Don’t Crash: A Primer on Building a Minimum Viable Product
A goal without a plan is just a wish.
— Antoine de Saint Exupery
Have a vision, a compelling idea, but not sure how to make it a reality?
Descend to earth and start with a minimum viable product (MVP). A well-crafted MVP is your first opportunity for traction. It tests and refines your startup’s core value proposition with early adopters.
Easier said than done. The descent can seem dangerous. Where do you start?
What to build?
Like the Sphinx, product/market fit is a riddle. CB Insights reports that 42% of startups fail because there was no market need.
Never assume anyone will want your product. Define your key assumptions, and like a detective or scientist, strive to prove their validity. Your vision should be dynamic and self-correcting. Keep refining it like a diamond.
Dive into the problem or desire you aim to solve. If you tap into demand, that’s great, but dig deeper. Ask yourself, ‘Why should someone use my app vs. existing alternatives?’ Uncover and identify your key differentiators.
How?
Tease out market gaps by thoroughly vetting the competition. Speak to target users and industry experts to confirm these unmet needs. Conduct a survey to verify your findings across a broad set of customers.
With a clear market view, then leverage a lean canvas to articulate your product vision, growth strategy and business model. (Lean Canvas is a widely-used adaptation of Business Canvas Model and a helpful starter tool to capture the core idea of your startup.)
At ProdRocket, we use a variant called an Opportunity Canvas. It focuses your mind on the market, the product and getting traction.
It forces you to wrestle and pin down your thoughts. It helps transform your fuzzy idea into a concrete, plausible opportunity.
Still, a clear concept isn’t a well-defined product. For that, the Kano Model offers an insightful structure to prioritize your app’s features. It breaks down functionality into ‘must-haves’, ‘nice-to-haves’ and ‘delighters’.
When building your MVP, resist the temptation to stuff it with ‘nice-to-haves’. You will confuse and dilute the app’s value. Instead, focus on proving 1–2 delighters, supported by the essential ‘must haves’.
Always concentrate your forces; avoid being a master of none.
How should it work?
Honor your foundation (the features), but obsess over design.
User experience (UX) can make or break an app. When something works right, you can just feel it. When it doesn’t, it will repel users, no matter how solid the idea.
First define your user personas and map out their journeys. Describe the simplest and most logical paths of how customers should use your app. Then translate these journey maps into ‘user stories’: concise descriptions of user behavior. (For example, “As a manager, I want to invite my teammates to my account, so we can collaborate on the project”.)
At this point, unless you’re a design wiz, you’ll want to hire a UI/UX designer. They’ll translate your journey maps into wireframes and ultimately a codeless prototype. Take this prototype and get feedback from early adopters. Keep refining it until they’re jumping for joy. Don’t spend a dime on development until you’re confident in the result.
Now the perilous leap from design to development.
Who should build it?
Before development, ask yourself, ‘Am I really committed?’ ‘Minimum’ can be deceptive. Building an MVP still requires a significant amount of time, energy and money. Depending on your product, building can take 2–12 months, costing anywhere from $10k to $100k.
How to build the app depends on three factors:
- Existing funding
- Speed-to-market
- Desired expertise
In a perfect world, you would have the best of all three. In reality, there are complex trade-offs. Assess your priorities to make the least bad decision.
Low on budget?
Not everyone has piles of cash, ripe for burning. Some have dough, but don’t want to risk their savings.
Here are some options to preserve your capital:
- Take your codeless prototype (and your deck) and pitch angel investors (friends, family, professional investors). (Remember, a validated prototype is lightyears more valuable than a fluffy deck). Before taking any money, ask yourself, ‘Do I really want to give up so much equity this early on?’
- Learn coding to build the app yourself. This is arguably the toughest route but there are countless coding courses (Coursera, Udemy) and bootcamps available (General Assembly, FullStack Academy). The problem is, not everyone has the desire or natural skill to master software development. Founders can spend months, even years, without reaching the required proficiency. Only pursue coding if you truly enjoy it.
- Search for a technical co-founder. This option can be ideal from an expertise standpoint and is a big plus when pitching investors. The challenge, though, is finding someone who shares your vision and commitment to the startup. If you’re lucky to find the right cofounder, still, you might not be satisfied with a slower speed-to-market.
- If you want to jump into action, consider developing a ‘service MVP’. An MVP must deliver value to the end-user, but it doesn’t have to be scalable. A service MVP is when you perform the core actions manually, no code, to prove value and viability. For example, you might have a basic website to sign up users, then ‘deliver’ the product via Google surveys, excel calculations, PowerPoint decks and email reports. When properly executed, a service MVP can accelerate traction and funding.
Want to move fast?
Not all MVPs can be codeless — most require a working app. If you want to maximize speed, hiring a development agency is the best choice. When chosen well, they will have strong technical proficiency, with ample resources to build faster.
Though they’re fast, agencies can have some drawbacks. Rarely will they have insights or opinions on properly defining the MVP. In fact, they are incented to build more, not less. They can also lack flexibility on iterating MVP releases to match your go-to-market plan. If you want long-term support, hiring a freelance developer (instead of agency) is often the best choice.
A strong developer can build the app right, if well defined. But they won’t know how to build the right app or market it to the right customers. For more strategic advice, consider other options.
Need expertise?
You have the vision, the knowledge, but everyone has gaps. It might be sales, marketing, product design, fundraising, you name it. Own your gaps and build a plan to overcome them. Tap into others’ experience to stretch your own capabilities.
Building an advisory board is a great way to expand your powers. Advisors are more than influential networkers and showpieces. They are masters of their craft — and can be invaluable as you face obstacles along your journey. But when you need more than advise, actual execution, advisors won’t always have the bandwidth to get involved in the nitty-gritty.
If you’re looking for a closer partnership, consider a startup studio or venture builder. Studios assemble top talent and mentors to launch successful startups. Some studios solely incubate and develop their own ideas. Others will partner with founders to validate, develop and launch their products. In return for development and support, they’ll generally charge some mix of cash and equity. Studios can be a powerful platform to gain traction. They provide a compelling mix of expertise, speed and affordability.
Long windy path
There is no single, best way to build your MVP. It depends on your priorities and constraints — time, money and knowledge. However, stay self-aware and flexible on your journey. Focus heavily on validating and refining your idea upfront. Don’t drop line of code until you’ve won early adopters’ approval. Anyone can build a bundle of worthless code. Few can animate it with value.
