Getting Started? Build Your MVP
In Airbnb’s second-quarter 2021 financial results, the company has successfully generated revenue of $1.3 billion. The revenue significantly rose nearly 300% on a year-by-year basis, not neglecting 2020 to be massively impacted by Covid-19 with travel restrictions worldwide.
According to Statista, Airbnb was estimated at $75 billion in 2020, 35 billion higher than the last year.
Back in 2007, two product designers who were roommates in San Francisco named Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia needed help to pay for the house rent. The situation led them to come up with a revolutionary idea of forming an “AirBed & Breakfast”. The lads arranged for a few air mattresses in their living room, along with free WiFi and breakfast for the guests. The idea was to leverage their own existing assets to provide space for living at affordable rates and raise the rent for their home through an overnight website they built, airbedandbreakfast.com.
After the success of the first night serving the guests, Brian and Joe were clear about what they wanted and struggled to transform their idea into a full-fledged business. As the two were able to identify the pain points, they had a great idea which they had it tested; now all they needed was continuous perseverance.
By March 2009, ‘AirBed & Breakfast’ was renamed “Airbnb”. During this time, the company modified its website multiple times to make it better, engaging, easy, and user-friendly.
Airbnb wasn’t always a multi-billion dollar industry. The company didn’t have the best website from the start, extravagant features to attract millions of customers, hundreds of customer support team members, or fully functioning mobile applications.
It is to note that the company however built upon its idea until it developed into a minimum viable product (MVP). They initiated by testing their idea to target the audience of tech conferences in San Francisco and have now expanded to cater to millions of hosts and guests globally with an iterative process to make their best service.
What is MVP?
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) means the most basic version of the product. The company launches MVP in the market to capture attention with the basic features until the final version is released after collecting feedback and sufficient audience response. Doing this helps to begin from small and receive cues from the end-users to understand and build exactly what they expect from the product.
Why build MVP?
Airbnb, as stated above, is a promising example of MVP and building gradually over time, through customer feedback and performance review to meet their business objectives and enhance user persona.
Let’s look into a number of benefits you can avail by creating and testing an MVP:
1. Meet Users’ Needs
You don’t have to focus on launching a full-blown product, you can just launch the first version, check out if your product has a market for the users, and if it really appeals to them. You can then gather early customer feedback, and modify your product to meet their needs accordingly.
2. Save Time
Rather than wasting time and resources on investing in projects that have no guarantee for success, you start with small, minimum features and functionality which are enough to test your organization’s business concepts. If you focus on putting a lot of time into the heavy product, you may end up re-developing the complete product from scratch if it doesn’t meet the business objectives.
3. Cost-Effective
You don’t have to worry about large investments before you launch and run your product. The cost is spread over time until you release the final product in the market. Focus on reflecting the minimum but core functionality instead of going into some technicalities in the development phase. You can carry out a low-cost marketing strategy. Prepare sketches and wireframes with PowerPoint or on Moqups.
4. Gain Early Investors
You can entice investors in a more logical, fast, and inexpensive way with your 1st stage product/ MVP. It helps to define the viability of your idea, makes it safer to invest.
5. Gain Clarity on Function Requirement
You are more focused and clear from the early stage. You get to consult with the stakeholders, investors, and customers — analyzing and understanding the exact requirement to prioritize and work on.
To sum up, whether you are a startup or already have a running business, looking to add a variety of features, it’s always wise to start by building an MVP. So if your business needs that direction to turn your great idea into a fully-fledged product, the developers at Psmorfia are all ready to assist you.
Reach us to help you release the product as efficiently as possible.
