Realizing we’re overbaking the product and need to go back to the MVP.
Not sure what this is, start here with our README, or catch up on last week, VRBTM Financial Modeling| Week XIII.
Nick and I were planning to get together to work on VRBTM today (12/18/16) before we both left for the holidays later in the week. However, when I got this text from him this morning I knew what I’ve been feeling the past few weeks is true.
I screwed up.
Even though we took Week VII off to make sure we didn’t push ourselves too far too quick, it’s exactly what we ended up doing. Looking back however, the problem actually started in Week V when we set the product outline and the development schedule for making that happen. I think even though we had validated our MVP to ourselves we didn’t validate it enough with other people. Since we started we’ve had a handful of people test it with us, but no one truly use it. Which I think is because we’ve been too focused on creating the full fledged product that we’ve envisioned, rather than make the product for right now. Doing this has had us reaching for big wins as opposed to keeping everything tight and consistent.
When we initially outlined it our six month timeline to getting to a complete, paid product, isn’t a very long time when you think about it. Which meant we/I’ve put off some best practices in favor of getting to March 2017. I’ve read the books and articles all saying the worst thing you can do with a new start up is to keep it a secret until you launch. And although we have these blogs, we’ve been pretty secretive with the product itself. Partly due to wanting to have a number of features implemented by the time we do launch.
However, looking back on the MVP I envisioned. Which before having gotten to where we are now would of been enough for people to start using VRBTM the way it’s intended. We’ve since built that out and then some. Meaning, we need to reassess our plan of attack for a few reasons:
- I don’t want Nick feeling burned out on the project. He’s done so much to get it where it is now and I want him to be as excited about it as he was when we started.
- We need to get real people using VRBTM in a professional way.
- To the above, we should validate the idea in the most definitive way possible — get people paying for VRBTM PRO
- Do we really need to build out PRO tiers and user logic until we get proper feedback on what people really want? The best products do one thing really well. Which the core of VRBTM does already, the rest is a bonus.
So, I think for now we have to do a few things:
- Note all features built out to see where we are between the first MVP and the full Product.
- Refine the current feature-set into a polished product.
- Reset our development timeline.
- Set ourselves up to start 2017 off with it being mission critical to getting people consistently using VRBTM. This is on me.
I’m disappointed I let this happen, but I’m happy to have realized it and know we’re in a great position to regain control on this and continue to move ahead in the right direction.
We’d love to hear from you…
Get in touch at Founders@vrbtm.co, talk with us on twitter @vrbtm.co, and read our story on medium.
Wes Jones is on Twitter @WesJonesCo
Nick Dandakis is on Twitter @Dandakis
