The Secret Recipe for an MVP
TL;DR: getting the ‘minimum’ right is critical. Your product’s value isn’t measured in number of features.
I can hear my English teacher from the fourth grade in the back of my head. “You’re being too wordy. Spend less time writing, and more time thinking.” Then, I hear my teacher from the software bootcamp. “Use as little code as possible to do as much as possible. You should learn to hate typing.”
As we’ve worked with startups on getting minimum viable products (MVPs) shipped, we’ve learned something very important that we realized we had already learned from a young age:
being concise is extremely important.
A customer should step into the application and understand what it does as quickly as possible. One of the keys to this, and a key to finding initial product-market-fit, is finding the right feature set, and the right way to communicate that feature-set to the user through the UI. For startup entrepreneurs preparing for an MVP or prototype build, here’s an exercise. Write down the following:
- What makes this special?
- What makes this special?
- No, think again, what really makes this special?
There are things that customers come to expect from applications, but those should be considered after the core value is focused on. Once you’ve answered the questions above, we’re here to help with the next steps.
