You Don’t Need More Features. You Need to Know Your Customer.

Iain Acton
9 hours ago
3 min read

Why guessing your way to growth is the fastest path to failure — and what to do instead.

“Our product was built. Ads were running. Then reality slapped us - nobody cared.”

Prasanta Raut, SaaS Founder

You’ve shipped your product.

You’ve launched the campaign.

You’ve got a beautiful landing page, a half-decent email sequence, a few early customers.

But the numbers don’t move.

Or they move slowly.

And you're wondering:“Is it the product? The copy? The ads?”

Maybe.

But the hard truth is:

You’re probably just selling to the wrong customer.

Growing more features won't help you find the right customer

Stop Trying to Out-Execute a Strategy Problem

Most startup founders and growth teams think they have a product problem.

What they really have is a customer insight problem.

They’re targeting the wrong segment.
Solving for a job nobody’s struggling with.
Pitching an offer that sounds right — but lands flat.

They double down on features.

Add bells. Build faster.

But nothing fixes the fact that they’re not aligned with what their customer actually wants.

“Choosing the wrong ICP almost killed my first startup.”

Adir Zimerman, SaaS Founder

Here’s the Real Reason You’re Stuck

You’re not getting traction because your message, your offer, and your roadmap are based on assumptions.

And it’s not your fault.

Everything in startup culture tells you to build first, test later.

But here’s what the best founders do differently:

They start by deeply understanding customer intent — not by blindly shipping features.

They don’t guess what’s valuable. They go find the customer segment with the highest urgency, clearest need, and strongest willingness to pay.

They sell the strategy before they build the product.

Features Don't Create Growth. Alignment Does.

You could build a world-class product with best-in-class UX……and still get beaten by a founder who deeply understands their customer’s emotional triggers and urgency.

“We were highlighting product features, but customers cared more about how it made them feel. We thought we knew what they wanted — but we were solving the wrong problem.”

Raj Gaurav, B2B Marketer

This is why we built the Intent ICP Strategy Pack.

It’s not a persona template.

It’s not a dashboard.

It’s a strategic engine to help you answer the most important question in your business:

“Who really needs this right now — and what would make them buy?”

How Intent-Led Strategy Works

At Market Fit Mastery, we’ve worked with challenger banks, fintechs, SaaS teams, and venture-backed startups to replace instinct with insight.

Here's the framework we teach:

1. Zoom Out

Map the landscape. Use Jobs-to-Be-Done to understand:

What your market is trying to accomplish
Where they’re struggling
What they’ve already tried (and failed)

2. Zoom In

Identify segments where:

The problem is urgent
The job is underserved
The customer is willing to pay

3. Validate Fast

Use structured interviews and offer tests to:

Prove demand before writing code
Spot false positives before wasting time
Prioritize your highest-leverage opportunity

“I sent this cold email sequence to 400 leads. Got one reply. Zero meetings. The pain we were solving wasn’t urgent — or even relevant.”— Nicolas Minuchin, Outbound Strategist