MVP
MVP
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Minimum Viable Product
Minimum Viable Product
Instructions
Instructions
Instructions text.
Outcomes
Outcomes
- Outcome point
Tasks
Tasks
- Task points
Some ideas are better than others...
Some ideas are better than others...
So you spent months developing this great new product...
Announcing the Umbrella Shoe!But is it the right idea?
If you started with the idea and then went looking for a customer, you're kind of doing it wrong!
A better approach is to identify a potential problem first and confirm it through customer interviews (validation).
If all goes well and it really is a problem that people have, then you should find a way to solve that problem.
But it is still early, so rather than spending time and money to develop your product, you should create an MVP - to see if people would buy it!
Minimum Viable Product: Definition and Examples
Minimum Viable Product: Definition and Examples
What is an MVP?
What is an MVP?
An MVP is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers while also providing feedback for future product development.
Building an MVP is a great way to test your product in the market. Gathering insights from an MVP is often less expensive than developing a product with more features.
A minimum viable product (MVP) helps entrepreneurs start the process of learning as quickly as possible. It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to start learning how to build a sustainable business with the minimum amount of effort.
Contrary to traditional product development, which usually involves a long, thoughtful incubation period and strives for product perfection, the goal of the MVP is to begin the process of learning, not end it. Unlike a prototype or concept test, an MVP is designed not just to answer product design or technical questions. Its goal is to test fundamental business hypotheses.
The lesson of the MVP is that any additional work beyond what was required to start learning is waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.
Eric Ries defined the MVP meaning as:
A Minimum Viable Product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
In general, the purpose of this product is to test the demand. The market reaction defines whether you are inspired to expand your business or just stop.
MVP Ideas
Non-App/Software Product Ideas
Non-App/Software Product Ideas
Yes, you can also use MVP thinking with physical products. Examples of MVPs can include:
- Kickstarter Campaign
- Mailing List Signup Pages
- Pop-Up Shops
- Market Stalls
- Events (eg dinner parties)
MVP Examples
MVP Examples
Dropbox
Dropbox
Dropbox needed to test its leap- of- faith question: if we can provide a superior customer experience, will people give our product a try? They believed that file synchronization was a problem that most people didn’t know they had. Once you experience the solution, you can’t imagine how you ever lived without it.
This is not the kind of entrepreneurial question you can ask or expect an answer to in a focus group. Customers often don’t know what they want, and they often had a hard time understanding Dropbox when the concept was explained.
The famous cloud-storage solution didn’t even release a physical product as their MVP. Rather, they created a short video which demoed their product’s first build, explained their core value proposition and demonstrated how easy it was for people to share files across their devices.
This is not the kind of entrepreneurial question you can ask or expect an answer to in a focus group. Customers often don’t know what they want, and they often had a hard time understanding Dropbox when the concept was explained.
The famous cloud-storage solution didn’t even release a physical product as their MVP. Rather, they created a short video which demoed their product’s first build, explained their core value proposition and demonstrated how easy it was for people to share files across their devices.
First Version Demo (2007)
Second Version (2008)
At the bottom of the video was a form to join the waiting list for the private beta.
Why was this a Minimum Viable Product? This video ‘product’ tested the value hypothesis – that people actually faced a file sync problem, and Dropbox was the solution to that problem.
This Dropbox MVP was simple and not ready for public use. It worked only on Windows, and they hadn’t developed a Mac version yet.
The Dropbox explainer video MVP showed why the Dropbox experience was magical, how you could instantaneously make a change on one computer and see it reflected live online. They grew their beta waiting list from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight.
Clearly, after this point Dropbox still needed to deliver with an actual product (which they did). But Drew was now confident he had tapped into a problem lots of people felt but no one was solving.
Why was this a Minimum Viable Product? This video ‘product’ tested the value hypothesis – that people actually faced a file sync problem, and Dropbox was the solution to that problem.
This Dropbox MVP was simple and not ready for public use. It worked only on Windows, and they hadn’t developed a Mac version yet.
The Dropbox explainer video MVP showed why the Dropbox experience was magical, how you could instantaneously make a change on one computer and see it reflected live online. They grew their beta waiting list from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight.
Clearly, after this point Dropbox still needed to deliver with an actual product (which they did). But Drew was now confident he had tapped into a problem lots of people felt but no one was solving.
Buffer
Buffer began as an MVP, and it was transformed rapidly into an app with 100,000 users.Buffer
In 2010, British entrepreneur Joel Gascoigne had a great idea. “I wanted to take the scheduling feature of many Twitter clients and apps and make that single feature awesome,” as he would write later.
First Gascoigne created a landing page to see if enough people were interested in the product to make it a profitable venture [see below]. After reaching a critical mass of registrations, Gascoigne built and designed the first version of the application software over a span of seven weeks.
The initial version of Buffer contained limited features which only allowed access to Twitter. Four days after the software’s launch, Buffer gained its first paying user. A few weeks after this, the number of users reached 100, and then that number multiplied to 100,000 users within the next nine months.
More Resources: MVP
More Resources: MVP
The article to the right highlights an approach to launching your MVP even if you are a non-tech business:
Lean Startup Case Studies
Lean Startup Case Studies
- Problem Validation and MVPs
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