MVP not working? Try PSP
Too many people are struggling with Lean and MVPs.
Why isn’t it working?
What I’m seeing over & over is that entrepreneurs who know their space already know the problems their users have. They wake up every morning and feel the pain of their users, so when Lean asks them to “test”…it feels futile.
I’m a legal entrepreneur BECAUSE I’ve been a lawyer for 20 years. I don’t need to “test” that lawyers have these problems, I live them!
The theory of the MVP is right (and scientifically proven by Steve Blank and others), but the vast majority of entrepreneurs do not get how to do it. They don’t know what “viable” means.
Entrepreneurs need a way to:
- pick the right problem to start with
- find the best “user experience” for the people to encounter your solution
Enter the Problem Solving Product (PSP)
I created this as an actionable method for building startups:
- List the problems that your users have.
- Narrow to the most acute (the ones they actually give a shit about).
- Pick one that can be solved in a few weeks.
- Build a prototype to see if your users agree that this is how they want their problem solved.
- Build and LAUNCH a PSP to solve that problem.
From there, you find the next acute problem and iterate. Think of it as a middle-ground between Lean and Agile.
Does it work?
My favorite example is LinkedIn. Knowing that LinkedIn now is the ultimate source for recruiting, what would most people have picked for their MVP?
A job board.
How terrible would that have been? In fact, how many other startups have tried that approach and failed?
Instead, the PSP for LinkedIn is a place where professionals can post their resume online. Solves the problem of fixing spelling mistakes after you share your resume. Small? Yes, but enough to get started.
The next PSP builds on the first — solving the problem of letting people in business stay connected to each other.Reid Hoffman invited his successful friends (the “PayPal mafia” that was being distributed throughout Silicon Valley). They then had something scalable and were off to the races.
The recruiting business model only came in several years later once they were ready to leverage that massive scale.
LinkedIn’s MVP: Job Board
LinkedIn’s PSP: Online Resume
What’s your PSP?
