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The Fallacy of Rapid Product Shipment: Why it Doesn’t Guarantee Product-Market Fit
I often hear people advise indie hackers to “ship one product a week.” It sounds like a great strategy at first glance: constantly produce, constantly innovate, and sooner or later, you’ll achieve product-market fit (PMF) with one of your ideas. However, I believe that this approach is oversimplified and may not lead to the desired result. Let me explain why.
PMF is the point where your product’s value proposition aligns perfectly with the market’s needs. It’s not just about creating a product, but understanding your customers deeply, recognizing their problems, and crafting a solution that fits like a key in a lock.
Envisage a schedule of shipping a new product every week. It’s an ambitious goal, but it comes with its own set of problems. One of the major issues lies in the assumption that a product will either gain immediate traction or fail instantly. This belief is far from reality.
Creating a good Minimum Viable Product (MVP) often demands more than a week. Even when the MVP is out in the market, further iterations based on customer feedback are necessary for refining the product to reach PMF. This process requires time and patience, which is at odds with the rapid turnover of the “one product a week” mantra.
