The Cheapest Possible Test
Reinhardt: The debate was whether to build the full product and test for product-market fit by trying to sell it — versus a super super lightweight MVP landing page that we'd put on Hacker News to see if there was interest.
What drove us toward the lightweight test was the skeptical divide among the founders. Since the founders couldn't agree, the only way to answer the question was to go to customers ASAP and get an answer. Usually that test is so cheap to run that it's worth running, even if you decide it was inconclusive.
The founders couldn't agree. The only way to answer was to go to customers ASAP.
The Airbnb Trap
Reinhardt: The Airbnb version of product-market fit is much more iterative. They struggled for years and years, made slight iterations, and finally caught on. Obviously a runaway success. My feeling is that's extremely rare.
I remember very clearly being inspired by the Airbnb story early on. It was a logical reason why we should keep plugging away at a bad idea. And I think we abused the Airbnb story to keep stringing ourselves along on a bad idea. I would be very very careful of following the Airbnb example. I don't know many other companies that hit product-market fit that way.
We abused the Airbnb story to keep stringing ourselves along on a bad idea.
You Need a Skeptic
Reinhardt: What you want is someone — either yourself or someone on the founding team — who's a skeptic. Someone who's critical, who will question and push for the fastest reasonable test.
If you have an optimist and a skeptic who both agree on what a valid test is — that's a good test. But if you have three optimists in a room who all agree on what a good test is, I don't believe that's a good test.
An optimist and a skeptic agreeing = good test. Three optimists agreeing = bad test.