Why Building an MVP is Critical for Tech Startups

by Lenka Davis

Are you wondering if your startup needs an MVP? Most likely, yes!

MVPs come in many forms, they do not need to be code written by software developers, they can be video demos or mockups. Or they can be the core of the product so you can demo your product to customers. Putting the concept in front of your customers and learning from watching them use your product is invaluable information. The purpose of your MVP is to get you the learning so you can put that back into your next version of the product.

Topics in this article:

• What is an MVP?

• Why is an MVP important?

• How to decide what goes into your MVP

• The best way to build an MVP

• Fun fact!

What is an MVP?

When you hear the term MVP you might think of your favorite athlete and the game in which they were named most valuable player. For those running technical startups, the minimum viable product, the MVP, is one of the first steps in finding out if their business is viable.

For entrepreneurs, building their MVP, or as Steve Blank refers to it, the ”minimum feature set” is a necessary step towards testing out your product with your first customers.

The story that Steve Blank tells is worth repeating. A former student of his disagreed with the idea of building a minimum feature set as the first release for his product. The student’s problem was that only one prospect wanted to buy the product and nine did not out of every 10 he talked to. So when Steve Blank asked what that one who was interested said, the answer was that as the prospect heard more about the company’s vision he said he could not wait to get the product.

The moral of this story is that your MVP is not everything, it’s just the beginning of everything that the product could be. It allows your team to iterate the product and learn from the customers what they want it to do.

Characteristics of an MVP

• It has to bring your customers value. It has a little bit of the important parts.

• It has to be built so that you maximize your learning.

Why is an MVP important?

An MVP is important because it allows you to go through the build, measure, learn cycle. This excerpt from Eric Ries, in his book The Lean Startup describes it as one of the five principles of building a lean startup:

It lowers risk since you can catch issues soon and therefore save money and time. It saves money since it’s a small version of the product but enough for you to learn early on where there might be issues.

How to decide what goes into your MVP?

Decide what is the smallest set of features that gives the customer value.

Add in the parts that will give you the most learning. The MVP is built for the enthusiasts and the early adopters.

Early adopters are those that can look past some missing features and see what the full product or service will become.

The best way to build an MVP

• Use a small team

  One of the benefits of building an MVP is that it contains the minimum set of features so it can be manageable with a small team.

• Map out your workflow or user journey

  Any process you use to map out the flow, either by traditional flow charts or just short phrases written on sticky notes or index cards, allows you to decide what parts of the flow are critical and which parts are future needs.

• Make a Story Map (How to create a Story Map and User Stories?)

  Your product story map describes your whole product vision, for as much as you know right now. The MVP is usually the first release of features off of your story map.

• Write user stories (What is Agile Story Writing?)

  Take the initial set of features off of your story map and describe what the user needs to be able to do with the benefit of that feature.

• Use real data

  For any B2B product that involves using data or is built for improving data processes it’s important to use real data.

Fun Fact

For Dropbox, the file synchronization company, it was impossible to demonstrate the working software in a prototype form. The team believed that the customer did not know they had a file synchronization problem so they built an MVP to prove that once you experience the solution you will want it. The MVP was a video. Drew, the founder, created the video showing the product. The video, Drew recounted, “It drove hundreds of thousands of people to the website. Our beta waiting list went from 5,000 people to 75,000 people literally overnight. It totally blew us away.”

Resources

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and Design - Balancing Risk to Gain Reward

A Review Of The Minimum Viable Product Approach

Minimum viable product definition

How MVP helped these Four Unicorns-Uber, AirBnB, Dropbox, Zappos

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Lenka Davis is a Managing Partner at Fly to Soar. She has worked in marketing, managing projects and building tools in the high-tech industry for Fortune 100 companies and also ran her own business. Follow Lenka and the Fly to Soar Team on Instagram @flytosoarcompany