{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Product Growth Stories","title":"How to Find Product-Market Fit in a New Market: Lessons from an African SaaS Founder","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/8f1622c3\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":620,"description":"Building a SaaS marketplace from scratch in Africa? Here's what early-stage product-market fit actually looks like when you're talking to customers every day.\n\nFeaturing Kosti, Co-founder at Gabea, a SaaS platform helping African entrepreneurs create service marketplaces and booking pages without a dev team.\n\nJean-Michel and Kosti break down how Gabea is approaching product-market fit in an underserved market, why copying Western SaaS products into Africa rarely works, and how their team used AI tooling to ship a second product in weeks. Kosti also shares how they structured early partnerships to get real user feedback before charging a cent, and why their Northstar metric right now is simply: are customers happy?\n\n🌍 Why copying a Western SaaS into Africa almost always fails\n🤝 How their first two paying partners doubled as product testers\n🛠️ They built a second SaaS product using AI tools in weeks, not months\n📊 At this stage, feature usage patterns matter more than retention rates\n👂 Talk to customers every day, and let them tell you what's valuable\n\n⏱️ 00:00 What Gabea does and who it's built for\n02:10 The two products: multi-sided marketplace vs. service booking page\n04:30 Why the African market needs its own SaaS, not a copy-paste\n07:15 First partnerships: getting early users and honest feedback\n10:40 Northstar metrics at pre-revenue stage\n14:20 Using AI tools to ship the second product fast\n18:05 Advice for early-stage SaaS founders on staying customer-focused\n\n🔥 Ready to add $1M in new revenue to your B2B company this year?\nApply to Scale 👉 https://www.rapidproductgrowth.com\n\n🔗 Website: https://www.rapidproductgrowth.com\n🔗 Jean-Michel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanmichelthink/\n🔗 Gabea: https://gabea.com\n\n#SaaS #ProductMarketFit #SaaSGrowth #RapidProductGrowth #AfricanStartups","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/X4IT14P2xMDfcTDbs7hsQIK9BMr3b8jaJAuqZx6l-bo/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9iZmU0/OWYxNGQxM2EzNTA3/YmFiMzNiNDBjM2Qw/YTU1Yy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}