#1 – MVN – What Is An MVP, Anyway?!
Start of November, 2022, I was talking with a friend about MVPs. And as our conversation unfolded, we realized the startup landscape is crazy.
Nearly 80% statups fail.
And the main reason for this frightening percentage is simple: lack of product market fit.
That conversation made me wonder: how come entrepreneurs that want to make. change in the world fail test the obvious? So I started researching & reading, and writing my thoughts on a sheet of paper.
I soon found out that most of the failing startups either skip or forget one essential thing: testing their assumptions in the market. Most of the failing startups jumped directly into building a fully functional product that had lots and lots of features. Founders have invested all their seed round and personal investments into development.
And at the end of a 6-months (on average) journey, they ended up with a product so few people wanted. And with close to 0 visibility.
So where did they went wrong? They haven't built an MVP. Let me explain.
Depending on your goals, testing your idea with real users might mean collecting feedback from a landing page, gathering registrations for an upcoming webinar, virtual summit, or growing a community of like-minded people within an industry.
But no matter your end goal, the essential characteristic of an MVP is that it’s explicitly designed to test your idea with real users, faster without burning a lot of money and resources.
Just as you wouldn’t use the same pickup line on every consultancy call with your clients, you shouldn’t go all-in for one robust digital product to launch your startup idea.
Along your journey, you will probably need different iterations of the product to test features, get feedback from the market and improve user experience.
This leads us to the science of creating an MVP.
MVP – Known as a Minimum Viable Product – provides feedback for future product development.
More straightforward, it is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers.
Just like in working with your clients, you give something, then wait for your customer’s response. Then you offer more and keep waiting for feedback while guiding them to the end goal.
Just like in the picture, imagine your end-goal app will work once you’ve already spent time and resources to improve the version you have built for the public you’re targeting.
Building your MVP is convenient and straightforward. But nothing simple runs without a structure and a proven framework. The secret sauce?
Ten times out of ten, building an MVP requires a system or a framework that successfully generates the minimum viable product to test and implement future iterations for your digital product.
In the last 12 years, I built, refined & constantly updated a secret formula of building an MVP that generates REAL feedback from REAL users in creating your digital product.
Here’s the go-to framework for building reliable MVPs. Piece by piece:
Ok, the review part of things is over (that wasn’t too painful, right?).
In the next issue, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty and look at the HOW. We’ll cover exactly how to build a killer MVP that saves you time and money.
See you next week
Whenever you feel ready, there are three ways I can help you:
- Transform Your Idea Into a Digital Product with Me in a Maven Workshop (27+ Workshops conducted so far)
- Work With Me 1:1 and get over 15+ years of Product Development Experience & Strategy in 90 minutes.
- Hire My Team at CODESILK to build your digital product