If you can’t find product-market fit, you don’t have to re-engineer the product, you could probably much more cheaply find a more appreciative customer.

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Understand where there's a need

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QR codes were made in Tokyo almost 20 years ago. And for the first 10 years of their lifetime they were mocked in the West. But they were widely used in Japan and adopted readily in China.

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Japanese and Chinese characters are more complex and QR codes offered the necessary storage for such data.

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Westerners couldn’t understand the point of QR codes for a long time. In fact, many mocked the humble QR code including many VCs. Attempts to awkwardly jam QR codes onto advertising just didn’t work. Entering a URL in English was as easy as typing IBM.com. The same wasn’t the case for Chinese or Kanji characters.

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But then smartphones took off and scanning QR codes became a native part of the OS, payment systems like WeChat pay, LINE Pay, and Alipay use QR codes at the foundation because it requires no additional equipment other than a smartphone with a camera.

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Now compare that to credit card systems that require additional card readers and the like to complete the same task.

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Broad adoption should be organic

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When COVID hit, QR codes really took off with restaurants working out that QR codes on the table could be used in place of menus, and even in place of exchanging cash, to minimise contact. Suddenly, QR codes became important in Western markets.

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Like QR codes, other history altering technologies are often ridiculed when they are first introduced. Cellphones, Roombas, and even lightbulbs were widely considered ridiculous when they launched.

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As engineers, if you’re told to find fit, you’re going to be tempted to re-engineer the product. I’ll give you an alternative: find a better customer. Find a customer who wants your product and needs your product and loves the product rather than attempting to change the product, it could be a lot cheaper.

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