Building the MVP - Dos and don'ts
If you are a startup founder, you have probably heard of the term Minimum Viable Product or MVP for short. The concept is very simple. You launch as early as possible by building the smallest product you believe your perfect user will consider valuable. You do this fully aware that the product you are launching is lacking a lot of functionality and is not nearly as perfect as you would want it to be.
If you cringe at this idea I understand, but by the end of this article, I will show you that not only is there nothing to worry about, but that launching a product filled with flaws very quickly actually benefits you enormously.
Let's think about it. How do you know that the perfect product you set out to build will actually solve real problems and deliver enough value to the user? Probably you have done some kind of research, talked to a few of your ideal customers and you strongly believe this is the product you want to build. You imagined a whole set of neat and cool features and you are fully confident once you launch it everybody will love it. But the truth is, you can only know this for sure if you put the product in the hands of your users and they do find it valuable enoght to part with they hard earned money to use ti.
Product-market fit
Developing something for months or even years greatly increases the risk of bad product-market fit. That's why the first thing you really should be focusing on is getting those initial customers. Anyone that is willing to use your product. You don’t want to be like many founders that finish their perfect product without a single user. Don’t do that, do everything in your power to get past this step because that is really important for you and your product.
Once you do get past this step and get first users, go out there, talk to them. Both of you know that your product is not the perfect solution but the users feedback can and will play a major role for you here. Based on the users feedback you can make crucial adjustments and improve your product! Don’t think that just because your product is not fully complete or because it isn’t how you imagined it that you can’t get valuable feedback. It’s the complete opposite. That feedback means the world to you in this stage. And honestly, you should have a really, really flexible approach to your solution. Keep in mind that you might end up building something you didn’t even think of in the beginning. Have a firm approach to the problem you are solving, have a firm approach to the user and have a flexible approach to the solution / product you’re building.
Problem solution fit
What if your solution does not solve the problem you were looking to solve? Does the story of your solution end there? Well, of course not. Like we said, here is where the user feedback comes in and tells you where to make changes in order for your products to be a better fit for the problem you are solving. Don’t fall head over heels for your first solution, like I said, you might end up building something you didn’t even think about in the first place. Iterate, fix your solution until it’s a perfect match to solve the problem.
In most cases, you should be able to build your MVP really fast. In weeks, certainly not months. Whether it’s software, a physical product, whatever, build it fast. Most startups can get going with really only a simple landing page and a really limited functionality. Look at Stripe. They started with only a simple landing page and you couldn’t do anything on it. If you wanted to use Stripe, the founders would come to your office to integrate it for you. You could see they really wanted to get as much users feedback at the beginning.
AirBnB started with a simple page with no payment option at all. You would pay at the host’s house in cash! The moral of the story of these two examples is, launch a very simple MVP and do it quickly.
From that point on, then you improve and upgrade. Stripe and AirBnb are two billion dollar companies and the MVP they started with was very lacking. To say the least.
Launch quickly
Launching quickly is and should be your go-to option unless you’re developing something in an industry with a lot of regulations which means you need to go through a lot of regulatory bodies. Like rockets, medicines, underground travel tunnels. That kind of thing is pretty impossible to build in a couple of weeks. But even in that case, those MVP’s can start with a really simple website explaining their purpose and their mission for a problem they are solving.
A lot of people think that they have to make something special for the launch of their product, big announcements, big events, press releases… If you had something like this planned, forget about it. It’s really not that special or necessary, and the time and funds you’ll be spending on that, you should spend on getting firs customers and upgrading your product based on feedbac. That’s what is really important, not the launch details that nobody will remember in the bigger picture. Once again, push for launch very quickly, get first customers very quickly.
Apart from user feedback on your product, you will learn other important things. You’ll see how they feel about that need or problem that they have, how important it is for them to solve it. It’s really hard to know for sure untill you u don’t have a product or a solution to offer to them.
Tips & Tricks for building your MVP
- Set a deadline
It will be much easier for you to launch your MVP if you firmly hold on to your deadline. You can only build a certain amount of features within your set deadline, and that’s okay. It makes your life simple, you have your timeline clear.
- Write everything down
Write your 1st user stories down, it’s as simple as that. That way you can keep track of what you are changing along the line of developing your product over time. It gives you a clear picture of the whole idea and its history and helps you out to respect deadlines.
- Cut unnecessary things
Once you write everything down and once you have certain deadlines, like the date you will launch your MVP, look at the user stories and just cut features or processes that are not important or that you can’t make within the deadline. The goal here is to get anything out, don’t worry about those features that got cut off. Once you launch something, it automatically pushes you to iterate and upgrade it. If you never launch anything, delaying stuff will always be your go to option, and that’s never good.
- Don’t fall in love with anything
Your MVP will change many times over the course of its existence. If it dosent, you are probably doing somthing wrong. The sooner you understand it, the better. That way you will have no problem changing your product, which is only for it’s best.
Have fun building your MVP, let your creativity flow and never be a perfectionist. MVP’s are all about doing it quickly and getting customers quickly, validating the problem solution scenarions, you will figoure out the rest along the way!
