Disruptor, Strategist, AUTHOR.

ABOUT MARKET FIT MASTERY

Our Vision

To transform how startups achieve product–market fit, by shifting from gut-driven guesswork to intent-led precision.

Our Mission

To make customer intent the foundation of every product and go-to-market decision.

Market Fit Mastery exists to help founders and growth teams replace intuition and assumptions with evidence-backed insight. Through our frameworks, AI-driven tools, and validation workflows, we accelerate clarity and dramatically reduce the risk of building for the wrong customer.

The Problem

Despite the rise of the Lean Startup movement, early-stage strategy is still riddled with waste. Startups commit to building far too early - before they deeply understand what customers truly want and why.

Most product–market fit failures don’t come from poor execution. They come from choosing the wrong market, solving the wrong problem, or chasing the wrong customer segment. And once serious product development starts, it’s often too late to turn back.

Why does this still happen? Because strategic market research - deconstructing complex markets, surfacing underserved needs, prioritizing high-intent segments - remains a luxury reserved for large enterprises. Founders are left to rely on gut feeling, intuition, or weak signals.

Our Approach

We believe founders deserve better.

That’s why we created the Market Fit Framework - a proven system that brings the power of customer intent and Jobs-to-Be-Done strategy into the hands of startup teams.

By combining:

AI-assisted research workflows,
Jobs-to-Be-Done segmentation,
Outcome-driven validation tools, we help you uncover unmet needs, define actionable Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), and build go-to-market strategies rooted in real customer demand.

And with the Intent Engine, we’re building a smarter way to surface what customers want before they ever fill out a survey - scraping live conversation data and ranking customer needs by urgency, value, and willingness to pay.

The Result

Startups move faster - with clarity, not chaos. They validate faster. They position with precision. They avoid waste, reduce risk, and confidently build products that serve the right customer with the right message at the right time.

Because when you deeply understand what your customer is trying to achieve, you don’t just build a better product - you build the right one.

Meet the Founder

Iain Acton

Founder of Market Fit Mastery

I’m Iain, a strategist, researcher, author and advisor who’s spent 20+ years helping companies - from disruptive startups to global brands - find clarity in the chaos of complex markets.

Early in my journey, I made the same mistake many founders do: I built a product I loved without truly validating demand. That hard-earned lesson led me to develop the Market Fit Framework and dedicate my work to helping others avoid the same trap.

I help founders and growth teams uncover what their customers actually want - before they waste time building the wrong product or chasing the wrong market.

At the heart of my work is a deep focus on intent-led strategy: aligning product decisions with real buyer behaviour, underserved customer needs, and high-leverage market segments.

I’ve partnered with teams across SaaS, fintech, government, and frontier tech to validate demand, define ICPs that convert, and engineer go-to-market strategies that stick.

Highlights of my work:

Led dozens of research programmes (including many JTBD +ODI), influencing £200M+ in product development investment decisions
Helped a challenger bank Kroo define its ICP and go-to-market strategy — now with £1B+ in customer deposits
Uncovered and validated a £100M+ market expansion opportunity for Just Eat
Mentored high-growth startups via Oxford University, Techstars, and NatWest accelerators
Co-authored innovation strategy chapters in a University of Warwick textbook, including deep dives on Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD)

This experience showed me something important: great execution isn't enough. What separates the winners is this—they understand their market better than anyone else.

That's why I created Market Fit Mastery. To help founders:

Replace product bias with customer insight
Navigate complexity with structured frameworks
Move from guesswork to clear, evidence-backed strategy

If you're navigating market uncertainty, wrestling with segmentation, or struggling to find a winning ICP - I’d love to help you unlock clarity and turn market insight into strategic momentum. Because market demand isn’t discovered. It’s engineered.