Steps to Build a Minimum Viable Product

Everything you need to do when building your Minimum Viable Product.

Every amazing product starts with amazing research and development before it’s perfected — the same is true with a minimum viable product. Now, your MVP shouldn’t be the perfect product because, if it’s perfect, you probably spent too much time developing and customers could ultimately hate it. The goal of a minimal viable product is to be able to answer the most basic hypothesis you have about your product: “Is this something your target customers will use?” and “Will they pay for it?”

Reach out to your network

Before you begin MVP development you need to reach out to your immediate network and pitch a potential customer your idea (at the very least pitch a best friend. They’ll be more straight with you than Mom or Dad will be). The goal of this pitch is to hone in on your vision.

After a short pitch your audience should be able to form their own vision for your product. Remember, you aren’t building this product for your personal use. You’re building this product to sell it to someone: your friends, strangers, your colleagues, or even your boss. So you have to build their vision of the product.

Competitive Research

After you had a little back and forth with your initial audience you’ll likely have a better understanding of what needs to go into the product. This is where you do your own secondary research.

First, scour the Internet to find anything related to your product: press, competitors, failed products, etc. This research should be all about gathering as much information about what goes into solving this problem so you have a good understanding of what features/services need to go into it. And you can learn from other people’s failures.

A company could’ve failed because they chose to build a web app first, but the ideal customers lived on mobile. Or they could’ve burned all their money adding features customers don’t want. Execution is much more than just what platform to build on, but this example explains the need for this research before you begin a minimal viable product.