Product-Market Evolution

Evolution is Constant, and so is the search for Product-Market “Fit”

I came back a few weeks ago from a unique vacation to the Galapagos. It was an excellent experience for the whole family (and especially this nature lover) as we admired albatrosses, frigate birds, sea lions, sea turtles, marine iguanas, sharks, and of course, the namesake giant tortoises.

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I didn’t think much at all about business while I was there. I was mainly happy to be among family and friends. Seeing million-year-old volcanic craters slowly sink into the sea or the Milky Way at night provides the necessary perspective on how we exist in the grand scheme of things. (I worry future generations may not be lucky enough to see such beauty in the world if we continue to wreck our planet.) However, upon returning, I realized that the Galapagos offers a fascinating lens for considering continuous evolution in business contexts.

Darwin's finches in the Galapagos didn't evolve once and stop; they continue to adapt to environmental changes, food availability, and competition. The medium ground finch, for example, has been observed developing different beak sizes in response to drought cycles and seed availability within just a few decades of study.

This mirrors what's happening with product-market fit today. The traditional startup narrative treats Product Market Fit as a binary state that you "achieve" - you build, test, and pivot until you find it, then raise a Series A round. However, that’s rarely true with today’s AI startups. Today, markets are like living ecosystems that constantly shift due to new technologies, changing user behaviors, competitive pressures, and broader economic forces. Charles Darwin might approve.

Every week, a new model from OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic emerges, surpassing the rest, while a competitor introduces a vertical agent with best-in-class capabilities. Consider how quickly Microsoft introduced co-pilots, how OpenAI is now creating agents, or how Amazon Web Services emerged from internal infrastructure needs. These weren't single PMF moments but continuous evolutionary responses to environmental pressures and opportunities. And these, while fast by today’s standards, may be seen to be “slow” by future standards.

The companies thriving now practice continuous product-market evolution - they've built sensing mechanisms to detect market shifts early, maintain genetic diversity in their product portfolios, and can rapidly adapt their offerings. They treat their products like living organisms that must continuously evolve rather than static solutions that have once achieved fit. It is genuinely humbling to be a founder or CEO in tech today.

The Galapagos teaches us that survival isn't about being perfectly adapted to current conditions, but about maintaining the capacity for ongoing adaptation. In business terms, this means building organizational capabilities for continuous sensing, experimentation, and evolution rather than just optimizing for today's market conditions. Perhaps today, Product Market Fit is a luxury afforded only by the old giant tortoises of the economy, which wouldn’t easily survive today without special protection. The sun will rise on a new, more adaptable species as it always has.