One of the most common terms in the startup world is MVP, which stands for Minimum Viable Product.
The MVP is an excellent concept but is often misunderstood. This term is sometimes used to convince startup founders or businesses to invest in a digital product that ends up failing. The product should never have gone beyond the idea stage.
I have worked with many startups and noticed a common reason for failure. This happens when a founder or business skips the MVP process. Instead, they jump straight from an idea to building a product.
While there is a consensus organisations must innovate and use technology, there are some common challenges to achieving this. These typically include:
- Having too many project ideas without an evaluation framework to evaluate which projects to implement.
- Searching for one big idea or project, rather than incremental and continuous innovation.
- Not engaging end users and customers in the process.
- Fear of failure.
Learning from startups and using a true MVP approach to deliver projects in your business, will help you unlock your company’s potential and provide value.
What Is a Real MVP?
A real MVP is not the first version of your product. It’s the quickest and simplest thing you can do to test the riskiest assumptions about your new product, service, or project.
The focus of a real MVP should be on validated learning. Any additional work beyond what is required to start learning is a waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.
Enterprise Challenges
In a business setting, there is often pressure to deliver perfect projects. This pressure can lead to trying to cover every possible situation. It can also lead to only choosing projects with the most potential for success. While this is a rational approach, it can lead to inertia and higher-risk projects.
The bigger you make the project and the more variables you try to control, the more stakeholders you must involve and the more assumptions you are making.
No matter how much time you spend planning and preparing for different scenarios, you can’t predict everything. This adds delays, necessitates managing multiple stakeholders’ expectations, and risks the market or business moving past you. By making more assumptions, you are introducing more potential for error, which is counter-intuitive to your goals.
The MVP approach advocates identifying the riskiest assumptions and then implementing the quickest and cheapest way to test these. Focus on what you can learn, use data, and continually feed this back to determine what to test next.
If your assumptions are validated, move forward; if not, reassess or kill the idea. By taking this approach, you will uncover unexpected learnings, deliver a better product, and not waste valuable time and money on building something that no one wants.
Types of MVPs
The type of MVP you need will vary depending on the product, but several proven methods should cover almost any scenario. While the list below isn’t exhaustive, it details some of the most common methods:
Customer Interviews:
In almost every situation, this should be the first step, but it is amazing how often it is neglected. Speak to actual end users to discover if they experience the problem the way you assume they do. You might also uncover valuable ideas and insights on how it could be done better.
When conducting interviews, focus on problem discovery, not just asking if they like your idea. Instead, ask open questions that aim to discover what problems they are facing before seeking feedback for your solution.
Manual, then Automated:
If there is a manual or off-the-shelf software solution, start with this. Learn what works, get feedback from your users, and then use these learnings to build an automated process or custom software solution. This method may not be scalable, but it can prevent you from creating something that nobody wants.
Concierge Model:
This method can be used for marketplace products where you play the role of the middleman connecting buyers and sellers. This gives you a great opportunity to learn about your customers before you automate and scale the process.
Product Video:
Videos are great for products that are difficult for customers to imagine or for illustrating problems they don’t even know they have. This would generally be accompanied by a landing page that captures potential customers’ details.
Landing Page For Signups:
This is a common and quick method to run. Set up a landing page and drive traffic to it via social media and paid online ads. The aim is to convert visitors to registered users, even though you don’t have a product yet.
Pre-orders:
By taking pre-orders, you get immediate feedback on demand and how much people are prepared to pay. You can also gain insights into who your customers are and where they are located.
Building a new product takes a lot of money, so by taking pre-orders you can access cash without giving away equity. Making changes to a product after it’s in the market is hard.
Therefore, it’s crucial to gather as much information as possible before beginning production. This will help avoid costly and time-consuming modifications later on. Learning about customer preferences and market trends beforehand can save a lot of trouble in the long run.
Where to Learn More
You can find a lot of information by searching on Google or using ChatGPT. One of our favorite books that introduced the lean startup method is “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries. The author has released a book called The Startup Way, which applies the Lean Startup approach to corporate innovation.
If you want something more personalised, we can help you identify the real problem you’re trying to solve and plan the steps needed to validate the solution.
If you want to chat, please send me an email or book a time with me.
