Product-Market Fit for New Products and Startups

2 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

Methods to achieve faster product validation and market traction. Ideal for new product introductions and early-stage startup leadership.

Product-Market Fit for New Products and Startups

2 Weeks

Cohort-based Course

Methods to achieve faster product validation and market traction. Ideal for new product introductions and early-stage startup leadership.

Hosted by

Ken Oestreich

Ex CMO and VP Product Marketing for high-growth B2B SaaS Firms.

Ken Oestreich

Ex CMO and VP Product Marketing for high-growth B2B SaaS Firms.

Course overview

Nailing product-market fit is the precursor to growth and go-to-market actions.

Do you think that growth is simply a function of more marketing and sales? Wondering why customers aren't beating a path to your door? Maybe you haven't achieved product-market fit.

I define product-market fit as tuning the product to meet the needs of the Ideal Customer Profile, while also tuning the Ideal Customer Profile to meet the product’s intended value. Fit is indicated by customer engagement and Sustainable growth.

This interactive cohort-based seminar focuses on the “How” of achieving and maintaining product-market fit (PMF) for B2B businesses – with 7 actionable techniques to use with your team. Whether you’re a senior member of an established company, or a founder of an early-stage startup, the principles and structures are the same.

Through a combination of light coursework, case-studies, group interaction, and 1:1 sessions, we will develop approaches to quantify the status of your current PMF, how to structure a precision-guided Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and how to determine / measure leading PMF indicators. This course assumes you already know the basics of messaging and positioning.

You’ll return to your team with a set of tools, templates, metrics, and evaluation techniques to ensure that you can also maintain PMF for ideal market traction. That is, how to work cross-organizationally to continuously adjust products to meet ICP needs, as well as how to adjust your ICP to fit product benefits.

The course Includes:

✓ How to construct precision-guided ICPs

✓ Product, marketing, and organizational PMF readiness

✓ Symptoms of (and corrections for) poor PMF

✓ Templates & worksheets for team use

✓ Metrics and measurement guidance across teams

✓ How to structure and optimize MarTech and instrumentation

✓ Building a balanced inbound and outbound marketing function

This senior-level workshop is for:

Founders - Needing to establish quantifiable market validation for a strong entry into Series-A/B funding.

Product Leaders / CMOs - Introducing a new product or penetrating a new market; seeking a successful product introduction.

Senior Product Marketers or Product Managers - looking to improve market traction, to evolve your go-to-market strategy.

Founders - Needing to establish quantifiable market validation for a strong entry into Series-A/B funding.

Product Leaders / CMOs - Introducing a new product or penetrating a new market; seeking a successful product introduction.

Senior Product Marketers or Product Managers - looking to improve market traction, to evolve your go-to-market strategy.

What you’ll take from the workshop

Building Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Developing a crisp approach and definition for your intended audience that perfectly meets your product's value.

PMF Tools and Templates

To use to structure customer research, instrumentation, experimentation, and inter-team collaboration.

Leading Indicators and Metrics

How to select PMF metrics, as well as early-indicator metrics that help guide your product and go-to-market motions.

Process and Collaboration Guidance

Repeatable feedback approaches for market-sensing, measurement and feedback, plus Team Models to involve the entire org to create a PMF focus.

Confidence, Direction, Agenda

You'll depart with the ability to create investor and/or management confidence in the success of your new product or venture.

Meet your instructor

Ken Oestreich

I'm bringing to this course over 25 years of Product Marketing and Go-to-Market leadership for new product development, product introductions, and category creation in the B2B space. As a former VP and CMO, I've led cross-discipline teams at recognized companies like Citrix, EMC and Auth0, as well as smaller high-growth startups. Notably, I was part of the core team that took Citrix’s cloud platform from zero to what is now foundational to their billion-dollar business.

As a result of celebrated successes (and some startup failures!) coupled with an engineering background, I've developed and now use a methodical approach to achieving/maintaining product-market-fit. My "super power" is applying engineering thinking to marketing - Creating clarity to achieve the right outcome-based metrics/goals that align teams.

Today, I serve as consultant and advisor to marketing / product leaders of smaller firms, fulfilling a passion for coaching and execution. I'm a mentor for First Round Capital as well as for Techstars.

I hold a BSE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Columbia University.

What people say about Ken

Ken has been instrumental helping our startup find product market fit... Ken took the lead and set us on a path to do customer discovery and test specific messages concepts and ideas. Several months later we have a clear message, deep understanding of our buyer personas and influencers, and are having success finding customers.

Dan S

CEO/Founder, Align Software

Ken is a truly inspirational team lead. He's one awesome strategist and he gave direction to a team that very much needed it… Ken pushed all of us in the team to be better versions of ourselves.

Vichitra G

Marketing and Communications Consultant

Ken has the ability to think big. It's a vision thing. More than that, he works hard to bring those visions to reality. Along the way, people he interacts with get infected with his passion. Ken's personable and a pleasure to work with.

John T

Sr. Engineer, Google

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