Product Zeitgeist Fit (a16z.com)

Where is the pzf? How do you tell if there is pzf? How do you know if there is enough pzf?

tldr: Timing is important when launching a product, there are a few indicators (he calls "tests") that timing might be good:

- Nerds use it a lot

- People use the product despite it sucks

- People wear t-shirts of the product/brand

- Most people don't undertand why this product is important although it's obvious to you

For me, these are also truism (as he rightfully calls "product market fit" one in the beginning of the article). I'm not sure if this is actionable or even good advice for entrepreneurs...

Edit: Styling.

Valid way to look at the world through the VC lens. I recently launched Nocs (nocsprovisions.com) - a styled, branded update on the age old product of binoculars, small and high quality built for the traveler/weekend warrior nature explorer in mind. There was not one pure target market, rather it just seemed aligned with the consensus to disconnect and “go outside and explore nature” vibe that exists in SF and the coastal cities today. Designed product, built brand + product, shipped XXXX, build more! Not in much of ways for scale but a fun adventure in PZF.

This is almost hilariously bad thinking. It’s the VC filter bubble turned into a kooky VC marketing buzz phrase designed to continue the VC filter bubble. Meanwhile, A16Z’s numerous investments in ‘zeitgeist’ fitting blockchain technologies like IPFS suck hundreds of millions of dollars with no visible success.

Seems like a laboured way to add something to product-market fit. To add some real meat to this essay, how about some concrete examples for the list of 4 indicators?

just the age old question "Why now?"

repackaged as nonsense

Yeah Hollywood has been doing this for decades. It’s called timing.

They let particular scripts sit on shelves for years until the culturally correct moment to have them be made.

The same can be true for just about any industry, it’s just depends on the cultural landscape of that particular industry.

This article is literally nonsense, there’s not a shred of scientific method or financial analysis or empirical observation in it.

Presumably the team over there is having meetings about they are going to rationalize the impending revelation that they’ve burned hundreds of millions of dollars in people’s retirement funds on indefensible cryptocurrency “investments” and those funds aren’t ever coming back.

Wasn’t the point of Crossing the Chasm (that other favourite of the VC crowd) that nerds using your stuff wasn’t enough to have a successful business in its own right and you needed to reach beyond that to a wider crowd to build something of lasting value?

Unless of course your aim was to build something fundamentally useless but where you could sell a small percentage for an insane amount on investor story time to sustain a donkey deca unicorn valuation to look good on a VC balance sheet ... oh