The thin line between FOMO and product-market fit

In this English-language episode of Datadrivet, Joni talks with Erwan Derlyn, founder of Odepar. Odepar gives early-stage startups strategic and operational support so they can build sustainable foundations for growth, and Erwan uses that vantage point to look at why so many young companies never make it.

His starting point is blunt. The main reason companies fail is their inability to create something people truly want, to identify real demand for their product, or to capture the demand that exists in the market. Product-market fit, in his framing, comes down to making something that solves a real problem.

The episode keeps returning to one analogy. Instead of making a key first and then searching for a lock, it is more practical to find the lock first and then create a key that fits it. The lock is the customer need. The key is your product or service. Founders who reverse that order build something clever and then go looking for someone who happens to have the matching problem, which is where FOMO creeps in: chasing a market because it looks hot rather than because you have evidence of demand.

Erwan and Joni discuss why this matters beyond buzzword status. Treating PMF as a slogan is easy. Treating it as the question of whether anyone actually needs what you are building is harder, and it is the difference between a company that survives and one that does not.

The takeaway: find the lock before you cut the key. Understand the customer need first, then build the thing that meets it.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for the full conversation with Erwan Derlyn.