The biggest dilemma to-be start-uppers have after they have zeroed on the idea they are going to work on is how to build the product, what features should the product have oncea it is launched in market. People tend to have different opinions on that, some of the founders take the route where they build a fully loaded product with all the features they think should be in the product, while there are other founders who decide to build the most important feature – the core of the product- first, and then keep adding features based on user feedback. The second approach, where you decide the bare minimum features that your product should have which makes the product usable for users and at the same time helps in shipping the product to the market at the earliest, looks like a better option as it helps in building a product that the users need. The idea behind this is to collect user feedback on the product without wasting any time and money. This version of the product is called MVP – Minimum Viable Product.
What is an MVP?
Eric Ries defines MVP as “ that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” MVP is a concept which has been popularised by lean startup methodology.
To understand MVP better, let’s talk about how facebook as a product has evolved over the years. Facebook was launched in the year 2004, back then it was just a website for Harvard University Students. It was an MVP, plain and minimalistic, catering to a closed group of audience. Once students at Harvard loved the product, facebook started opening up to more schools and universities in 2005. 2006 was the year when the Mini-feed was born, which was basically a play-by-play of the Facebook activity. We did not have news feed until 2007 where you could see what all your friends had been doing since the last time you logged in.
2009 was the year when Facebook launched its first mobile app. So the facebook we see today was not built and launched in one go!
Why you should build an MVP?
Getting an MVP first not just helps in fast go-to market but it also ensures that the product you are building is one which customers need.
Paul Graham, co-founder of Y-Combinator says “Make something people want.” That’s the fundamental problem. If you die, it’s probably because you didn’t make something people wanted.”
Getting a no-frills version of your product upfront enables faster learning and quicker iterations over the product development. If the product is solving a popular problem, you can get enough user traction to grab investor attention to your product.
In case you decide to build a feature-rich product right at the outset, you might end up building something which the users do not need, moreover the cost and time to go-to market is exponentially high compared to an MVP.
Who should be building an MVP?
You should build an MVP when your idea is relatively new and you want to test waters before going full in. When the idea has not been validated by actual users or customers, it is better to start small and keep building on it iteratively.
But in cases where you already have product-market fit (you have enough number of user transaction on your product to prove that the product is needed by the end users.), you do not need to build an MVP.
The decision to build an MVP or go with a full blown product first up depends on the stage at which you are with your idea, as well. For a matured product idea, you obviously do not necessarily need to take the MVP route.
When does building an MVP hurt?
It’s not wise to build an MVP when your users are expecting a finished product. This happens in matured(already served) markets where your users are used to certain kind of user experience.
Say, you are building an e-commerce venture today, you can not build a store where users can not track their orders or can not cancel/return their orders. But, had you built the same e-commerce store 5-8 years ago, you could have avoided building these features to start with.
In cases where you need to pivot based on user feedback, the product marketing costs increases and time gets prolonged as you continually have to change the marketing pitch. When the product that you have built has a definite value and has seen a significant number of transactions by users, it’s wasteful to build an MVP.
The decision to build or not to build, an MVP depends on what resources you have at hand, the stage your idea is in and the market that you are targeting. There is no “one size fits all” solution to this. There might be cases where going the MVP route would be a bad idea. But talking specifically about startup ecosystem, it’s very unlikely that one has an exhaustive list of features that users would want and enough resources to trump all those features in one go. Rather than opening all the war fronts at once, MVP provides you the liberty to focus on the most critical features first. While you work on subsequent features, your idea is further validated by users. Hence, the final product would not only be superlative in terms of user experience but would also be tailor made for the target audience as it would accommodate user feedback.
From our experiences with founders and entrepreneurs, it’s a good idea to start with MVP and pivot as per the customer feedback till you reach a product-market fit.
To get your mobile or web product idea into reality, we are always here to help you. Drop a line at mittal.nayan@sugoilabs.com