Why Startups Lose Focus Before Finding Product-Market Fit
- Chris Burgess
- Sep 11, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 14
Ambitious teams chasing too many ideas often lose sight of what really drives traction and growth.
Building a successful company is notoriously hard, especially when your early customers interpret your value proposition in completely different ways. Each one has their own priorities, requests, and “must-have” features.
The result is that startups spread themselves too thin. They launch multiple products, chase every opportunity, and confuse motion with progress. This scattergun approach creates noise, stretches teams beyond capacity, and wastes valuable resources.
In this post, we will explore why that happens, the key challenges product managers face along the way, and how startups can stay focused long enough to build something that truly lasts.
Understanding Product-Market Fit for Startups
Product-market fit is about proving that your product solves a meaningful, repeatable problem for a specific group of customers. It is what turns early traction into sustainable growth.
Before diving into solutions, it helps to understand why so many startups lose focus in the first place.
Many startups do not deliberately chase what I call company-market fit, but they fall into it all the same. It happens when the company starts shaping its direction around whichever customer or revenue opportunity shouts loudest, rather than around a clear product vision. In the short term, it can feel like progress because revenue is coming in. However, over time, it fragments focus, pulls the development team in different directions, and prevents any single product from reaching its true potential.
When startups keep every possible door for revenue open, they start building multiple products to “test the market.” This scattergun approach, often driven by the same overstretched team, might seem like a smart way to explore opportunities. In reality, it spreads attention thin and makes it almost impossible to build deep empathy for users or learn what truly works.
When product development teams are stretched too thin, decisions start drifting toward what is technically easiest or what wins a single deal, rather than what is most valuable for the broader customer base or a clearly defined market segment. This is how engineering-led or sales-led cultures are formed.
At this point, many startups turn to product management as the answer. They assume hiring a strong product manager will restore focus and alignment, but that assumption often sets them up for disappointment.
Can product managers be the Silver Bullet?
It is not uncommon for product managers to be perceived as the silver bullet. After all, they balance commercial outcomes, user experience, customer insight, market understanding, and team leadership.
However, no individual can make up for a lack of company-wide focus.
Startups often hire experienced product managers to lead development, hoping their expertise alone will bring structure and clarity. But if the company is unwilling to focus, even the best will struggle to deliver results. It is impossible to stay close to customers, learn effectively, or set priorities while being pulled in multiple directions. Product managers need clarity of ownership, consistent priorities, and the support of leadership if they are to succeed.
How to help product managers succeed
The product manager connects the dots by ensuring that technical capability, commercial urgency, and customer understanding all move in the same direction. But to make that possible, leaders must create three essential conditions for success.
1) Protect single-product focus wherever possible
In a startup environment, context switching is one of the biggest hidden costs. Each shift between competing products, stakeholders, or customers drains focus and slows the feedback loop that good product management depends on. Product managers are especially vulnerable when managing a portfolio instead of a single product.
As the product team (i.e., product manager, developers, QA, designers etc.) becomes deeply familiar with a product and its customers, additional products can be introduced to the product manager's portfolio, but never before this point.
2) Focus your product manager on customer needs
Without a clear and consistent connection to customers, development can veer off course, producing features that look impressive internally but fail to create real value externally.
This is where product leadership becomes critical. If engineers are left to make decisions without clear product direction, or if sales priorities dominate the roadmap, the company risks becoming engineering-led or sales-led instead of product-led. Both patterns can create short-term wins, but they erode long-term learning and alignment.
3) Build a genuinely product-centric culture
A truly product-centric culture prioritises customer insight over internal preferences, empowers the product team to guide trade-offs, and aligns everyone around a shared vision of customer value.
Simple disciplines such as a well-maintained backlog, clear sprint goals, and transparent prioritisation help keep attention anchored where it matters most, on learning from customers and delivering meaningful outcomes.
Conclusion
When those conditions are in place, product managers stop firefighting and start leading. The company regains focus, and momentum naturally follows.
The success of a startup depends on its ability to focus, learn, and manage its product effectively. By focusing on product-market fit, reducing context switching, prioritising customer understanding, and building a culture that values evidence over assumption, startups can navigate this competitive landscape and achieve sustainable growth.
Hiring experienced product managers makes perfect sense, but only if the company creates the conditions for them to succeed.
True success comes from understanding your market deeply, aligning your product with real customer needs, and creating an environment that rewards value over speed.
Key takeaways:
Focus on product-market fit Avoid the scattergun temptation of building multiple products simultaneously. Depth beats breadth when finding what truly works.
Protect focus Product managers managing multiple products are especially vulnerable to the productivity costs of context switching. Concentrate on one product at a time to maximise learning and impact.
Build around the customer Ensure that product development is driven by customer insight and feedback, not by internal assumptions or technical preferences.
Empower the product team Give product managers the authority, clarity, and resources to make informed decisions that reflect customer value.
Foster alignment and learning Create a culture that values customer feedback, open collaboration, and alignment around shared product outcomes.
If you are leading a startup or scaling product organisation and need to refocus your team around true product-market fit, let’s talk. I help founders and product leaders design and run their first focus and prioritisation sessions that are practical, fast, and tailored to your team’s reality. Reach out at info@crwburgess.com to start turning focus into alignment.
Comments