Yogyakarta, September 17th 2022–As a part of the SOPREMA 7-Year Event, Youth Studies Center (Yousure) FISIPOL UGM is back with the second SOPREMA Talk titled “Product and Development 101: Product Market Fit for Young Sociopreneur” on Saturday (17/9). In this session, Yousure invited Azellia Alma Shafira or Selly, the CEO of Banoo Inovasi Indonesia, as the speaker.
In the business world, the term Product Market Fit (PMF) is used to know whether products that are developed fit the target market aimed for. Therefore, market research is needed. This can be done by involving potential consumers in perfecting the product so it fits their needs.
Selly explained that, in the process, a PMF can’t be done only once so an iteration is needed because oftentimes, in the middle of the process, a product fails. When a product no longer fulfills the market demand is when a pivot is needed. Although there is a lot that we need to sacrifice, we need to pivot if we want to survive in the business world.
“There are things that sadly we have to sacrifice even though we have researched it as much as we could. But we need to get out of the short-term thinking. We might think that it is a failure in the short term, but when we see the bigger picture, it is not a failure, it’s just a part of the iteration,”
Basically, what makes a new product hard to sell or introduce to the market is that the problem and the solution are unknown. There are a lot of root problems that have to be analyzed before synthesizing a solution. However, we need to work fast to know the solution to the existing problem.
“The bottom line is that we don’t know. The one who knows are those who are a part of the market, who experience the problem, so it’s all up to the market, it’s all up to the users,” Selly said.
Selly offered two theories to use in the PMF process. The first is the theory of change where we start from the problem-solution fit. To do it, we need to identify which are real problems and which are only symptoms of a problem. Even though both are considered pain points, a symptom is still not the root problem. We need to focus on one root problem that can be the source of many solutions.
The second theory is the design thinking theory where we think through a specific model or design of thinking. For example, we can categorize the feedback from the market/users about a product by using the insight tree model to find the root problem. Then, we can build the solution based on the insights from the interviews we have done.