Best Posts on Minimum Viable Product
Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a strategy for avoiding the development of products that customers do not want. The idea is to rapidly build a minimum set of features that is enough to deploy the product and test key assumptions about customers’ interactions with the product.
Eric Ries notes that Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn started by testing the hypothesis that customers were willing to buy shoes online. Instead of building a website and a large database of footwear, Swinmurn approached local shoe stores, took pictures of their inventory, posted the pictures online, bought the shoes from the stores at full price, and sold them directly to customers if they purchased the shoe through his website. Swinmurn deduced that customer demand was present, and Zappos would eventually grow into a billion dollar business.
It differs from the conventional strategy of investing time and money to implement whole product before verifying whether customers want the product or not. MVP tests the actual usage scenario in contrast to conventional market research that relies on surveys or focus groups, which often provide misleading results.
Best Posts on MVP:
1. Eric Ries — the person who popularized MVP
Minimum Viable Product: a guide
Inc Magazine on Minimum Viable Product (and a response)
What is the minimum viable product?
2. Ash Maurya — How to use the concept in practice
Minimum Viable Product
3. How small is not too small?
A. What means “viable”?
Stella Fayman — The ABCs of MVPs: How to Get the RIGHT Product out Faster
David Aycan — Don’t Let the Minimum Win Over the Viable
B. Time spent, size
Rich Skrenta on how long is too long — http://qr.ae/GmGmX
Joel Gascoigne — How to successfully validate your idea with a Landing Page MVP
Neil Patel — Four questions for developing a minimum viable product — GeekWire
C. Quality
Josh Puckett on UX — http://qr.ae/Gmhni
William Pietri on code quality — http://qr.ae/Gmhhp
4. Debate around “MVP doesn’t work for iPhone & Tesla”
Attack by Glenn Kelman
- The Maximum, Beautiful Product | TechCrunch
- Redfin on TechCrunch: The Maximum, Beautiful Product — Redfin Real Estate Blog
Defense by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits — Three reasons not to build a Minimum Viable Product
Peter Thiel’s Calculus vs Statistics, read from “IV. The Return of Design” — Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup — Class 13 Notes Essay
5. Validating and Invalidating MVPs
Taylor Thompson — Building a Minimum Viable Product? You’re Probably Doing it Wrong
6. Steve Blank’s perspective
Perfection By Subtraction — The Minimum Feature Set
An MVP is not a Cheaper Product, It’s about Smart Learning
How to Test Your Minimum Viable Product (with Bob Dorf)
7. Examples of MVPs
Dropbox example — How DropBox Started As A Minimal Viable Product | TechCrunch
Ryan Hoover’s Five Successful Startups That Started As Blogs and Email-First Startups | Ryan Hoover
John B. Petersen III examples http://qr.ae/GmGAG
William Pietri examples http://qr.ae/GmNfG
Leo Polovets Linkedin example http://qr.ae/GmhC8
Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz Minimum viable product: Aardvark
Kickstarter-ed products — Sell Your Product Before It Exists
8. How to prioritize features for MVP
Tristan Kromer’s answer http://qr.ae/GmG5R
9. Can you outsource MVP?
Jason M. Lemkin’s answer http://qr.ae/GmGiE
10. MVP for online games
