February 2019
Stepping into view in 2013 with unapologetic verses and a label-less irreverence, Chance is a story of resonance. Free music, mass audience. He was (and is) a voice speaking the right language, via the right medium, at the right time. A story of biting content meets new distribution opportunity, birthing much-sought-after-but-seldom-found autonomy. The sound of freedom to many but also (and we can fight on this) one of the purest expressions I’ve seen of founder-market fit.
Often referenced but seldom explored, founder market fit is the younger sibling, brilliant but quiet, sitting in the shadow of product market fit. Yet you’ll rarely reach the latter without the former. As referenced by a wise First Rounder, founder-market fit is the unique insight a founder holds for the problem that they are going after. ****At the earliest stages of company formation, it’s the question behind the question when investors ask what you see that others don’t. The secondary, intimate understandings of your customer. The ability to identify and seek out what, to others, is imperceptible. It’s the authenticity from which you build. The urgency with which you move.
Sometimes founders see opportunity from being deeply imbedded in their market. At others, they come from outside, building in. But these insights (and instincts) come long before product market fit. They dictate it.
Chance came from outside, building in — defiant, with a deep understanding of who he was and who he was speaking to, breaking from the long seated norms of a label dominated industry. It is the authenticity and urgency with which he writes, moves, builds that mirror some of the most compelling founders I’ve had the opportunity (or chance) to work with.
Run it back.
Authenticity? Wedged between the ubiquity of Youtube, early froth of Soundcloud and birth of Black Lives Matter, Chance captured the imagination of the weird, at times carefree (but often painfully aware) Black kids. Those who understood Paranoia but also saw themselves in Juice. Those who wanted to support, hear, partake, but didn’t always (or ever) have subscription or CD money. Those scattered somewhere between a new found ability to inform and shape culture, but within a country that still insisted on negating this influence (and existence). Remaining independent, in an industry known for pushing authenticity into a secondary seat, he tangibly told his customer that this here was for them — and met them where they were time and time again.
In founders, these semi-obsessive instincts often appear in those who doggedly pursue their customer, spend time with them, may even live with them. Those deep in their field who’ll have person after person vouch for them, speak wildly about them. Those who know steps two and three before taking step one. Those with a weird(ish), counterintuitive insight about a gap and an end user that they’re fixated by.
Mixtape on mixtape, releasing free music and betting on distribution over immediate dollars — believing that freedom of expression could bring financial freedom — it is this type of fundamental, seemingly crazy decision, that demonstrates the innate understanding of an audience, and hints at founder market fit.
But isn’t Chance also the product of perfect timing? Of a very specific opportune moment in the industry? We can ask whether there could have been a Chance at another time, pre-Soundcloud or post-online-artist-saturation, but part of the delicacy of founder market fit is the timing at which this founder sees their market and the urgency with which they move to meet it.
We can ask whether independence was intentional, a calculated bet or happenstance, but it isn’t important — the ability to identify and lean into resonance is more so. The instinct to move quickly, to optimize for velocity of learning by building, releasing and testing with a hunger for feedback, communicates why now is so critical — and why now is when you’re building.Urgently.