A Minimum Viable Product
I was asked to talk to the summer class of plug and play startup camp about Minimum Viable Products. I thought it could benefit others by posting my discussion with the amazing entrepreneurs I met.
Definition
Simply stated, a minimum viable product is a new product allowing you to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. It is one of the core concepts of the lean startup model, a group of principles developed by Eric Ries.
Least Effort, according to Ries, is one cycle through the Build, Measure, and Learn loop. This means the product you are building is a single test and isn’t an actual product the way you and I think about the word product.
If you have read my other posts, you know I love to learn, so MVP and lean methodology fit right in with my life learnings.
Purpose
The purpose of the minimum viable product is to validate some assumptions you are making about the value hypothesis of your product, the market demand for your product, or the growth hypothesis of your product. The MVP, which I will call it from now on, is the first step in determining whether people want what you are building. Creating an MVP gauges demand, helping preserve capital and find a product people want.
Once the MVP is completed, the rest of the lean methodologies take over to help you iterate and revise your product. You cannot and should not build an MVP if you aren’t committing to a quick and iterative process. Remember, the MVP is something you build to get you through one cycle of the build, measure, learn loop as fast as possible.
Minimum
Start thinking small. Now think smaller. Now think smallest. Eric Ries states a minimum viable product is much more minimum than you think. If you are a developer, take these words to mind. You probably won’t be coding for at least few weeks.
The concept here is, Sell it before you build it. You are looking for early adopters who are interested in paying for what you are building before you have written one line of code. Bill Gates did this when he brokered the deal for DOS to IBM. He didn’t actually have DOS, but he sold it before he built it, or rather purchased it from someone else.
You can do the same thing by developing some landing pages, sending some traffic to it, and measure the demand. Sending traffic can be done using ads, your twitter followers, facebook friends, or your blog community. If you don’t have any of these, you should drop everything and start building a community you can leverage. Every entrepreneur seeks to have a huge network to learn from.
Viable
When you actually start to build product, the viable term is the most important to keep in mind. Your product offering needs to actual be helpful to your market. The level of viability can change from market to market. It is important however to not let yourself fall into the trap now before you. It is easy to state your market needs more viability than the next. Keep asking yourself the question, “Is there a small enough feature set for people to start getting something from it?”
Can’t decide what to leave in and what to cut? The feature set probably doesn’t even need to be built. It depends on what you are testing. RYou should test the assumption of the feature by building another MVP (fastest cycle through build, measure, repeat) and measuring whether people want that feature.
Product
It is important to remember you are validating the need for a product. It is totally okay if your first version, isn’t even an actual product. As a developer, when I think about a problem, the first thing I want to do is start developing. The lean methodologies teach you to get away from this thinking and validate your business hypotheses.
Personally, I think the first few versions (if not the first 50) of your MVP should be nothing more than a landing page. Joel of Buffer, has a great story about how he tested the need for buffer by setting up a landing page. His first two iterations of the product was validating the need and validating if people are willing to pay for it.
This falls into the 4 steps Eric outlines in the book.
- Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve?
- If there was a solution, would they buy it?
- Would they buy it from us?
- Can we build a solution for that problem?
Joel’s first two MVPs, validated steps 1 and 2. It is important to note, these steps need to be done in this order. Most companies jump right into step 4.
Nick Swinmurn, of Zappos, also built an MVP to answer a fundamental question to his business. Nick asked local shoe stores if he could take photos of their stock. In return he promised that he would post the pictures online and come back and buy them at full retail price should a customer buy them. He was testing if consumers were prepared to purchase shoes online.
His experiment proved customers were prepared to buy shoes online. All of the Zappos back end was missing, but he was able to prove out and learn something about his market.
First Step
Keep in mind your MVP is the first step in a constant, iterative, learning process. It helps to validate a consuming market which is willing to pay for their consumption. MVPs lead to a lot of failures. Prepare yourself to get answers you don’t want to hear. Commit to testing out many hypothesis, no matter where it leads you. Continue to iterate when you have validated an assumption and commit to keep testing for features customers are willing to pay for.