate. If you can’t iterate fast enough, you won’t get to product-market fit.Here is my suggestion to founders of tech-enabled services: don’t grow until you achieve product-market fit. Get a few customers in the door to start, then move any further demand to a... See more

However, it is usually easier to begin with single-player. Building multiplayer is more complex. You need to have liquidity (ie: friends needs to be online for the ah-ha moment to be most fertile).

Once you know your product actually makes your service 10x better along some dimension, then grow. Don’t fall prey to temptation (or pressure from your investors) to grow before then.

The bad part is that you can fool yourself into thinking you have product-market fit. You have a product (the “tech”) to go along with (or “enable”) your service, but are people buying your service because of the accompanying product?

The most common question I get about this framework: Do I start single-player or multiplayer?

With service-market fit, there is little market risk. Tech-enabled services generally start out as just services that use existing technology well. You’re not testing a hypothesis by offering a service that other people already offer - you know there is demand for what you’re selling.