The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback

by Dan Olsen

The main reason products fail is because they don't meet customer needs in a way that is better than other alternatives. This is the essence of product-market fit. Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame coined the term in 2007. In the same blog post he also contends, as I do, that startups “fail because they never get to product-market fit.”

In business, there is a distinction between creating value and capturing value. In order to capture value, you must first create it.