Most products that appear to have achieved product-market fit are not succeeding because they are indispensable, but because the market has not yet discovered a simpler way to make them unnecessary, a reality that is becoming harder to ignore as artificial intelligence reshapes how software is built, distributed, and used.
For years, product-market fit has been treated as a reliable signal that a product has found a stable position within its market, often validated through growth, retention, and engagement, yet these indicators were shaped in an environment where building required coordination, access to advanced capability was limited, and replication carried real cost, conditions that have shifted materially through 2024.
Artificial intelligence is no longer an experimental layer applied at the margins of products, but an embedded capability shaping workflows and expectations, while advances in developer tooling continue to compress the distance between idea and execution, reducing what previously required months of effort into cycles that can now be completed in days and, in some cases, hours.
Even the underlying capabilities are becoming interchangeable, with the CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, noting in 2024 that “models are a bit more fungible than cars,” a shift that lowers the barriers that once separated established products from emerging alternatives.
This is reflected in how generative artificial intelligence is embedded into workflows, with developers relying on AI-assisted tools as part of their standard process, accelerating both the creation of new products and the replication of existing ones.
At the same time, capabilities that were once confined to specialised tools are now accessible through general-purpose platforms, enabling individuals and small teams to reproduce outcomes without recreating entire systems, which means that value is no longer tied exclusively to the product itself, but can be assembled through simpler paths.
The result is not just more competition, but a different kind of competition, because it no longer arrives only as a direct alternative offering a better version of the same product, but increasingly emerges as a more efficient way of achieving the same outcome.
This shift is reinforced by a growing preference for flexibility over lock-in, with Mark Zuckerberg arguing in 2024 that organisations “need to control their own destiny and not get locked into a closed vendor,” reflecting a broader move toward open models and architectures that reduce dependency on any single product.
As a result, what appears to be product-market fit is often less about deep alignment with enduring demand and more about timing, because a product may look successful not because it is essential, but because a simpler alternative has not yet fully emerged.
This becomes particularly evident in environments where products are built around organising access to capabilities, because as those capabilities become more accessible through artificial intelligence, the need for the product itself begins to weaken through gradual substitution.
Users do not necessarily abandon products outright, but instead adjust how they use them, relying less on certain features and reconstructing workflows in ways that reduce dependence over time, creating a situation in which usage metrics may remain stable even as underlying relevance declines.
This makes the transition difficult to detect, because traditional indicators of success continue to show positive signals even as the foundation that sustains them begins to shift, creating an illusion of stability at the moment when resilience is quietly eroding.
This dynamic is reinforced by the way artificial intelligence is being embedded into existing platforms, where new capabilities are introduced directly into tools that users already depend on, reducing the need for standalone products and shifting value toward those who control distribution and workflow integration.
Entire categories of product value are already being compressed into internal capabilities, with the CMO of Klarna, David Sandström, observing in 2024 that “essentially, we have removed the need for stock imagery,” illustrating how quickly previously monetised workflows can disappear.
The implication is that software is no longer competing as complete products, but as pathways to outcomes, and in such an environment, the simplest path to achieving a result becomes the most competitive one.
For product builders, this introduces a more fundamental question than how to achieve product-market fit, which is whether the value being delivered is deeply embedded in a way that can withstand simplification, or whether it exists within a structure that can be bypassed as more efficient alternatives emerge.
The risk, as evidenced throughout 2024, is not that products fail because they are poorly designed or executed, but that they become less necessary as the market discovers better ways to achieve the same outcomes.
What many teams interpret as product-market fit may, in practice, be product-timing fit, a reflection of when a product entered the market rather than how strongly it is anchored within it.
