Pivoting during COVID with Thomas Alflen

Product-market fit is often treated like a switch: either you have it, or you do not. But in reality, it tends to behave more like a spectrum. A company can have early traction, real customer interest, and even paying users, and still not be in the market where the fit is strongest.

That was one of the most useful ideas in Collin Stewart’s conversation with Thomas Alflin, co-founder of Oddity.ai, on the Predictable Revenue Podcast. As Thomas put it, product-market fit did not feel binary in practice. It felt stronger in some markets than in others. And that is the real lesson for founders: early signs of demand matter, but they are not the finish line. 

The job is to keep testing where the problem is clearest, where customers feel it most urgently, and where your solution becomes easier to repeat and scale.

Early traction can still hide weak points.

A company may be solving a real problem and still be in a market that is hard to grow in.

That is what makes Oddity’s early story so useful. The company started by helping public agencies detect violent or high-intensity behavior through camera footage. There was real interest in the idea, and the team ran pilots with cities in the Netherlands. The product was solving a real problem in a real environment.

But that did not automatically make it a strong market. 

Selling into government-related buyers meant slow timelines, more regulation, and a small pool of potential customers. On top of that, the product had to run on physical servers at customer sites, which created a lot of operational work for a small startup.

So while the solution clearly worked, the bigger question was whether this was a market the company could scale efficiently. Pay attention to early proof matters, but it is not the same thing as strong product-market fit.

Revealing better opportunities.

Pressure has a way of exposing which parts of a business are solid and which parts depend too heavily on the current environment.

For Oddity, COVID created that kind of pressure. When public spaces emptied, the original use case became much less urgent. Fewer people in the streets and public areas meant fewer incidents to detect, making it harder to keep building around that market the same way. The problem had not disappeared, but the conditions around it had changed enough to force a new look at the business.

That shift matters because many pivots do not begin with a bold new vision. They begin with a practical question: where else does this problem exist, and where else could our solution work? In Oddity’s case, that pressure pushed the team to explore other verticals and reexamine assumptions they might otherwise have defended. 

A better market often starts with one strong signal

A stronger market does not always appear through a formal strategy process. Sometimes it starts with a single inbound signal worth taking seriously.

That is what happened when a healthcare provider in the US reached out to Audity with a specific problem. Instead of treating it like a quick sales opportunity, Thomas took a more useful approach. He asked questions, tried to understand how the organization handled incidents, and tested whether the product could actually analyze the footage effectively. That matters because unexpected demand is only valuable if you learn from it before trying to close it.

What they found was not just another customer. 

It was a use case with much stronger alignment. The problem was clear, the environment was more conducive to the product working, and the mission still made sense for the company. That is a lesson for founders: when a surprising lead appears, the right move is not to pitch faster. It is to get curious enough to find out whether the market behind that lead is better than the one you are already chasing.

Stronger product-market fit feels more repeatable.

Sometimes, a better market reveals itself through a single lead, if the team is willing to slow down and learn from it.

In Oddity’s case, that signal came from a US healthcare provider who reached out with a specific problem. Thomas did not jump straight into a pitch. He asked questions, looked closely at how the organization handled incidents, and tested whether the product could actually detect what they needed it to detect. That part is important. The value was not just in getting the inbound lead. It was in treating that lead like a discovery opportunity.

What came out of that process was a much stronger use case. The footage made it easier for the product to analyze. The problem was clear, and the company saw a closer match between what it had built and what this market needed. 

So when unexpected demand shows up, do not just ask, “Can we sell this?” Ask, “What is this teaching us about where our product fits best?”

Operational fit matters too.

What made the new market feel different was not just that Audity found more customers. It was the same problem that kept recurring among those customers.

That is a meaningful shift. In the earlier market, there was real demand, but the path to growth was harder and less consistent. In the new one, the team kept seeing the same core need. That kind of pattern is one of the strongest signs that product-market fit is getting stronger, because it means you are not rebuilding the story or the solution every time you sell.

Other signals started to reinforce that. 

The market was larger, expansion was easier, and referrals became a real driver of growth. Just as importantly, each new customer helped improve the product in ways that benefited the next one, without requiring major changes each time. 

That is what repeatability looks like in practice: the pain is familiar, the value is clear, and growth starts to feel more like momentum than effort.

Conclusion

The question for founders is not just, “Does this product work?” A better question is, “Where does this work best, scale best, and spread fastest?”

That is what makes product-market fit easier to recognize in the real world. The strongest fit usually shows up when the same problem keeps appearing, customers feel the urgency quickly, referrals start to build, and the business can deliver the solution without unnecessary friction. In other words, fit strengthens as the market starts pulling harder.

Oddity’s story makes that idea concrete. The product worked in the first market, but the second market felt stronger because growth became more repeatable, more referable, and easier to support. That is the takeaway worth remembering: product-market fit is not a fixed milestone. It gets clearer as the right market makes growth easier.

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