Your MVP isn’t good enough.

User expectations of mobile apps have never been higher. Of the 1.5 million apps in the app stores today, only 25% are used more than once. Even with time, money and expertise, new mobile startups can’t build features fast enough or reach enough people before the crowd moves on to something better.

The next generation of successful new product launches will be native to mobile and leverage network effects to scale. In 2016, a minimum viable product (MVP) remains critical, but if you try to build a mobile app from scratch — especially one with network effects — it just won’t be good enough, fast enough to know if your idea is the next big thing, or dead in the water.

Entrepreneurs like Randy Taylor and Gerard Scarpaci and Eric Ries are taking a different approach. They are seizing new software-as-a-service products that offer everything they need to create a network effects business on mobile — at a fraction of the cost or the risk of finding a technical co-founder, raising money and, in six months, fighting it out in the app store for downloads.

These new services eliminate the need to know how to code or raise half a million dollars to hire a technical team. They also let you get the word out about your idea and app at a fraction of the cost of promoting a native app alone. With network effects built-in across iOS, Android and the web, you now have the advantage of focusing on one thing: executing on your idea.

Most importantly, these alternatives remove the risk of building software that fails to meet user expectations early in your validation phase. Instead, they let new entrepreneurs take advantage of sharing features, network effects and built-in member personalization to generate behavior you can measure, and insights you can immediately apply.

When your MVP can rely on a hosted service for the increasingly sophisticated features users have come to expect from mobile networking and messaging apps, you can focus on the specific things you’re out to learn. The results can uncover the branding, positioning, growth strategies and engaging features that will put you on the path to exponential growth. Whether it’s a new app for customer success professionals, futurists or people living with diabetes, entrepreneurs are choosing new ways to test faster on existing platforms to successfully bring their ideas to life.

Only 3 decisions stand between you and a successful mobile MVP

With these new tools, three simple decisions can help you launch a successful MVP:

1. Who will your app serve? The more specific, the more valuable your MVP will be.
2. Why will people join? The motivations here can give you a head start.
3. What do you want users to do together? To drive network effects, think about the relationships your users will build with each other via topics, polls, questions, meetups, etc.

From here, your launch is as easy as choosing a relevant, memorable name and recruiting a handful of early members to see what they do together, not just what they say they want to do together.

That’s it. You don’t need to know how to code. You don’t need to raise capital. You have everything you need right now to build the easiest and most meaningful MVP that only you can bring to the market.

Smarter MVPs created in hours, not months are ushering in a new wave of valuable apps. So, only one question remains. What do you want to learn from your MVP?