Most early-stage B2B startups believe they are learning from the market. In reality, many are only accumulating opinions.
Market Co-Creation (MCC) exists to change that. It is the stage where assumptions finally give way to evidence, and where a startup first encounters how the market actually behaves around its solution.
This is also the stage most commonly skipped.
Market Co-Creation in the Reditus Startup Lifecycle
Market Co-Creation is the second stage in the Reditus Startup Lifecycle, following Hypothesis and preceding Product-Market Fit.
In the Hypothesis stage, founders articulate a belief about a problem and its potential value. MCC is where that belief is tested through real deployment with a committed customer. It is the first point in the lifecycle where observable market behavior replaces internal conviction.
The broader lifecycle and its purpose are introduced in Introducing the Reditus Startup Lifecycle. This post focuses on MCC specifically, because misunderstanding this stage creates downstream failure that no amount of execution can fix later.
What Market Co-Creation Is
Market Co-Creation is the stage where a startup deploys its solution with one or more committed beta customers inside a real workflow.
This is not a simulation. It is not a demo environment. It is not a pilot disconnected from daily operations.
In MCC, the solution is used by real stakeholders, with real data, under real constraints. The startup observes not just whether the product works, but how the organization behaves around it.
The purpose of MCC is simple: convert assumptions into evidence through deployment.
Until this happens, the startup does not know how the market actually functions around the solution, regardless of how many conversations have taken place.
What Market Co-Creation Is Not
MCC is often confused with research or discovery. It is neither.
Interviews do not constitute Market Co-Creation.
Design feedback does not constitute Market Co-Creation.
Pilots that never touch real workflows do not constitute Market Co-Creation.
These activities can generate insight, but they do not reveal how value is experienced, how adoption unfolds, or how buying decisions are made in practice.
In the current AI-driven product cycle, this confusion is amplified. Teams can build impressive demos quickly, which makes it easier than ever to mistake presentation for readiness. MCC exists to counter that illusion.
Why Market Co-Creation Exists
Many startups move directly from Hypothesis into building and early go-to-market activity. They assume that enthusiasm, interest, or polite agreement signals demand.
What they miss is the difference between interest and commitment.
Market Co-Creation exists to answer questions that cannot be resolved any other way:
- Who actually uses the product versus who sponsors it
- How many stakeholders are involved in adoption and buying
- Where political or operational friction appears
- How buyers describe the problem and value in their own language
- Whether the solution truly dissolves pain in practice
- Whether the product would still be adopted at a market-realistic price
No amount of interviews can surface these dynamics. Only real deployment can.
What Progress Looks Like in Market Co-Creation
rogress in MCC does not come from volume. One credible deployment is often enough.
What matters is fidelity, not scale.
During Market Co-Creation, a startup should expect to learn things that directly challenge its assumptions. Workflows rarely behave as imagined. Stakeholders often differ from initial expectations. Value may be realized in places the product was not originally designed to serve.
This learning is not incidental; it is the point.
MCC produces the qualitative foundation that later stages depend on. Without it, Product-Market Fit testing becomes guesswork.
The Market Co-Creation Tradeoff
There is a real tradeoff in how MCC is executed.
Running MCC with a single beta customer keeps upfront cost low. However, if that customer stalls, deprioritizes deployment, or fails to complete implementation, the startup must repeat the entire stage later.
Running two or three MCC deployments in parallel increases upfront effort but reduces the risk of rework and accelerates learning.
There is no universally correct approach. The decision should be made consciously, with an understanding of cost now versus cost later.
The Gate to the Next Stage
A company exits Market Co-Creation only when all four of the following conditions are met:
- The solution has been deployed in a real workflow
Not a sandbox, pilot, or isolated test environment. - The customer confirms ongoing value
They continue using the solution after initial deployment and can articulate its value in their own terms. - The customer is willing to serve as a reference and support a case study
Even if anonymized, this signals confidence and relevance. - The customer affirms the solution would still be worth adopting at a market-realistic price
Pricing cannot be purely symbolic or dependent on extreme discounts.
Only when all four are true does the startup exit MCC and move into Product-Market Fit.
What Happens When Market Co-Creation Is Skipped
When MCC is skipped or treated superficially, the consequences surface later and compound quickly.
Startups enter Product-Market Fit without understanding stakeholder dynamics or buyer language. PMF testing becomes noisy because segments, personas, and messages are built on incomplete information. Go-to-Market efforts struggle because sales motions are invented rather than derived.
The system amplifies whatever assumptions were wrong.
These failures are often misdiagnosed as execution problems. In reality, they are evidence gaps created upstream.
What Is Market Co-Creation?
Market Co-Creation is the stage where a startup deploys its solution with a committed beta customer in a real workflow to generate evidence about value, adoption, stakeholders, and buying behavior.
A startup remains in MCC until at least one customer is actively using the solution, confirms ongoing value, agrees to serve as a reference, and affirms adoption at a market-realistic price.
An Honest Self-Check
If you are still relying on conversations, pilots, or enthusiasm to validate your solution, you are not yet in Product-Market Fit.
That does not mean you are behind. It means the work ahead is clear.
Market Co-Creation is where the market stops talking politely and starts telling the truth.
