[00:00:00] Amber Hinds: Our guest today has founded two unicorns, hyper growth companies with valuations of over 1 billion. Do you want to rapidly scale your product reaching a million active installs or more? Hyper growth is only possible when you achieve true product market fit. Tune in now, as we discuss invaluable insights, strategies, and real world experiences that can help you transform the trajectory of your WordPress product.

[00:00:43] Matt Cromwell: This is WP product tech place where every week we bring you insights, product marketing, business management and growth, customer experience, product development, and more. It's your go to podcast for WordPress product owners by WordPress product owners. And now

[00:01:05] Amber Hinds: Hi, I'm Amber from Equalize Digital.

[00:01:08] Matt Cromwell: And I'm Matt Cromwell from Stellar WP.

[00:01:11] Amber Hinds: And today we're talking about finding product market fit.

[00:01:15] Matt Cromwell: And I'm excited that we get to do that, uh, with somebody who I've been anxious to talk with for quite a while. Our special guest today is Jason Cohen. Jason, thanks so much for being here. Oh

[00:01:27] Jason Cohen: yeah,

[00:01:27] Matt Cromwell: this

[00:01:27] Jason Cohen: is going

[00:01:27] Matt Cromwell: to be fun. Nice. Well, can you introduce yourself to the world just so they all know who you are?

[00:01:35] Jason Cohen: Sure. Uh, I'm the founder of WP engine. Uh, we're about 14 years old. Now we host more of the top one, uh, 10 million WordPress sites than anybody else. We host about 2. 5 percent of all websites on the internet, which is kind of a silly thing. Um, and so if you're in WordPress, I'm sure you've heard of us before.

[00:01:56] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely.

[00:01:58] Amber Hinds: Yeah, we are very excited to have you here. Um, we always like to kick off by talking about why this topic is so important. Um, and I I'll kind of maybe lead by saying, uh, I think a lot of us create our own products sort of because we're, you know, scratching our own edge. Maybe we have a problem.

[00:02:21] A lot of us, if we started as agency owners, we saw something on sites we built, we couldn't find something. And so we thought there's a gap in the market. Um, and I know we've talked a lot on some of our previous episodes that it's not as simple as build it and they will come, uh, and there's a lot of nuance that really goes into identifying a problem, creating a product to solve the problem, marketing it to the right audience, not to mention identifying if that market.

[00:02:48] Is actually large enough to support the kind of growth that we might want as product owners if we're trying to shift from doing the consulting work to being fully product funded. Um, so if our products are not hobbies or lifestyle businesses, I think we really need to start thinking about product market that really.

[00:03:06] Early in the process. And that's kind of why I think it's important, but I'm curious, Jason, if you wanted to share a little bit about why you think WordPress product owners might want to think about this.

[00:03:16] Jason Cohen: Yeah, I don't think it's anything to do with scaling or being a hyperscaler. Like sure. That's, uh, it's fun that I have it on my resume, but the company did before that was SmartBear.

[00:03:24] Um, it, it did very well, but wasn't hyperscaling. It was also bootstrap by the way, and not recurring revenue. So that should, that should sound familiar to a lot of people here. Um, I don't think it has anything to do with, with like hyperscaling, although it's, it's required for it. I don't even like the word lifestyle business because it's a pejorative.

[00:03:41] It shouldn't be because even if I'm a, uh, I don't know, a Silicon Valley venture seeking tech bro, that's also a lifestyle. Is it not? I think it is. It looks like a lifestyle to me. So, uh, we're all building a lifestyle. So to me, that's just a pejorative suggesting or implying that that's a or less impressive lifestyle, perhaps, which I reject that idea.

[00:04:03] Um, there certainly are different goals. You can have a goal of, I never want to hire anyone. I just want to be as profitable as I can, um, and control my time. Okay. Now we're talking, that's a goal, or I want to get big and change the world or whatever, that's a goal. Okay. Now we're talking right. To me though, and different people are different definitions of product market fit.

[00:04:23] So here's my definition. Is that it, what it feels like every day flips from the struggle of every day. You're just trying to find someone else to buy it. It's very hard to do. Maybe they leave in, you know, most customers leave in a year, so they're not sticky and like everything is scratching and clawing and difficult and unclear how to do that.

[00:04:45] And then there's this moment, if you reach this magic place of fit where that flips, the orders start coming in so fast and you don't even know why half the time. You're like, I don't know. I didn't really do anything. You say, of course you did do something. Maybe there's luck. It doesn't, whatever. Like it's totally different now.

[00:05:03] Now it's everything you can do to keep up with it. You're trying to keep up with tech support. You're getting behind there just for volume. People are wanting features, finding bugs just because now there's a lot of them and it just feels completely different. Now, whether that's quote unquote hyper scaling is sort of irrelevant.

[00:05:17] Um, I don't know. There's lots of examples of people, especially like on indie Twitter type of type of communities where you can see in their, in their growth charts and things where they hit product market fit and very few of them are hyperscaling companies. So that's, it's not about that. You would say, you would say that finding that is necessary, but not sufficient to be hyperscaling, right?

[00:05:38] Cause obviously if you're going fast, this must be happening, of course. But, but the point being like, this is true of all companies. This was true of Yoast and this was true of gravity. And this was true of Divi, like none of those are hyperscaling companies. All of them first didn't have, and then eventually found product market fit.

[00:05:54] Those of course found it years ago. That's why we know who they are and stuff. Right. So it's really about this, this magic moment where things start really working and you're keeping up with the demand rather than scratching and clawing to find the demand. And anyone with any kind of company, I think should be seeking that not because it's

[00:06:14] Amber Hinds: more about stability.

[00:06:16] Jason Cohen: It's that it's working. Yeah, that's a, it's as simple as that. It's that it's working no longer just this, like everything's so hard to do. That means it's not working yet. Yeah. Fitting would be that word. Right. And so I have certain ways that I look at that one is yes, that the growth rate changes again.

[00:06:34] It doesn't mean it has to be hyper growth, quote unquote, but it goes from like, Oh my gosh, the growth rate. It's so hard to like, okay, finally. It's just, it's growing and it may not be the fastest thing ever, but like something's shifted. It almost always looks like that. Um, I forgot if you mentioned, but I've been, I've been writing about stuff like this for 17 years online.

[00:06:54] So I'm not here to promote anything in particular, but I do have an article which has, The data I'm talking about right now, it shows for many companies, uh, only like one or two are VC funded. All the rest are not funded. And yet it's the same curve of like, it's so hard. Oh, it's going. So that's one thing.

[00:07:12] And this feeling, this everyday feeling like I'm describing. And then the last thing I would put on that is people come back and buy again at high rates, high rates depends on a lot of things is a recurring revenue or not. Uh, because even people that buy once they still come back. Like you need them to come back and get upgrades.

[00:07:30] You need them to come back and buy the next version. You need them to come back and buy the next product you make. Like I buy anchor, uh, I love anchor, um, power strips. So I'm a repeat buyer. It's not recurring revenue, but I am a repeat buyer. And they could, they could measure whether they have fit with me based on whether I keep buying stuff, or at least I bought a lot and not just one thing.

[00:07:50] Right. So of course it depends on, uh, it depends on whether it's, it's, it's a B2C. Usually has a higher cancellation rate, for example, than B2B, the bigger the business, usually the lower the cancellation rate. So the exact rate of like, what's good, that does depend on some stuff. But the bottom line is the customers are showing you that they actually want the product by using it and paying you for it repeatedly, no matter how you've structured your business model.

[00:08:15] That to me is part of fit. Cause if the customers try it, even buy it, but then stop using it to me, that means it's not a fit because the customers are saying with their behavior, Yeah. And that means it's not a fit.

[00:08:29] Amber Hinds: Yeah. What do you think, Matt? What, how does, how does this fall for in the WordPress land and what you've seen in your experience?

[00:08:37] Matt Cromwell: I, I really liked the examples that you gave that of, uh, other WordPress products, um, that at one point we all kind of were noticing that like all of a sudden it seemed like. It wasn't so hard for Yoast anymore. All of a sudden, it seemed like Gravity just really was picking up and taking off. More recently, I think we all noticed when all of a sudden Elementor was a household name, uh, like, Things like that.

[00:09:02] You, you see like, Oh, this is an up and coming. And then all of a sudden it's like, Whoa, they have 25 people working at their shop. This, it like, it feels like suddenly something switched or changed. Um, and I, I like that as a kind of a metric, an internal metric, um, maybe a little bit subjective metric of, of like when maybe that has reached.

[00:09:23] But I think there's also, I'm sure I need to get more into your article. I'm excited to read it. Um, but there's, I'm sure there's a lot more objective ways to think about it too, uh, especially from a customer perspective. And that's kind of my biggest thing is really trying to think about like the reason why this subject matters so much is because ideally, um, I would hope and expect that everyone wants to be more of a customer centric, uh, organization, customer centric.

[00:09:48] business, um, or, uh, a customer centric product. Um, and the only way to do that is to understand, um, what customers are looking for, uh, in the market that you're targeting, um, and making sure that what you're delivering, um, is that thing in one way or another. Um, I think, I feel like the importance of product market fit, um, is like paramount.

[00:10:15] Like, you don't succeed if you don't have it. Like, if you don't have that, that magic product market fit, you're not going to ever get to that point of just doing, uh, making it easier, of starting to feel like there's a sense of stability, of starting to feel like Folks are finding you and, and choosing you without you having to go and hunt them down as much.

[00:10:35] Um, internally at, at, uh, at Give, Devin and I always called it, um, like the, the lack of success. We called it cockroaching. Here we are still cockroaching, just barely just trying to get along at the very bottom of the barrel. And why are we still in this phase? Um. And it took a while for us, for sure. We'll, we'll get into story time later, but, um, uh, I definitely, I feel like the, the difference is, um, when, when you start listening to your market, uh, to your customers and knowing what they want and how you can, uh, how you can get there, but I really liked in your article, Jason, um, is I feel like I see that journey just in the outline of how you outlined everything out.

[00:11:16] You talk about personal fit and market fit, customer fit specifically, of course. Um, build and ship the SLC. Uh, I want, this is some of the stuff I really want to get into more. Marketing and sales. But that was first early stages of personal fit. It sounds a lot like exactly what so many people say. Like I started building a WordPress product because I wanted to scratch an itch that I had.

[00:11:39] Like I knew that there was this problem that needed to be filled. Um, and I felt like I could fill it. Um, And what I say to my team all the time lately is like, I am not our customer anymore. Like early days for sure. Um, but nowadays I'm not our customer. I don't know for sure what our customer wants and needs.

[00:11:59] I know what I needed 10 years ago. Um, and I know that we built that in the beginning. Uh, but nowadays we've gotten to the stage at which it's like, I need to be trying to pull myself out of that position, um, and make myself secondary and the customer a lot more primary. Uh, see,

[00:12:16] Jason Cohen: my, my view is you're never the customer.

[00:12:18] You were never your customer. You may have had a need that you wanted to collect money so you can give it to something else. Okay. That does not make you your customer

[00:12:30] Amber Hinds: agency, right? Even if you're an agency building things for your clients. The customer is the person who paid you to build the thing, right?

[00:12:39] Jason Cohen: Yeah. If you're an agency building some of your client, you're definitionally not your customer. You're a builder, but even if you personally had the same need, that's great. You're still not the customer because your customers are people who need to raise money for a cause. They're not people who write code and they're definitely not people who might quit their day job or otherwise structure their business around writing code and then selling a product.

[00:13:01] Matt Cromwell: That

[00:13:02] Jason Cohen: none of that is on their minds at all. So you're not like them almost at all. In fact, you just have this tiny sliver of overlap with your customer. So that's still good. Like to me, the, the, the origin story of I needed, so I built it is very common. That's the origin story for me and WPN.

[00:13:17] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:13:18] Jason Cohen: I had a blog and it was popular would get on Hacker News and it would crash.

[00:13:21] So I needed something that stayed up. That is the origin story of, of the, of the need, but my customers are not people who like to go get a VM and set up engine X and set up varnish and set up a staging area and backup my SQL. Those are not my customers. In fact, that's, it's exactly because they're not like me that they need me to do it for them.

[00:13:39] Right. And they're willing to pay to have someone else do it for them. So it is a great spark and it gives you a personal connection to the, to the Problem. Which is often good. Not always like the, you know, the guy who started Uber, we're not taxi drivers. It doesn't have to be that way, but yeah, it usually is.

[00:13:59] And it's great, but you should never confuse the fact that you had, uh, that you, that you had a, you noticed a certain problem that maybe even you had, you should never confuse that with saying I'm like my customer, indeed, I think that's one of the problems is people think I already understand my customer because we shared this one thing.

[00:14:19] Matt Cromwell: That is

[00:14:19] Jason Cohen: completely false. That's why they're not coming because you're not like that at all. And you weren't even on day one.

[00:14:26] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, that's a really good point. I like it. I mean, I think that's where a lot of us start. Like you said in the beginning, scratching that itch and thinking like, Oh, this is going to serve all of my needs that I feel like I have right now.

[00:14:38] And that's why it's going to be great. Well, it's like, well, how many people have exactly those exact set of needs? Uh, or think that those exact needs can be served in exactly that way that you're answering them. Um, yeah. Yeah, probably not as many as you'd like.

[00:14:54] Amber Hinds: Yeah, I, I think it'd be interesting to explore that a little bit on the, you know, if we're not our customers, which we're not, how can we best, you know, is there a good thing?

[00:15:04] And I know you touched on this a little bit in your article, which we did link, um, in the, the chats for everybody, um, if you want to open it up, but, um, You know, customer interviews, is there other ways, maybe some ways that some WordPress plugins can validate? Because I think that's really important. And, and I don't know, like, I think sometimes you're like, Oh, just put it on.

[00:15:26] org for free, make a free version and see how many people install it. But I don't think that that always translates to willingness to pay. Like, I think actually Yoast is probably a really good example of that because my understanding is the conversion rate on the Yoast plugin is very low, um, or at least it was and verse people that are like, Oh yeah, I'll put it on every website, but I'm never going to buy it.

[00:15:47] I'm only going to use a free version or like my friend, Bill Erickson has a plugin called display posts that has over a hundred thousand installs. It's used on wordpress. com. It was used on wordpress. com for a long time. Like they built it in. And at one point I was talking to him and I was like, why don't you, when we're the, the block conversion was happening and he's like, maybe I should make it a block instead of a short code.

[00:16:08] And, and I was like, have you asked people? So he'd like. Sent out email and, and like other communications to people he had contact from, and pretty much everybody was like, no, I won't pay for this. So I don't know, like, how do you, how do you validate that? What, what can a WordPress plugin do if having a free version with a lot of installs is not, you know, A way to do it.

[00:16:31] Jason Cohen: Yeah. And also almost no one has a free version with lots of installs. Fortunately, I mean, Matt's obviously the expert here on WordPress plugins, but what we can do is look at the WordPress repository. There's what plugins in there and the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of them aren't used at all. So putting another one in there doesn't feel like it's going to tell you anything at all.

[00:16:53] Not anything.

[00:16:54] Matt Cromwell: Hmm.

[00:16:55] Jason Cohen: So, and then, yeah, you get the problem of people install it and don't buy it. Why? Because when WordPress is a WordPress is a long tail market, almost everyone in WordPress has no money. Let's just stop right there. I mean, that's why a lot of people start with it, right? It's no money

[00:17:12] Amber Hinds: free.

[00:17:13] Jason Cohen: Most freelancers make almost no money. Most people have websites on WordPress have almost no money. So they're not going to buy anything, probably most now that does not mean you can't make money in WordPress. We know, we all know lots of examples of people that do. So what does that mean? That means when you look at things like a hundred thousand installs, it doesn't matter.

[00:17:36] Cause that's the long tail of people that don't buy anything. What you need is to say, well, wait a minute, but there are, let's say 1, 2, 3, even 10 million WordPress websites of people who do buy stuff. It's just that the hundred or 200 million WordPress installs, they don't. So how do you get to this tiny percentage of the WordPress market who actually spends money on anything and what do they need and how will you get in front of them?

[00:18:08] What do they need? You're going to have to go find out and ask. What you can't do is survey WordPress people because then you're surveying into the long tail. Oops.

[00:18:16] Matt Cromwell: And what

[00:18:17] Jason Cohen: you can't do is just put it in the repository. I mean, also the repositories, it's easy to install, of course, but just putting the repository also does not get you to them.

[00:18:25] You'll get to them, but also everyone else. And the everyone else is so overwhelming in N that you can't see it. So you are going to have to go find your customer number one. And then you're going to have to ask them stuff so that you can get the answers to this and you'll probably need to advertise and market to them.

[00:18:43] I know that's, that sounds bad, but otherwise you're in plugin number 60, 000, whatever in the repository and it's not going to happen. By the way, Some of those people you talked about, they advertise in market. Mm-Hmm. . That's, they, they do that , you know? Mm-Hmm. . One of the reasons why you started hearing about Elementor is 'cause they bought ads , you know, like, yeah.

[00:19:03] So as, as much as it's like, oh, and just any ads, that's how people find out about stuff. ,

[00:19:08] Matt Cromwell: you know, not just any ads. They did like really slick, expensive ads like they. They spent their money for sure. Um, maybe we, I don't know, Amber, maybe we should switch a little bit into story time because Jason, if you would, uh, have some stories of how you went to market, how you went to, um, talk to customers, find the customers, ask the right people the right questions, uh, in order to, to grow your business, that would be really great to hear.

[00:19:36] Amber Hinds: Yeah. What, what, what have you done in your experience to, uh, Um, and then you can actually find those people and validate.

[00:19:46] Jason Cohen: Yeah. So, um, this is another area where, um, again, I have written up the process that I used in detail. So if you want to cop, I'll give you the outline, but if you want to copy this again, there's a, there's an article that, uh, It gives it in great detail.

[00:20:00] Um, so, and by the way, we were just talking about before the call, things like analytics and ads. I don't have any ads and I don't have Google analytics. I don't have any of that kind of stuff. Nothing's tracking you. Like everything's all clean. So there's no reason not to go get the information. So when I started WP engine, I actually had a different idea first.

[00:20:23] It was for this marketing tool and it wasn't a terrible idea. Um, but unlike my previous companies, I was like, I think I need to go, Talk to people first and see if anyone will buy this before I build it. And that was actually a novel, a relatively novel idea because for example, the lean startup wouldn't have, didn't come out for another two years.

[00:20:41] Right? So that wasn't a thing like nowadays, it's just part of our psyche. All these things like, like doing scrum and having a fast cycle and get in shipping quickly. And if you haven't shipped your, you're not embarrassed by the first thing you shipped, you shipped too late, all these kinds of things that hadn't happened yet.

[00:20:57] So it was relatively, Strange to think maybe you should talk to customers first. And so I, I, uh, I tried to evaluate this, this marketing tool. And what would happen is I would ask people about, I would show people what it is. And then they would say, one person would say, Oh, this is a great idea. You know what you should do with it?

[00:21:15] Use this to track ads because reasons, reasons. Then the next person would say, this is so great. You know what you should do is use this to track sales leads because you could do this, that, and the other thing. And then the next person would say, this is great. You should, it should be freemium and just, uh, like get a huge base and then convert them because reasons, reasons.

[00:21:32] And the next person is like, this should be 10 grand a month sold through large agencies because they could make so much money off of this. You only need a few customers at reasons reasons. And so, in other words, I just got all this different, uh, dissonance and I didn't, I couldn't decide what to build.

[00:21:49] So even though there were some kernel of good ideas there, it felt like, I don't know what this is. This is not converging on something real, which is actually interesting point. If you just ask someone, is this good? And they say, yes, You see you, you would have thought you validated it, but you didn't for the reason I just gave because you're not valid.

[00:22:06] Of course, you have a couple of good ideas. Otherwise you wouldn't be all excited and talking to people. Of course, that's not what you're validating. What I realized there is no, I'm validating. Is there a business? And that's going to mean all kinds of things. Who am I selling to? Is there a consistent segment that I can identify and name?

[00:22:22] That I'm selling to and what specific problem do they have and what language do they use when they talk about it? Cause it's their language. It needs to go on the homepage, not the way I think about it. So in WordPress, I might, I might say something like server, but they may say something like platform or service or something like who knows, or they might say hosting,

[00:22:41] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:22:41] Right.

[00:22:42] Jason Cohen: And so what do they say? Cause that's, that's the keywords that go in the ads. That's what goes on the homepage. Not what I want to say. Um, how much money do they have? How did they spend the money? How was that budgeted? How often does that happen? Um, what are they comparing it to? I mean, there's like a million things you have to, there's not all of them, right?

[00:22:58] But there's a million things to figure out, to ask, is this a business that's what you're trying to validate? Not is this idea good? Cause sure. You have a couple of good ideas. I could tell you that right now you're done.

[00:23:08] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. So,

[00:23:09] Jason Cohen: So then when I started validating WP engine, I took a different tack with this, uh, this idea of, um, I'm trying to validate the business.

[00:23:18] How would I do that? So I took more. I don't want to say it was like science or an experiment because that's taking it too far. But let's say. Inspired by that. I thought, okay, what are my hypotheses about what the market is? It's freelancers, not big agencies. It's brands, not agencies. Uh, how many sites a year does a freelancer make?

[00:23:39] Uh, I want to have one theory I had was, uh, freelancers run 20 websites and so they have to manage the passwords and they don't have a good place for that. Is that true? I don't know. That's my hypothesis. I have to go find out, right? Like, okay, there's one other question I think is really cool. And I heard it from Bob Moesta, who is, um, one of the jobs to be done.

[00:24:01] One of the people that claim to invent jobs to be done. There's several people who claim to invent it. I don't know or care, but he's one of them. He's super smart anyway. And all this stuff is really good regardless. One of the questions he asked, which I love is what makes someone wake up and say, today is the day I'm going to switch WordPress hosting providers.

[00:24:21] Using me as an example, right? What? Cause no one says that like, who, wait, nobody wants to do that. That's a pain in the ass. Like it just wouldn't even occur to you, but sometimes it does. What is the trigger? What is the circumstance where I'm going to do it? And what is that? So for example, um, someone gets hacked.

[00:24:41] And they find out which is a pretty big one because, uh, we find that about 12 percent of all WordPress sites are hacked.

[00:24:48] Amber Hinds: People don't even know.

[00:24:49] Jason Cohen: I'm hacked and I find out. That's why I said that much less frequent. Um, and so it feels it's so bad. Like I'm paying someone probably like. An extra digit per hour to unscrew it because it's urgent, like calling a plumber, right?

[00:25:05] Um, I'm never sure if it's all clean. I'm never sure if the vector that they came in is fixed. It probably isn't because I don't know how they came in. That could have been hacked a year ago. Anyway. Um, so. You feel violated, you know, you just never want this to happen again. So that's a moment where you might say, okay, I never want this to happen again.

[00:25:25] I'm going to go to a hosting provider that says they'll do security. Maybe they'll say they'll fix it for me. Something that I never want this to happen again. I'm ready to buy. Now I'm ready to move. Now I'm actively looking. Now's the day that answers the Bob question. There's a couple other reasons.

[00:25:41] That's one of them that, that answers that for a company like WP engine. But this is a perfect kind of a wonderful question to find out during validation, because that's going to, because you can already start thinking. Okay. So what ads am I going to run? And what am I, what am I going to say? What keywords is it?

[00:25:58] Cause just saying WordPress hosting, that's obviously fine as a blanket thing, but that's not hitting on that triggering moment. That's what's going to give me the sale, not selling to them when they're not looking or not that interested selling to them where they're highly motivated to buy now. That's what I need to go get in my marketing.

[00:26:14] So of course these questions don't just answer what ad should I run, but look how valuable it is to, to then go, you know, Test and blah, blah, blah, to try to figure it out. So all these kinds of questions I'm listing here, these are the kinds of things we're trying to validate. And so I would write down all these theories of these kinds of questions.

[00:26:34] Um, then I would, then I did the following. I said, okay, I can't just ask someone something like, do you care about security? Like, do you care that there's hackers everywhere constantly trying to get in? Cause then they'll say like, Yeah. Cause it'll sound dumb if they say no, I can't ask that. I'm not getting any kind of real information if I ask that I've got to ask something that doesn't lead the witness.

[00:26:56] So each one of these things I thought, this is just a literal spreadsheet and the next column I would put, I would, I would like try to form a question that didn't lead the witness. So it could be as simple as how do you think about security? What do you do for security? If anything, um, just really open ended questions that don't lead the witness.

[00:27:14] That kind of stuff. So there's my questions, then I would answer them. Now, then what I would find when I would do this is some of my assumptions were true were correct. And a lot of them were wrong. And then there was new stuff. I didn't even consider. But since I asked open ended questions. I would hear these new things if I just asked yes or no questions and stuff, I wouldn't have probably, I probably wouldn't have gotten these new things that I didn't think of before, not only not leaving the witness, but open ended so I can learn something new.

[00:27:45] And so, of course, you, you adjust your hypotheses as you go and adjust the questions and so forth. Eventually, it got to the point where, and by eventually, I mean, dozens of interviews eventually got to the point where it was boring, like from the answers to the first few questions, I could pretty much tell you what they were going to say.

[00:28:01] Matt Cromwell: And that's

[00:28:02] Jason Cohen: the moment where you've got it. You can stop, you're not learning anything new with this process. It's time to stop. Now, that doesn't mean, you know, everything. It just means this process is not working to give you more information. You should stop this process and build the damn thing already because you have enough, you know, and, and continue to learn.

[00:28:20] Cause you're, you will still be wrong in various ways. Um, and so that is roughly speaking the way that from then I did that for WP engine and then from then on. I've used this same thing over and over again, whether it's for big feature areas within a product or brand new products, like when we did Atlas a couple of years ago, which is headless WordPress, we did it.

[00:28:43] So the same process, but to try to evaluate stuff. So again, not trying to claim like it's the best and it always works or it's, it's, et cetera, but, but it's semi, it's not scientific, but it tries to get this idea of, How do you know you're learning if you don't write down what you think is true and how do you, how do you, um, at least try to be objective about how you're gathering the information, like give it a good try, you know, and so it at least forces you to maybe be in a better posture as you're doing that and trying to learn stuff.

[00:29:15] Matt Cromwell: That's awesome. That is a whole lot to chew on. Oh my goodness. We should just like break out that, that segment sometime to give to folks. Um, Amber, what's your story? What's, uh, what have you, um, uh, I'm too excited. I'm taking over. I'm sorry.

[00:29:33] Amber Hinds: Yeah, no, no, no, no. Uh, I, I mean, I, I think we're still trying to figure it out.

[00:29:39] Right. We're, we're early. We haven't hit that. I mean, every once in a while we have someone come by something and my We have a, you know, it's the, I'll tell you how small our volume is, is that we have a, a zap that hits Edd and posts in a specific thread in our base camp, which are predetermined every time we get a sale, right?

[00:30:00] Because. There's still enough that that's, or not enough that it's overwhelming. And every once in a while, we'll get something where my partner, Chris will be like, Oh, I've never talked to that person before. I never heard of them. And we're like, Oh, that's, that's exciting. Right. But a lot of times we know because they've asked questions or whatever.

[00:30:17] Uh, so we're, we're still trying to figure it out. I, you know, I've thought a lot about, there's another article that Jason has, which maybe we can, um, throw in there for us. And, um, what was it? The, the problem article, where you talk about, you know, is there actually a problem? Right? And, and are you the right person to solve the problem?

[00:30:40] And, and that kind of thing, which I think is probably step one on this product market fit, which is making sure you're addressing the right problem. And I've thought about this one a lot, not just because you talk about how people feel about accessibility in that article, which is also some thoughts that you and I talked about via email a couple of years ago.

[00:30:58] Um, but I think, uh, one thing that I like about that problem, that article, and that I've thought about in my own journey is, One, I think size of market is really important. Like talking about, you know, maybe you can, it's okay to have a smaller market size when it's a B2B versus a B2C. Um, or maybe if your pricing is a little higher than you can still be successful in a higher.

[00:31:24] In a smaller market than if you're like very cheap, you've got to have a lot more customers right to be able to be able to survive and all of that. So I know we thought about that a lot with our pricing and our positioning and that kind of stuff. Um, I think where we are currently is we're and I mentioned this pre show like we're in the land where.

[00:31:42] We've been doing a lot currently to create demand for our product. We run the accessibility meetup. I was like, Hey, we need to bring back WordPress accessibility day conference. And yes, I want to educate people on accessibility, but let's also be real. If people don't know about accessibility. They're not going to purchase my product.

[00:32:04] Right. And so a lot of our marketing efforts have been focused on doing things to drive demand in some of the broader market. That's larger than that really small market of higher ed and gov, which they know. And they're the ones that typically we don't have to talk to. They just show up and purchase the thing.

[00:32:24] Um, not as much government. Sometimes we have talked to them, but, um, but I feel like that's kind of where we started. I'd use. Kind of feel like we're seeing a little bit of a shift now, but I'm definitely in that land of trying to figure out, like, how can I reach those broader things, which honestly, I, you know, since, since I have you here, Jason, like, uh, I think a follow up on that, that I'm curious about, Matt, maybe you have thoughts or things from your story that you could share as well as like, how, how long do you think WordPress product owners is?

[00:32:57] Should focus on like that timeline for achieving product market fit. I know everyone's goals are different, but is there a point at which you feel like it's so, it should be so obvious, right? That this isn't going to work or you should stop. Not that I'm saying I'm going to do that, but just like broadly thinking about our audience and everyone, right?

[00:33:16] Like we talk a lot about failing fast and I wonder if some of us try for too long,

[00:33:23] Matt Cromwell: you know? Interesting. That's a tough one. I mean, for me, product, the question of product market fit is one that goes on always for forever. Like you have to keep continue no matter what. But I think part of what you're saying is there's a question behind the question there of like, What if you just don't seem to be getting it?

[00:33:45] What if it just doesn't seem to be clicking exactly right? Uh, is it actually a business problem? Is it a marketing problem? Is it a product problem? Is it a product market fit problem? Um, there's a lot of different moving parts in, in that question behind the question. Um, I do think that, that in the WordPress space, especially, we see plenty of folks who, who succeed fast and fail fast.

[00:34:11] Uh, we see products come and go all the time. Um, and I do think it has a lot to do with their goals of like, if they're expecting to be the next Elementor and they're just not like, that's not a big surprise. Like, um, but It's hard to compare

[00:34:27] Amber Hinds: yourself against a plugin that's raised multiple millions of dollars in VC funding though.

[00:34:31] Like you're just not. That's

[00:34:32] Matt Cromwell: If that's your goal, you know, your, your tactics are going to have to be really serious and you're going to have to double down in a lot of areas and it's not going to happen overnight. Uh, Elementor's success wasn't overnight. So, um, GiveWP's wasn't overnight. Nobody's is overnight.

[00:34:48] Um, but I do think that if you get a sustained. Voice of your audience of your customers of like, um, yes, but if they're constantly just being like, yes, but like, yes, I chose you, but I'm always looking at your competition. Yes, this is fine. But I really want 10 other things. Um, yes. Okay. For now. But, I'm not going to stick around next year.

[00:35:17] If you just keep getting that type of feedback over and over and over again, something's off in one way or another. Um, something's amiss that, uh, I do think, um, asking the right questions is going to be a big deal. Um, and then you have to ask whether or not you have the capacity to do that because asking those questions takes a long time.

[00:35:36] Like Jason is highlighting, it takes a long time to do that process. Um, especially if you're. You know, solo founder who's doing all the things all the time. You can't just like stop all of your activity to do all of that. Um, and then after you get those insights, you have to implement the changes. And then you have to wait to see that change make an impact on your business.

[00:35:58] I mean, you're talking about, uh, six to nine to 12 months. Um, Period at minimum for that type of pivot. Um, it's, that's a hard question. Honestly, I, I have talked with a few, um, entrepreneur product owners recently who are asking themselves that question. Um, and, um, and it's a tough one. I don't know, Jason, does that ring with you?

[00:36:21] Jason Cohen: Yeah, no, it's super, it's very hard. Cause there's not going to be an objective answer, but I do have a lot of techniques you can use to try to get to an answer.

[00:36:29] Matt Cromwell: Nice. Um,

[00:36:30] Jason Cohen: So first of all, no, I don't think there's a timeline you see people reaching it in three months, three years, you know, never this and that.

[00:36:40] And if you gave up after a year, how do you know it wouldn't have worked after two years? You don't nobody does. Right? So I don't think you can put a timeline and you can't know. That's actually one thing. That's just nice to know right off the bat. You can't know. All right. So, so what, what can you use to make the decision?

[00:36:57] Because it's really indecision. How do you decide? So one way would be a simple time box. Just say, like, if I don't, if I'm not a 10 K MRR by the end of the year, I'm going to stop.

[00:37:08] Matt Cromwell: Of course, all

[00:37:08] Jason Cohen: those numbers and timelines are your own invention. I just made that up, but you could just simply decide that if it's not going well enough as defined by something objective, like revenue, you want to change because, because you do want to buy, you do want to do something that's giving you the life that you want.

[00:37:23] And without enough money, it's not the life you want or whatever your personal calculus is. Right. Another one. Are you enjoying and. Are you enjoying it still? Are you learning from it still? If the answer is yes, and it's dragging on, even if it never works, but you like it and you're learning that is value.

[00:37:42] Amber Hinds: Like on your desk bed, you're

[00:37:43] Jason Cohen: not going to say, gee, I wish I stopped this interesting thing that I was pursuing that I loved. I'm so glad I stopped that. I don't think that's what you're going to say. So in other words, if you're loving the journey, there's a lot to that. Now you may not want to do something for 10 years.

[00:37:58] That's not working out because you like it. Although maybe you should. I mean, maybe that's not the worst thing to optimize for. It depends again on your goal. If your goal is I want to be making half a million dollars a year post tax, then what I just said, isn't good enough. Cause that's not what that is.

[00:38:14] That's a different goal, right? So of course it depends on your goals, but it could be that that's sufficient. You can look at the rate of progress, meaning. If maybe every month, but certainly in, let's say, every two, three months, the number of customers coming in is growing up and up. It's just not going up fast, but it is increasing.

[00:38:30] That might give you confidence that like, look, eventually I'll simply accumulate enough people, even if it never breaks and I'll at least have a business that's mine, but also maybe it'll, you know, It'll accelerate from there. It's possible. If that's not the case, if an absolute numbers, it's flat or down, it's really, really hard to turn things around that are doing that.

[00:38:50] And especially if the end is so small that it's hard to tell. It's like, well, you're kind of answering your question yourself. It's just not working and you're not making progress. Lack of progress again, not after three months, but after progress after a year or two, three years, like that's a pretty good indication.

[00:39:05] Uh, it's not going the right way. Okay. A lot of times with these things where it goes, it's, it looks kind of flat. Then it goes, when you zoom into the flat, it is going up month by month, just slowly.

[00:39:14] Matt Cromwell: It's

[00:39:14] Jason Cohen: very rarely going down and then comes up. That's a super rare graph to see. So hence the rate of progress being a good one.

[00:39:20] Um, have you run out of ideas? Like if you're like, okay, I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. That's not a bad sign. Maybe you should try this. But if it's like, dude, I've tried everything. I'm just gonna have to think of something else. But what, that's a bad sign. You've kind of run out of your options.

[00:39:38] Matt Cromwell: That may

[00:39:38] Jason Cohen: be a signal that like, is it impossible? As we said at the beginning, you don't know, nobody knows, but like, that's just a bad place to be where there's fewer things to try. Um, imagine that it's the same, it's going the same as it's going now, but it's 12 months in the future. Does that sound good?

[00:39:56] Are you like, that's cool. Okay. Well then maybe that's what will happen, but you'd be like, Oh, well, then you'd better set again, a time box or something, maybe even stop now, but if not stop now, then you're like, okay, but if in three months, it's not at least this, then I'm on the path to what I just said I didn't want to do.

[00:40:12] So just even that simple question might start setting up some of the answers to the other questions. There's opportunity costs. If I weren't doing this, what would I be doing? Have you really explored the answer to that? Really? And if you haven't, it's like, well, then you don't know compared to what, like, it's really hard to decide to do a, when you don't want to BC or D is like, I don't know.

[00:40:34] So go actually figure out what BC and D might be. And if C sounds really good, that's, or, you know, that starts to be kind of interesting. Um, I would say one bad reason is stuff like sunk cost or fear. Or fear of letting down other people or looking bad. Obviously those emotions are very real. So of course I'm not negating the emotion.

[00:40:55] In fact, just the reverse because the emotion is so real. And make so much sense. It can overwhelm your logic. It can overwhelm your decision making process because the motions are real. But real though they may be, we probably can agree, but that's a bad way to decide. Like if you know, it's not working.

[00:41:17] And the reason you're still doing this is because you don't want to let other people down or look bad. Well, you're still are going to let them down and you still are going to look bad just later after you've wasted more time. There's no way like you're right. And yet delaying is not the answer, even though you're right about the emotion.

[00:41:33] So one reason not to do it is, is, are those things. So, so while you can't make them go away, you can say, all right, why am I still doing this? Aside from that? What are the actual reasons? You know, then again, like that might lead to, and that there is an answer or that there isn't. So obviously none of these give you the answer.

[00:41:51] Again, uh, uh, Objectively, but, but like, to me, these are the kinds of questions that start poking at it where maybe, maybe in your gut, you start feeling what the answer really, in fact, should be. I

[00:42:03] Matt Cromwell: really like that because they all help you towards what you said at the beginning is that at the end of the day, this is a decision that you make all those things are helped are helping you to.

[00:42:13] Make that decision and make that decision. Be an informed one that you feel like you can justify in the future and be like, well, this is why I made that decision and I still feel good about it to this day. That's, that's really good stuff. Um, in terms of story time for me, I'll, I'll, I'll try to give a really practical example.

[00:42:32] Most recent examples actually, I think in terms of product market fit, uh, on my side of the fence is, um, Everything we did with iThemes turning into SolidWP, um, that was actually quite a journey. And, um, the whole impetus for why we decided to rebrand that product has a lot to do with a lot of the questions that Jason was just raising about that product at the time or that, that brand at the time.

[00:43:01] Uh, iThemes had gone through multiple kind of like identity crises over its 13 year history, um, before I came on board with, uh, with Devin Walker and, um, they had changed, uh, hats multiple times. They had agency work with them before they were doing web dev work. They had a e commerce platform. They sold themes.

[00:43:22] Um, they did all kinds of stuff. Um, and then they ended up having a lot of success specifically with security. Uh, the benefit we had, uh, when we came in, um, was that the whole team, um, the whole iThemes team all had this feeling like, we've kind of jumped the shark when it comes to this brand name and what we're doing, um, we've outlived this, this idea of being called iThemes.

[00:43:48] Um, and, uh, And also all along the time, there was this thing called iThemes training that was going on, led primarily by Nathan Ingram. And, uh, it's a wildly popular community, uh, that he's been growing for, for, I think, eight years now, nine years now. Um, and so we got to walk into that brand with this community of people that loved, uh, The I Themes brand and the products, um, and we got to talk to them all the time.

[00:44:17] So when we came in and said, you know what, this, we really need a refresh of this brand and we want it to focus around where we're successful and not around. Products that we don't sell anymore, like themes. Um, we want it to be more about security and, uh, foundational aspects of websites. Um, we were able to talk to that whole community, um, and hear what they think and why, why are they still sticking around iThemes?

[00:44:43] Why do they like it? What does the value add to them? Uh, what are they looking for in the products that we already offer? What do they want more of? Uh, we heard all the ways in which some of the products were a bit broken. We heard all the ways in which some of the products are making their livelihood possible.

[00:45:00] Um, and so we knew what we needed to double down on and we knew what we needed to fix and we knew what we needed to let go of. Um, and all of that was because of those conversations. Um, the very first one was, which was essentially the brand question. We were like, Hey, If we expired the iThemes brand, how would you feel about it?

[00:45:21] And I was honestly really nervous about that. Um, and uh, resoundingly, they all said, Oh yeah, no. Like, the iThemes brand doesn't mean anything to us. Like, they, they were like, it's, it doesn't, it doesn't represent why we're here. It doesn't represent the products. Like, they all were just like, That's fine.

[00:45:38] Definitely change it to something different. I was like, Oh, good. Like that makes it easy. Um, and then when we, when we, uh, said we're thinking about solid WP, uh, we got very positive responses to that too. They said, yeah, that sounds a lot like why we are here. We like security. We like backups. We like maintenance.

[00:45:56] Like that's why we're here. Um, so a lot of in, in that whole process. Um, and that, that to me was Was excellent experience. Um, the, the other caveat I'll give is on the give side of things. Um, the one thing, one reason why I said earlier that product market fit is like an ongoing forever thing is because the market changes, um, and things continue to evolve all the time.

[00:46:23] Like I, I'm super bothered about the fact that I feel like we have to use the word app in order to gain the right traffic anymore, like we're plugins, you know, but people just say. Do I have that app on my website? And I was like, probably not, but I think you mean a plugin. Like I have to use app in the, in our marketing copy now.

[00:46:43] Uh, that's a silly example, but it's just a way in which the market changes all the time. Um, one of the biggest ways with GiveWP was we were like, we're all about online donations. Let's double down, let's triple down on the term WordPress donation plugin, online donations, online donations, online donations.

[00:47:00] We were doing great killing it on online donations. Then We found out we're missing a whole segment of our audience because they don't care about donations. They care about fundraising, which in their minds is a totally different thing. Um, and so, and they weren't searching for donations. They were searching for fundraising, a fundraising platform, fundraising solution, online fundraising, all those types of things.

[00:47:23] Um, Let me interject a

[00:47:26] Amber Hinds: side note real quick on, on that, the app thing and just the language and all of that. So when we were raising our pre seed round, We talked to a lot of investors outside of WordPress space, and we ended up doing a lot of like scrubbing our website of WordPress. And so we were like, it's a software product.

[00:47:45] Right. And like, that's what it said. But then we realized. People were Googling like accessibility plugin or WordPress accessibility plugin, and we weren't showing up because we had stripped not WordPress. It said WordPress, but we had stripped the word plugin because people. Outside of WordPress. And so like, I do think you have to be very careful about that.

[00:48:08] Like you do, you

[00:48:09] Matt Cromwell: do, you kind of have to do when

[00:48:10] Jason Cohen: we were, when we were raising money, each time we raised money, we have similar kinds of conversations. What happens is we show the strategy of the company and then they would go to the home page. Yeah. And they're like, but your strategy says this, your homepage says that.

[00:48:22] We're like, right, the homepage is not where we put our corporate strategy. It's a marketing site. It's what we put to get people to buy things. Of course, it's not the strategy, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:48:34] Matt Cromwell: That's a good point. Nice. Well, I love the story time stuff. I do think that so much of the insights of what we offer folks are in the specific examples of these types of things.

[00:48:46] Um, I, it's so valuable. Um, and it's sometimes the only way to really be able to learn anything is to By hearing how folks have failed or won or things like that.

[00:48:57] Amber Hinds: So I'll just show real quick for people. Adam, who's watching on YouTube said, uh, when we were talking about that product market fit and how it's not instant, he said the overnight success comes right after 10, 000 hours.

[00:49:11] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:49:11] Amber Hinds: So

[00:49:12] Matt Cromwell: that's from that adage of, of how folks, uh, uh, Become an expert at something that requires 10, 000 hours. If you want to be a expert unicyclist, uh, put in 10, 000 hours, then you're good. Yeah. Adam is a former startup. It's not true. Not necessarily.

[00:49:30] Amber Hinds: Yeah, it could be, it really could be better than not necessarily.

[00:49:33] We

[00:49:34] Jason Cohen: all know lots of entrepreneurs who don't, who did not have 10, 000 hours in their, when they launched their company and, or even when they got product market fit. So, yes, that is true. If you want to be a unicyclist or a concert pianist,

[00:49:48] Matt Cromwell: that's

[00:49:49] Jason Cohen: also the right 10, 000 hours, right? People just say 10, 000.

[00:49:51] It's not 10, 000. It's, it's the right kind, which means there's feedback and it's intentional. There's all this stuff, but right. Yeah. Um, but interestingly in startups, it's not really true.

[00:50:00] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, you can do it a lot quicker or you could do the 10, 000 hours and still see zero success.

[00:50:06] Jason Cohen: I guess the point is that being an expert is not one of the requirements because if it takes 10, 000 hours to become an expert, okay, well, I guess that's not what you need to do.

[00:50:14] Interesting. What do you need to do? Not that. Okay.

[00:50:18] Amber Hinds: So I feel like we could talk to you for like three hours, Jason, and still not have all the magic out of your brain, but. We kind of have to wrap up and we usually like to end with best advice. And I feel like this is a good transition. Cause so what do we need to do, right?

[00:50:32] Like what, what is our best advice for people who are still trying to find product market fit?

[00:50:40] Jason Cohen: Um, it's a big topic obviously. Um, and you put a link already to, uh, to, to my full answer. So here's the, here's like the one thing I'll pick out of there. If there's something that you don't like doing or don't want to do, then probably you're not doing enough of it.

[00:51:00] So if you love writing code, you're probably not selling enough. And

[00:51:05] Matt Cromwell: if you love

[00:51:05] Jason Cohen: designing things, you probably don't have enough features. And if you're an introvert, you're probably not talking to customers enough. And if you're in sale, if you love to make sales, you may not be delivering enough on your promises and so on.

[00:51:20] No, it's not a law of the universe or anything. Just something I noticed about myself as well as others, of course. And as an entrepreneur, as the founder, who tells you, no, who tells you get away from visual studio and go make some customer calls, no, you're the founder. No, one's allowed to tell you that.

[00:51:39] And maybe you're on your own anyway. Okay. So if you don't want to do it, it just isn't going to happen. And you'll say, Oh, I procrastinated or we just decide I don't need marketing. Okay. That's, that's fine that you think that, right. Um, and so I would say it's, it's, it's, um, whatever you feel like, ah, like that, you know, that's something where you should really take a look and say, but is that holding me back really?

[00:52:09] Cause the answer is probably yes.

[00:52:12] Matt Cromwell: Hmm. Nice. That's good. I think that pairs well. We had a conversation recently where folks were like, if you find yourself doing code all the time, maybe you need to outsource the marketing. Um, maybe you need to find partners, uh, in one way or another to help you to do the things that you're not drawn to naturally, but maybe it first takes, it first takes actually taking that subject seriously though, in the first place.

[00:52:38] Jason Cohen: We, we all know a bunch of successful WordPress, uh, companies. Which of them outsource their marketing early on?

[00:52:45] Amber Hinds: I think that we've talked about that a lot, like marketing and sales or even writing blog posts. Cause it's cause that's been hard for me personally. I'll say like, I frequently would be like, I don't have time to write good blog posts, but this year I was like, no, I'm really going to do it.

[00:53:01] And I, we explored a few times having like, there's these outsourced rights, but I'm like, they don't know accessibility. The stuff they give me back is, I'm sorry, it's garbage. Like even companies that are come highly recommended. I'm like, they can't write blog posts for my blog. I'm the only one that can do it.

[00:53:16] And I think outsourcing marketing, it's really hard.

[00:53:19] Jason Cohen: Well, you know, we outsource some, we outsource some of the operations. But not the strategy and not the messaging,

[00:53:25] Amber Hinds: the social media posts, well,

[00:53:27] Jason Cohen: stuff like, like, Oh, we actually need to run an affiliate program. And that's like a full time job. Maybe a few people.

[00:53:32] And a specialty, but that's different than outsourcing or outsourcing your strategy, your positioning, your ideal customer, your core message, your voice, outsourcing that that's who you are. Right. On the other hand, like, okay, we know who we are. We have all this stuff. We have a hundred blog posts. We just need more like that.

[00:53:51] Like you say, maybe that still doesn't work, but maybe it does. Or, or like, could someone else then run ads for you? Given all this material that's already right, maybe, I mean, again, like no matter what it is, there's a lot of charlatans or a lot of people who aren't very good at it. So fair enough, but there's some people that are good.

[00:54:08] So I don't think the answer is, is, is purely never outsource, um, outsourcing who you are. I'm pretty against. And that's often what you don't have at first. That's what you're trying to figure out. You don't know who that is yet. That's not working yet. So you're not sure yet. It's like, right. Someone else isn't going to find that out for you.

[00:54:26] Probably.

[00:54:27] Matt Cromwell: I'll just back up and say, I wasn't trying to suggest that outsourcing marketing is a good idea. I was trying to use it as an example to say, when you, uh, are find yourself drawn to one thing and avoiding that other thing. Yeah. You probably need to figure out how to do that other thing in one way or another.

[00:54:44] If that means outsourcing or something, or if it means partnering up, if it means trying to get other team members to do it, if it means eating the frog and you have to do it, whatever it is, um, one way or another, figure that out.

[00:54:56] Amber Hinds: Well, I wonder if that's an argument for having a co founder. Honestly, I mean, like our team, there's three of us, there's a developer, there's me, who's good at marketing.

[00:55:06] And there's my husband, Chris, who's our COO and understands taxes and. Well, keeping an HR and hiring people and doing all the things that make stuff run in the background that I do not even want to touch. Right. Like, I think when you have, if you're a solo founder, it's a lot harder because you have to do all the stuff, whether you like it or not.

[00:55:27] Jason Cohen: Yeah, at least it is an argument to have a co founder. Of course, you can easily find stuff online, quote unquote, proving that you should, that co founders are better. Um, to me, it's a little more nuanced. I think there's a lot of people who enjoy being solo founders. And, and it would be worse for them if they were with someone.

[00:55:45] So I think it's quite personal, but you're absolutely, I 100 percent agree with you. It's an argument too. It's, it's the argument in the four column, right? Um, as long as y'all are different, if you're both the same, then that argument goes away, which is interesting also to note, because sometimes that's what it is.

[00:56:01] We're both coders like, well, that's actually not that good.

[00:56:04] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, absolutely. Who knew that diversity

[00:56:08] Jason Cohen: was a good idea? Hmm.

[00:56:10] Matt Cromwell: Interesting. Never heard that one

[00:56:11] Jason Cohen: before.

[00:56:13] Matt Cromwell: I think on, in the best advice column for me, uh, when it comes to product market fit, um, my, my best advice is always just to jump into the support queue, jump in there.

[00:56:26] Like you are getting feedback every single day. whether you like it or not. Um, and that is the ripest, easiest spot to go and find it. Uh, because customers don't typically hide their feelings. Um, if they're on, especially the ones who are unhappy, they're just like, this sucks because of X, Y, and Z. And until you fix these things, I'm not going to be happy.

[00:56:48] And maybe I'm not going to renew. Well, I don't know. Maybe taking that advice seriously, um, is probably ground, uh, zero for product market fit. Um, I, I love at Automatic in particular, I've always, I talked to a lot of different, uh, support folks at Automatic and I love the way that they make all of their new hires Do two weeks of support, uh, frontline support, um, just so that you can get to know the customers of automatic, uh, usually wordpress.

[00:57:15] com customers. Um, they even have really prominent hires, like, uh, one of their old designers, uh, went through the whole process and he did a blog about it, which was really interesting. Um, I think that that's really smart and really useful for everyone to be. Comfortable and familiar with what it takes to support the product in one way or another and just to realize the perception that customers have about your product because they'll tell you they're like, Hey, compared to this other product over here that I'm looking at, you're not stacking up well.

[00:57:46] And if you want to make me happy, here's what it looks like. Um, they might sound grouchy and they might sound like they're like, uh, um, Bribing you or, uh, but, uh, but it's real feedback. I always just try to say feedback is feedback. Just take it. Um, try to maybe subtract the snark, uh, if you can. Um, but take it seriously.

[00:58:08] Um,

[00:58:09] Amber Hinds: yeah. So my advice from the seat of someone who's still figuring this out, right. Is don't be afraid to pivot. I think that's something we've found, like adjusting and adapting to strategies, um, that kind of thing, and also seek out. Others that you can bounce off what you're working on and what your challenges are.

[00:58:31] I think that, like, I've gotten so much value out of other people in the community. And I mean, that is one of the huge strengths of the WordPress community is there are a lot of people there. Um, and I think sometimes you have to get out of your own echo chamber. To hear whether it's from customers or other people who know the industry well, um, to make you rethink some assumptions you have that might be getting in the way of you actually achieving product market fit.

[00:58:59] Matt Cromwell: Nice. Love it.

[00:59:02] Amber Hinds: Well, we are at time. Um, Jason, do you want to share where people can find you online?

[00:59:09] Jason Cohen: Sure. It's, uh, all these articles are on a smart bear. com and on Twitter, I'm a smart bear. And of course the company is WP engine.

[00:59:19] Amber Hinds: Well, thank you so much for joining us for everyone watching. Be sure to tune in next week as we discuss, uh, how many features you should be putting in your free product or not with Daniel Iser, the founder of pop up maker.

[00:59:34] Matt Cromwell: Love it. And a special thanks to Post Status as always for being our green room where we organize all these things in the back. If you're enjoying these shows, uh, do us a favor and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, do all the YouTube things that make everything work, and, um, tell your friends and hopefully we'll see you next week.

[00:59:49] Thanks so much, everybody.

[00:59:51] Amber Hinds: Thanks.