The only thing that matters

Key ideas

Andreessen asserts that market matters more than team or product, so a startup's only job before product/market fit is reaching it, whatever that requires.

1. 1

   Define team, product and market separately

   Andreessen defines team by its suitability for the opportunity, product by how impressive it is to one actual user, and market by the number and growth of potential customers. An excellent application for an operating system nobody runs is the example of why product quality and market size are different things.

2. 2

   Treat market as the deciding factor

   Andreessen takes a third position against those who pick team or product: in a great market, demand pulls the product out of the startup even if it only basically works, and the team can be upgraded along the way. In a terrible market, Andreessen says, neither a strong team nor a strong product will save the company. Andreessen credits Andy Rachleff with the formulation.

3. 3

   Don't count on team or product alone

   Andreessen says he can name many great teams that ruined their products or executed well against terrible markets, and that in his experience the most frequent case is a second- or third-time founder after a big first success. A transformative product can create a new market, as Andreessen says VMware's did, but this is presented as a best case that founders should not count on.

4. 4

   Know what product/market fit feels like

   Andreessen describes the absence of fit as customers not quite getting value, quiet word of mouth, slow usage growth and sales that drag or never close. Fit shows up as customers buying and usage growing as fast as the company can keep up, with money arriving and hiring racing to follow.

5. 5

   Before fit, do whatever it takes

   Andreessen divides a startup's life into before and after fit, and says that before it founders should do whatever is required, including changing people, rewriting the product or moving to another market. Andreessen says founders could ignore almost everything else, while adding that this describes what is possible and is not a suggestion to do so. Founders later credit other causes, in Andreessen's view, because people are poor at understanding causation.

In Marc’s words

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