Product-Channel Fit: Products Are Built to Fit Channels
The most counterintuitive fit. Founders assume they build the product, then pick channels to distribute it. Balfour says the causality runs the other way: products are built to fit with channels. Channels do not mold to products, because you don't control the channel. Google, Facebook, and email inboxes set the rules, and you conform.
Every channel has properties that reward certain product shapes. Virality demands a product with fast time to value and a reason for users to bring in others. SEO demands a product that generates lots of indexable content or user-generated pages. Paid demands strong immediate monetization to fund the spend.
This is why copying a competitor's channel usually fails. Their product was shaped (deliberately or not) to that channel. Yours wasn't. Fit is built into the product, not bolted on by the marketing team.
“Products are built to fit with channels. Channels do not mold to products.”
Key idea
You don't choose a channel and force your product through it. You shape the product to exploit the rules of a channel you don't control.