Interesting perspective and I can agree somewhat...
But isn't "drowning" correlates to the validation of your product/business model?
Depending on the business that is, but if there's an unsolved need from the market, wouldn't it be that no one is fit for the market? If so, then the person who's "drowning" is the most qualified of all (given at that moment).
Drowning can have bad reasons: you are not ready, your product is under-priced, your product is trendy based on an point-in-time event/PR/whatever, ...
And it can have bad consequences: your customers might get unhappy because of delivery delays, lower quality, you might try to adjust the product/price loosing early customers or making a mess, your thinking and doing will be in a hurry, ...
Overall, the trend might not last, and others might get into that market in a better shape than you.
Market-fit is more about the long run: being able to have regular steady growth, of customers, of the revenue, being able to learn and adapt to it, having positive feedback again and again and again, ...
I think this "drowning" idea is a pure bro/VC one: you demonstrate in a short time that you can attract a lot of customers, you get good press (for that short time), investors, millions (or billions) of money pours in, and it's not really about the customers or the long game of making a product.
Drowning is a problem, but a good kind of problem to have in my opinion.
I'd rather have a positive feedback that my business is growing in the right direction but can't keep up with demand than being the never-ending void of finding a product-market fit. This is purely my opinion (so I don't expect everyone should do/think this way), I just feel the trade-off is better.
"Overall, the trend might not last" - I love this bit. I think this is one of the biggest problems with finding a product-market fit that is often mixed with "catching waves" (think AI wave, sharing economy wave, blockchain wave). How do I know which is which is the driving force of my product when it's mixed up?
You're 100% right, market-fit is about the long run and there's this tendency in tech culture that everything should be fast-tracked to become a unicorn, hyper-growth, press coverage on TechCrunch. It is a purely bro/VC idea.
But iterating your product/business to the best/biggest possible realization that it could possibly be can lead you to get "drowned". At the end of the day, when coming on the crossroads at that point, we should ask if we want to "go big" or "stay as you are". Both are equally accepted answers and comes down to taste and preference.
We all hate the toxic tech bro/VC culture telling us not going big is akin to being a failure and we don't talk/promote enough the idea it's absolutely fine to go slow and steady (my favorite example would be Basecamp). Tech bros are all in to get a few seconds of fame and VC are in maximizing their returns in the shortest possible time. It's unsustainable and unstable idea. I think it's the primary root why there's a diaspora of engineers, VCs, startups in silicon valley.
