Sean is a serial entrepreneur VC and co-founder of GrowthX and GrowthX Academy, with three successful exits, who has successfully grown dozens of early-stage companies across a wide variety of products and markets. He was recently named the #2 Online Sales Influencer and contributor at The Huffington Post. He’s now committed to working with countries, companies, entrepreneurs, and those who want to work with them on building startup ecosystems and developing the next generation of leaders for the innovation economy.
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Time-Stamped Show Notes:
[17:54] Why is Product-Market Fit important?
[23:07] What are the key indicators that I have a good product-market fit?
[36:04] Do you think the role of a pro-market developer is necessary?
[47:15] What are the questions you would ask a salesperson or a market developer during their demonstrations?
[49:18] What is your advice for startups in terms of finding the market product market?
In-Short:
Question: Why is Product-Market Fit important?
Sean: I think the best way to think about it is that you have two sides to business. You have a product side and you have a market side and both need equal attention and both have a unique set of skills associated with them. And then there needs to be a way for both to work together in a learning loop that accelerates the feedback so that you can build something that people want.
Question: What are the key indicators that I have a good product-market fit?
Sean: The general rule is, can you have two consecutive business quarters, fiscal quarters, where your market development team is paying for itself? Well, in the form of revenue contribution, that’s typically two to three times their cost of sales.
Question: Do you think the role of a pro-market developer is necessary?
Sean: Yeah. So this person is always the one who’s responsible for taking something someplace for the first time, and that’s a valuable role in any organization at any stage of the company because it’s not about the stage of the company.
Question: What are the questions you would ask a salesperson or a market developer during their demonstrations?
Sean: Should we work together? And if so, how? And how would we measure that? And how would we budget and allocate resources on both sides to that in the form of time, truth and potentially money?
Question: What is your advice for startups in terms of finding the market product market?
Sean: Focus on the problem and the prop and the person that you’re solving it for and what and how they’re going and how you’re going to solve it and what that is, how you’re going to measure the results of the solution and what that is worth in the form of money.
We are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Subscribe to our channel for your daily dose of quality learnings and insights into the world of sales and marketing.