How to find portfolio/audience fit

You’ve probably heard of Product/Market Fit. It’s widely seen as the holy grail for just about every early-stage startup — and for good reason.

But what happens when your product doesn’t really feel like a product; when you have a portfolio rather than a product?

And what about when you’re focused not on a specific market with highly specific and aligned pain points, but an audience — where everything feels more fluid and diverse?

When you don’t identify with a singular product or a specific niche market, it’s pretty hard to find product/market fit.

If you’ve got a portfolio of projects and an audience that’s hard to categorise, the playbook on fit… well, doesn’t fit.

Between the gaps

As with my recent attempts to fit into 34″ waist jeans, I’ve wrangled with this for some time. The advice ‘you have to focus down on a really specific niche’ never appealed. It always felt limiting, constraining, and weirdly conventional; a bit like skinny jeans, come to think of it.

Perhaps you know what I mean.

But working on multiple projects, I’ve also sensed tension surfacing. Operating largely solo with limited resources, time, and energy, it’s challenging to hit a moving target.