If a tech solution falls in the forest...

When I was transitioning from a dyed-in-the-wool technologist to a "dirty white-hat sellout who sells things" it was quite the exercise in mental gymnastics. Like many, I'd seen sales and marketing modeled so incredibly poorly that a part of me felt like I had to compromise my own integrity to join that game.

Then, at some point along the journey, a thought occurred to me - Sales and marketing are literally a part of solving the technical problem, equal in importance to building the technical solution.

A solution disconnected from it's problem isn't actually solving anything.

I keep coming back to this phrase when I talk to founders who've built something technically impressive but can't figure out why customers aren't lined up around the block.

Real product-market fit happens when you figure out how to bridge the disconnect between:

• A valuable capability that you've built, and
• A problem that has real pain associated with it, and is in need of that capability.

From there, it's just math. Buy low (your cost to deliver the solution), sell high (the value of solving their pain), scale your distribution and delivery, and delight your customers to ensure that they are part of telling your story to others who need their problem solved too. You don't have a technology problem. You have an arbitrage problem.

The magic isn't in your technology - It's in finding where your thing creates the most value in the area with the most pain.

Stop falling in love with your solution. Start falling in love with their problem.

When you get this right, explaining what you do becomes easy. The customer will literally do it for you.