MMP, focus, outside-in lens, customer experience = a viable business, not just MVP
MMP: Minimal Marketable Product
After reading 2 great posts this week from CB Insights, “146 Startup Failure Post-Mortems” and “The Venture Capital Funnel: Your Chances Of Raising Follow-Ons, Exiting, And Becoming A Unicorn”:
it was time to maybe hit the keyboard on Medium again.
In a previous post on MVP vs. MMP, maybe startups and even larger agile companies were too focused on the wrong middle letter in “M…P” …
Over the last 18 months, MMP has been reinforced for me, while working, advising and watching several companies on what makes a new or existing business continue to aggressively grow, caveat I am referring to double digit % growth businesses in this post, across a range of consumer and B2B companies.
So what have I learned, the middle letters “V” and “M” are in most cases the difference between a successful business over the mid-term, I am not even looking beyond 24/36 months here. M: “Marketable” meaning it hits the next set of strategic and financial goals for a company, whether that’s acquiring the right customers and clients, building a repeatable revenue model, hitting the right data points to attract another round of funding, a strategic outcome or a profitable self sustaining business generating the necessary cash to support it’s growth.
The common thread to the successful ones was the teams are focused on a “marketable” product/business that a large enough group of customers were willing to buy, or love enough to support another revenue stream, with enough buyers to amplify the success to bring in more customers via referral or a positive K factor, to complement a marketing and revenue generation funnel that scales at a sustainable cost.
The other key element was “focus”, a willingness to say “NO” to going too wide or get distracted by markets that looked interesting, and remove the internal distractions.
The final piece in the jigsaw was a healthy obsession with an “outside-in view” of their customers, the addressable market and the customer experience with every touch point (digital, human, content, product etc …), as I’ve cheekily posed in a few meetings in that time, “are the buyers with all their credit cards in this room?”
So think MMP not just MVP, focus and customer experience (theirs not yours), as I am sure being #147 on this list from the team at CB Insights “146 Startup Failure Post-Mortems” is not a strategic goal.
Don’t get lost in hype, trends and latest name for a model/process, lean, MVP or even MMP. Business has not changed, to be successful stay focused on desired outcomes that support the growth of your business, future investment, cash, and oh the customers.
