No one seems to be able to agree what the definition of Product-Market Fit actually is! So feel like I should write a general response.

If you go back to the Andreessen Horowitz post that I linked to above, they credit the term to Andy Rachleff who has a couple of really interesting quotes about PMF under point #2 in the article:

“A value hypothesis is an attempt to articulate the key assumption that underlies why a customer is likely to use your product. Identifying a compelling value hypothesis is what I call finding product/market fit. A value hypothesis identifies the features you need to build, the audience that’s likely to care, and the business model required to entice a customer to buy your product. Companies often go through many iterations before they find product/market fit, if they ever do.”

So he is saying that once you have a proven “Value Hypothesis” that identifies features you need to build (like a VIP cabana), you have product-market fit.

Another great quote from the same part of the article:

“If you address a market that really wants your product — if the dogs are eating the dog food — then you can screw up almost everything in the company and you will succeed. Conversely, if you’re really good at execution but the dogs don’t want to eat the dog food, you have no chance of winning.”

No doubt that Fyre screwed up everything possible with execution — but the dogs were still eating the dog food… so I still say they found product-market fit.

But even if we disagree over the actual definition of what product-market fit is, that doesn’t change my main point!

Which is with the reach that is possible now, you can get your product or business idea out there really quickly so you need to be ready for that. (just look at what happened to Robinhood’s checking and savings account not that long ago)

And if you get caught out, you have to do the right thing and pull the plug and apologize. Which similar to Fyre Festival, most people don’t do — including Robinhood who deleted their original blog post launching their new not-yet-existing product and said they were “excited and humbled”, “realize the announcement may have caused some confusion”, and will “work closely with regulators as we prepare to launch our cash management program.”