Product Market F*ck

First things first. Sorry for the word.

This is not going to be a gentle book. While I do have very high regards and respect for all the entrepreneurs, startups, investors, and everybody else mentioned in this book, I'm going to be very non-diplomatic in my presentation and honest with my usage of words (if that's not already clear from the title!)

The idea is to surgically dissect the root cause of death of some of the largest celebrated elephants of the startup ecosystem, who died, but also caused enough collateral damage to last quite some time and affect the newcomers badly enough.

The tone of the book could be a little negative, but I will choose to use the phrase "bitter truth". 

We will, not so gently talk about the exaggerated, disproportionately celebrated, the damaged and the damaging startups of the ecosystem, that a lot of new and upcoming entrepreneurs look up and try to imitate. 

The criticism in this book is not meant to derecognise the efforts and hardwork of everyone who worked hard and built what they built. This is but to reflect on what's happening at a macro level - the kind of the work they are inspiring, directly or indirectly, as a result of what they chose to do - and try to bring in a mindset change at a systemic level, not just focusing on immediate outcomes and build enterprises that are sustainable, impactful and inspiring, the right way.

No, that’s not a typo. You read it right. 

 Product Market Fuck: When a hyper funded startup starts offering their solution for free or at a heavily discounted price, in the hopes of achieving the "critical mass" sooner, while spoiling the market for other players until it saturates or they are killed, and most of the times, both, is called Product Market Fuck. If you are an entrepreneur then you’d already know how critical is Product Market Fit to determine the scope of success for your product, and eventually your company. Startup entrepreneurs struggle day and night to figure out their “market fitment”. Yes, there are so many factors that determine your market fitness, including but not limited to: UX, value offered, unique differentiator and yes, price. Based on your audience types, entrepreneurs more often than not try to come with jugad or hacks, to get that one chance with their users. Entrepreneurs usually say and think - only if they’d give my product/service a chance, they’d not want to go anywhere else. And that's the only chance they have got. That usually happens in the form of a demo, a free-ish (read freemium) product, a discount coupon or - a completely free product. Yes. A completely, no strings attached, free product. And then, there are these products that go out on a limb and give it all out, for free. For $0. For zilch. Now, any sane mind would ask - how can somebody give out a product absolutely for free? Isn’t there a cost attached to everything these days? (I am almost about to pay to even breathe. Geez.)