What comes before MVP?

James Murphy

Published in

Matt Breakwell

6 min readOct 29, 2019

…and why is it so important?

There are two questions we must frame first, before diving headfirst into the belly of the beast.

What makes a good digital product? What role does the MVP play?

The answer to the first one surely initially has to be ‘one that is used’. Hopefully, by a significant amount of people, because it is useful and performs — and the MVP is its first incarnation. So, let’s focus on ‘used’ as the operative word here… how do you make a product that is used? The answer surely is ‘by having a product adopted by users’?

How do we get a product to be adopted? Well, the surefire way is to develop a product that is required, solves a problem, adds value — ergo, it becomes ‘useful’. There’s a whole lot of user interaction behaviour here too, of course.

Ok, and how do we do that? How do we ensure a product that stems from a personal idea or experience (usually from one or two or three Founders) becomes useful? The answer is to validate, test and iterate until the most useful version is apparent, right? And the first tangible thing pushed out there is… the MVP.

So it stands to reason that validation of an idea to get to the point of user adoption is what most Digital Product Business Founders are looking for.

When we say the term ‘Digital Product’ in our studio, invariably this means apps or tech platforms.

In the transient and ever-reaching tech landscape of today, users hear about and adopt apps at the drop of a hat. Viral messaging is so key but if users don’t see the value of the app even in its raw form, then user adoption will die and dwindle. Your product will end up lifeless on the floor of the App and Play Stores. Sad indeed!

The MVP is and should be the first product.

It should not be the initial validation and testbed. In order to avoid dwindling or no start adoption, I believe focus initially should be on feasibility, then prototyping — rather than MVP.

The Minimum Viable Product is by its very definition minimal, but it’s usually still a ‘thing’ with lines of code and infrastructure — it has features and functions, so… it is a Product. Writing code takes time, preempted by UX design and wireframes, which translates to time and money.

Prototyping, or as we refer to it in our studio MVPr — Minimal Viable Prototype, is the most accurate way of limiting investment, receiving validation from users and paving the way to a successful MVP. Prior to MVPr, feasibility or what some call POC (proof of concept) is super important and for our studio, this takes the form of a workshop and a report with multiple touch-points.

In the world of Design Thinking, which is about finding solutions and paths, MVPr is a tool for research. It shouldn’t be missed out.

Stage 1.0 as mentioned, is feasibility or proof of concept, i.e. shall we embark on this journey or is it fundamentally flawed? Let’s not put too much focus on this, as essentially no project goes further without it and it deserves a deeper dive (which I will publish soon). Needless to say, a Founder or someone close to embarking on a tech product journey, the business plan and grand idea must-have fundamentals such as an identified problem or niche, revenue or viral adoption potential and some commercial sense and potential — for obvious reasons.

Focusing on MVPr.

Validation and testing often, if not always, leads to different iterations and changes of product — flows, features and user interaction. At these early stages, there is a limited focus on visual design but UX is critical.

Once an early stage business is committed to designing and building MVP with UX and lines of code, change is painful. Ultimately necessary, but painful! MVPr reduces this pain significantly.

Does no-code mean limitations? Initially, no.

Developing prototypes that users can test and validate and that behave essentially a similar way to a coded MVP allows change to be recorded and implemented quickly with much less cost. This is why MVPr is such an important step prior to MVP — it allows for ‘mistakes’, encourages innovation and focuses the product path underpinning with research; ultimately enabling MVP to be what it should be, a functioning product to be refined and honed, not the first testbed that might change beyond recognition!

This can (and does) wipe out early-stage businesses.

There are some amazing tools to prototype apps and digital products and you don’t have to be a developer. Tech validation of the features tested within MVPr is super valid and this should not be taken lightly however and tech knowhow is a must.

Formalising prototypes with brand and design allows for an early-stage business to look and feel further advanced and allows users to get a real feel for a product, how it looks, feels and behaves/outputs and feedback scope is significant.

Validation is THE most important early-stage objective.

A few points I have made before and we are always muttering to ourselves in the studio:

Users are King.

The idea is yours but now as a Founder or Founding Team, your job is to nurture and support and let the product take shape and be adopted. Are you the user? In most cases nope. Do it for the users.

As an investor in early-stage tech businesses, I am much more likely to invest in the build of a super validated MVP. Investing in blind MVP i.e. ideas that sound and even feel great but still need investment for a first-stage product, is happily becoming a thing of the past even for teams with a record of previous success.

This lowers investor risk — and the lower the risk the more interest they have, of course!

I recently read an article about the first Google Glass prototype containing the image below — now, that’s a prototype! Nothing really built, nothing solid that can’t be changed, it’s a concept and a route that can be explained and understood — ultimately the hanger can go back to its day job if required… it’s well and truly dipping the toe in the water, as an MVPr should.

So, leaving with these thoughts.

The MVP is the first product and not a testbed.

The MVP ideally creates revenue and definitely creates value to users, catapulting it to the next stage of investment. As a product, it must be useful, usable and valid — convenient. It’s much easier to get to this point in theory if a prototype provided most of the heavy lifting for validation and iteration.

MVP is not final, of course. However, refining, adding features and scaling a product are in a whole different postcode than deciding on key features and even potentially pivoting, and at MVP stage this happens all too often!