Four Fits For $100M+ Growth

This article and related video walks through how Brian Balfour found product/market fit at HubSpot. He believes there are four fits you need to find: Market/Product Fit, Product/Channel Fit, Channel/Model Fit and Model/Market Fit. There are links to other articles by Brian that go into more detail.

2 minute read, 17 minute video plus links to other posts on the details of achieving the 4 fits.

Key Quotes

“Building a great product is a piece of the puzzle, but it’s far from the full picture.”

“There are terrible products that have reached $1B+ and amazing products that never make it anywhere. Why is that?”

“When people focus on product market fit they always focus on the product first. But that’s putting the cart before the horse. You are thinking about the solution before properly understanding the problem and audience that has that problem.”

“But if you think about your product and channels in silos, then you will end up trying to fit a square peg through a round hole. Why? Because…Products are built to fit with channels. Channels do not mold to products.“

“I show evidence of how the four fits works together in almost any market segment. More importantly there are three key lessons we can learn. One, you need all four Fits to grow”

“you can't think about the four Fits in isolation because together they form an ecosystem for growth.”

Bottom Line

“I’ve been lucky to have been part of building, advising, or investing in 40+ tech companies in the past 10 years. Some $100M+ wins. Some, complete losses. Most end up in the middle.”

“One of my main observations is that there are certain companies where growth seems to come easily, like guiding a boulder down hill.”

“In other companies, growth feels much harder. It feels like pushing a boulder up hill.”

“What is the difference between these two types of companies? This is a question I’ve pondered for a long time and have pieced together a framework to explain the difference.”