Markets Win

This is a little backwards, but I found a great old post by Marc Andreesen that relates to my former post on identifying great markets.  It’s definitely worth a read.  One particularly good segment (with Marc himself quoting Andy Rachleff):

“The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

Andy puts it this way:

• When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
• When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
• When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.

You can obviously screw up a great market — and that has been done, and not infrequently — but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.

And neither a stellar team nor a fantastic product will redeem a bad market.”

But the whole post is worth a read because it gives a bunch of examples and gives some practical clues on how to find product-market fit.