Is This Actually a Business? How to Find Product-Market Fit
You've got a startup idea. You've talked to a few people about it. They think it's great. But does that mean you've found product-market fit? Not necessarily.
Finding product-market fit is one of the biggest challenges early-stage founders face. It's also one of the most important. Because there's a big difference between building something people think is interesting and building something they actually need (and are willing to pay for).
To help founders navigate that challenge, Startup Boston partnered with City of Boston for a virtual panel, Is This Actually a Business? Finding Product-Market Fit.
Moderated by Nicole Collins, Founder of Bea, the conversation brought together:
Anuj Adhiya, Managing Director of the Founder Lab at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council
Joanna Shu, Co-Founder & CEO of Cartwheel
Monica Gauba, Founder & CEO of Surev AI
Together, they explored how founders can validate their ideas, identify meaningful customer signals, avoid common mistakes, and figure out whether they're building something people genuinely want.
Here are the biggest takeaways.
1. Product-market fit isn't about people liking your idea. It's about people needing it.
One of the biggest misconceptions about product-market fit is that positive feedback means you're onto something. Someone tells you your startup idea sounds amazing. Another person says they'd totally use it. Maybe a third person even offers to introduce you to someone. Great! But none of that necessarily means you've found product-market fit.
Anuj described product-market fit as a test of "must-haveness."
His analogy? Imagine dropping a pencil into a disgusting toilet. Would you reach in to retrieve it? Probably not. Now imagine dropping your brand-new iPhone into that same toilet. Suddenly, you're much more motivated to retrieve it. The point: You want to build the product people are willing to go out of their way to get.
And according to Monica, finding that level of demand requires founders to continuously evaluate three things:
Who are you building for?
What are you building to solve their problem?
How will you reach those customers?
Founders also need to understand whether the product is feasible to build and whether customers will pay enough to make the business sustainable. Importantly, product-market fit isn't something you achieve once and never revisit. Customer needs, markets, and competitive landscapes change.
The takeaway: Stop asking whether people like your idea. Start figuring out whether they need your solution badly enough to change their behavior.
2. Your earliest customers should be willing to put some skin in the game.
How do you know whether someone genuinely needs your product? Look at what they're willing to do.
Anuj suggested introducing a little friction into the customer discovery process. Ask potential customers to commit something, whether that's $5, 15 minutes of their time, or participation in a product test. Why? Because it's easy to say something sounds interesting. It's much harder to demonstrate that interest through action.
Monica agreed, noting that in the earliest stages, founders shouldn't obsess over metrics they don't have enough data to measure.Instead, look for customers who are willing to:
Spend time discussing the problem you're solving.
Test an early version of your product.
Provide thoughtful feedback.
Become a design partner.
Make a financial commitment.
As your product develops, retention becomes an increasingly important signal.
Anuj pointed to the Sean Ellis test, which asks customers how disappointed they would be if they could no longer use a product. A commonly used benchmark is having at least 40% respond that they'd be "very disappointed." But he emphasized that founders should compare those responses with actual behavior. Are customers continuing to use the product? Are they coming back? Are new customers finding you through word of mouth?
The takeaway: Compliments are nice. Commitment is better. Pay attention to what potential customers actually do, not just what they say.
3. Go deep on the problem, then wide on who experiences it.
One of the most interesting examples came from Joanna, whose company, Cartwheel, develops first-aid products for families, starting with a treatment for head lice. Before bringing the product to market, her team spent years understanding the problem - and we mean really understanding it. Joanna even attended a four-day lice conference, but understanding the science was only one part of the equation.
Cartwheel also needed to understand the different people involved in the purchasing process. There were retailers deciding whether to stock the product, parents deciding what to purchase, children using the treatment, and school nurses, teachers, and doctors identifying the problem; each stakeholder had a different perspective.
Joanna explained that one mistake she frequently sees among early-stage founders is only interviewing people who look like them or share similar experiences.
For example, college students might validate a problem by asking their friends whether they experience it. But that doesn't necessarily mean the problem is widespread or that the people experiencing it are the ones who would pay for a solution.
For Cartwheel, that meant interviewing people across different demographics, locations, and professional backgrounds - and the research uncovered something particularly interesting. When parents were asked how much they'd pay for a head lice treatment that worked in one application, more than a dozen responded with "infinity dollars." Obviously, that wasn't a literal pricing strategy. But it was a powerful indication of how painful the problem was.
The takeaway: Don't limit customer discovery to people in your immediate circle. Identify everyone involved in experiencing, purchasing, recommending, or delivering your solution.
4. Stop pitching during customer discovery interviews. Start listening.
If you're conducting customer interviews, there's one temptation you need to resist: trying to convince the person you're interviewing that your idea is brilliant.
The panelists emphasized that customer discovery should be about understanding the problem, not selling your proposed solution.
Joanna shared one of her favorite questions to ask at the end of an interview: "Is there anything I didn't ask you that you want to tell me?" Often, that's when the most valuable insights emerge.
Monica encouraged founders to explore the concept of "jobs to be done," understanding how customers currently accomplish a task or solve a problem. After all, your competitors aren't always other startups. Sometimes they're spreadsheets, manual processes, existing workarounds, or simply doing nothing.
Anuj recommended asking questions grounded in customers' actual experiences rather than hypothetical scenarios.
Questions worth asking during customer discovery:
Tell me about the last time you experienced this problem.
What was the most difficult part?
How are you solving this problem today?
Have you tried anything else to address it?
Why is solving this problem important to you?
What prompted you to speak with me about this?
Is there anything I haven't asked that you think I should know?
These questions help founders understand the severity of a problem, how frequently it occurs, and whether customers have already invested time or money trying to solve it.
The panel also discussed the value of combining live interviews with surveys. Live conversations create opportunities for follow-up questions, while surveys can help founders reach different audiences and uncover broader patterns.
The takeaway: The goal of customer discovery isn't to hear that you're right. It's to learn something you didn't already know.
5. Trying to solve everyone's problems can leave you solving nobody's.
After conducting customer interviews, founders often walk away with a long list of problems they could potentially solve. And for technically capable founders, the temptation is to build something that addresses all of them.
Monica warned that this is where many startups get into trouble. She shared an experience from an earlier venture: a marketplace for event services that brought together caterers, entertainment providers, venues, and other businesses. Technically, the platform could support all those different services, but operationally, each category had different customer expectations, logistics, and fulfillment requirements.
By trying to serve too many markets simultaneously, the business struggled to gain traction and spread its resources effectively.
Her advice? Narrow your focus before trying to scale. If you're offering a broad range of services, consider focusing on a small geographic market. If you're expanding across multiple geographies, narrow the specific use case you're solving.
Joanna added that founders also need to pay attention to who their actual customers turn out to be, rather than who they originally expected. She described skincare brands that discovered their customers were significantly older and from different demographics than their initial target audiences. Rather than continuing to market to their imagined customers, the brands adjusted their messaging based on who was actually buying.
The takeaway: Just because you can build something for multiple audiences doesn't mean you should. Start narrow, understand what's working, and expand from there.
6. Your first customers probably won't come from advertising.
One audience question focused on how early-stage founders should find and market to their target customers. Anuj's response was straightforward: when you're just starting out, you probably shouldn't be advertising at all.
Why? Because you may not even know who your ideal customer is yet. Instead, he described early customer discovery as "hand-to-hand combat." It's reaching into your network, asking for introductions, contacting potential customers directly, and doing the unscalable work required to understand who cares about the problem you're solving.
Anuj shared that, in his experience, it can take 50 to 100 conversations to find one person who deeply cares about a particular problem, but once you find that person, you have a starting point. You can begin asking what makes them different, where they spend their time, and how to find more people like them.
Joanna suggested incorporating questions about online habits into customer interviews. Which social platforms do customers use? Which communities or subreddits do they participate in Those answers can eventually inform your marketing strategy.
The takeaway: Before spending money trying to reach thousands of customers, make sure you understand the handful who genuinely need what you're building.
7. The most important question: Are you getting smarter every week?
Toward the end of the conversation, the panelists were asked what founders with an unvalidated startup idea should prioritize over the next 30 days. Their advice centered on three principles.
Monica: Keep asking why. Understand the problem deeply before jumping into building a solution.
Joanna: Go deeper on the problem and wider on stakeholders. Make sure you're hearing from the people who actually experience, influence, and pay to solve the problem.
Anuj: Learn things in the right order. He pointed to three dimensions of innovation:
Desirability: Do people actually want or need this?
Viability: Can this become a sustainable business?
Feasibility: Can you realistically build and deliver it?
Founders should prioritize learning what customers need before investing heavily in how to build it.
Anuj also offered a question that every founder should ask themselves: "Are you smarter every week?"
Every experiment, customer conversation, and hypothesis should help you make a decision. Maybe you discover something worth pursuing further. Maybe you realize an assumption was wrong and need to change direction. Either way, you've learned something valuable. What you want to avoid is spending weeks or months building without gaining a clearer understanding of your customers or market.
The takeaway: Progress isn't just shipping more features. It's making better decisions because you've learned something new.
So, have you found product-market fit?
There's no single metric, customer interview, or magical moment that tells you with absolute certainty that you've found product-market fit, but there are signals worth paying attention to.
Are customers actively trying to solve the problem? Are they willing to commit time or money? Are they returning to your product? Are they recommending it to others? And perhaps most importantly, are you continuing to learn as you build?
The biggest theme from this conversation was that finding product-market fit requires founders to get outside their own assumptions: Talk to customers. Listen carefully. Test what you believe. Pay attention to behavior. And don't be afraid to change direction when the evidence tells you to.
Because building a product is one thing, building something people genuinely need is what gives you the foundation for a business.
Keep building with Startup Boston
This conversation was part of City of Boston Startup Series, a collaboration between Startup Boston and the City of Boston designed to help early-stage founders connect, learn, and grow.
Startup Boston works to make the Greater Boston and New England startup ecosystem easier to navigate by aggregating and amplifying the events, resources, organizations, and opportunities available to founders and startup operators.
Looking for more opportunities to learn from experienced founders, connect with the community, or find resources to help build your company? Explore upcoming events and opportunities at startupbos.org.
Interested in diving deeper into how to find product-market fit? Watch the full recording here.
