🤏 Minimum Viable Product
This note is about creating a minimum viable product (MVP). MVP is a version of a product that you want to create as fast as possible to test assumptions about customer demand with the least amount of effort.
The MVP process in a nutshell:
- Find a problem worth solving.
- Determine the smallest possible solution.
- Research and test if the solution sounds attractive for the customers.
- Build and launch the solution at the smallest scale possible.
- Find and engage early adopters.
Figure out if your solution is attractive before building it. You can start by only creating a single landing page that explains what the product or service does and what it costs. Having only a landing page is not an MVP as it provides no value for the customer, but the landing page will give you crucial information about the target market.
Buffer landing page explained how the service worked, offered a news feed sign up and showed plan pricing. When the user clicked the plans, they got a notification to sign up.
Don't forget the P in MVP. MVP should already provide value for the end user. It should be a smaller scale version of the product with the bare bones functionality to solve the main problem.
Your problem is offering end users a way to move between two locations: MPV: skateboard, bike, motorcycle, car NOT MPV: wheel, two wheels, convertible car, car
AirBnB was initially made for the duration of one design conference in San Francisco.
Twitter was first launched as an internal product in a medium sized podcasting platform company.
Create a promotional video that explains the service and product. Collect email addresses of interested people. You can additionally create a crowdsourcing announcement.
Dropbox 3min video got 70 000 sign ups overnight and they didn't even have the product.
Avoid using tech as much as possible.
Groupon's first version was collecting emails through a blog post form and mailing them manually.
Zappos initial business model was that the founder posted images of shoes online for ordering. When an order was made, he walked to the shoestore, brought the shoes and mailed them.
When you have to test multiple assumptions at once, test the riskiest assumption first.