How to Find Product-Market Fit in a New Market: Lessons from an African SaaS Founder

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. Featuring Kosti, Co-founder at Gabea, a SaaS platform helping African entrepreneurs create service marketplaces and booking pages without a dev team. Jean-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? 🌍 Why copying a Western SaaS into Africa almost always fails 🤝 How their first two paying partners doubled as product testers 🛠️ They built a second SaaS product using AI tools in weeks, not months 📊 At this stage, feature usage patterns matter more than retention rates 👂 Talk to customers every day, and let them tell you what's valuable ⏱️ 00:00 What Gabea does and who it's built for 02:10 The two products: multi-sided marketplace vs. service booking page 04:30 Why the African market needs its own SaaS, not a copy-paste 07:15 First partnerships: getting early users and honest feedback 10:40 Northstar metrics at pre-revenue stage 14:20 Using AI tools to ship the second product fast 18:05 Advice for early-stage SaaS founders on staying customer-focused 🔥 Ready to add $1M in new revenue to your B2B company this year? Apply to Scale 👉 https://www.rapidproductgrowth.com 🔗 Website: https://www.rapidproductgrowth.com 🔗 Jean-Michel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanmichelthink/ 🔗 Gabea: https://gabea.com #SaaS #ProductMarketFit #SaaSGrowth #RapidProductGrowth #AfricanStartups