Really good explanation of the dangers and some pitfalls re: how MVP is understood and commonly used these days in the real world of start-ups. I’d like to springboard from these three gems of truth from your point #2:
- “…the customer determines if it is Viable”
2. “It takes weeks or months of experimentation to see if there is a there, there. Remember that the goal of the MVP isn’t to scale or generate revenue, it’s to learn in the market by generating qualitative & quantitative data.”
3. “You use that data combined with your vision to then, in turn, make a more informed investment decision.”
How right you are in today’s environment and context. But what if there is a way to tap your truth #1 (above), with a faster more comprehensive method (addressing your truth #2), that in one pass robustly supports your truth #3? What’s still needed (and now found) is an alternative method for obtaining decision-worthy market feedback and insights on a new consumer product.
Recently invented (by me), this market research service assesses product — market fit for new consumer products, and is called: Q3MA. It integrates efficient standardization of method and measures, with customization to each client’s product and category, and easy access to balanced rep samples of US households (N=1,000), ending with a professional end product: report with recommendations and a professional presentation.
A hybrid service, Q3MA was explicitly designed to bridge the yawning crevice between:
A. Elaborate full service big budget marketing research consulting engagements
and
B. “Agile” (though often “fragile”) D-I-Y research tools or “platforms” that follow highly iterative, time-consuming hands-on processes (see your point #2 above) that typically serve up an ounce of learning per helping.
Instead, Q3MA brings together the other — and better — parts of both worlds (traditional, full service big brand market research and online “real-time”, “on demand” amateur polling) at a very reasonable cost with short (but not too short) turnaround. To me, it completes the marketing research menu by filling a big need gap. Am I right?