This probably seems like a reasonable statement to many (I hear it all the time in startup pitches), but there’s one serious problem with it. We had a solution (virtual goods platform) that was looking for a problem and a market (dating sites, social networks, etc.). In other words, we were putting the cart before the horse.

What we should have done instead was to focus on the problem and market, then search for the solution. This common mistake is why I prefer “Market Product Fit” over the terminology “Product Market Fit.”

The reason for this is because the real problem is something experienced within your market and by your audience, not something that lives within your product. While that phrasing might sound like a small change, language matters. How we word things affects how we think about things.

Searching For Market Product Fit The Right Way

When I got to HubSpot, I joined a brand new division in the company with just six other people. We were tasked with building the road to a second $100M line of business (the HubSpot Marketing product being the first), so it was a lot like running a startup within the larger Hubspot org.

Luckily, by this point I had learned my lesson from the Viximo days. Rather than focusing on the product first, we narrowed in on defining the market.

There were four key market elements that we looked at:

Category . What category of products does the customer put you in?

. What category of products does the customer put you in? Who . Who is the target audience within the category? There are always multiple personas within a single category, so this breaks it down further.

. Who is the target audience within the category? There are always multiple personas within a single category, so this breaks it down further. Problems . What problems does your target audience have related to the category?

. What problems does your target audience have related to the category? Motivations. What are the motivations behind those problems? Why are those problems important to your target audience?

While I find most companies really understand the “category” and the “who,” defining the problems and the motivations behind those problems is far more important.

Here is what these four elements roughly looked liked for our HubSpot division: