Estimated Time
- Reading: ~10 minutes
- Video: ~15 minutes
- Activities: to be completed prior to next week
Insights
- We previously touched on foundational knowledge and explored several tools that will be useful as you build your MVP
- This section will double down on a few of the activities you've completed.
- We will begin to pull it together as you identify the core features you'll include in your MVP
- As we discussed, for your MVP to be successful it has to provide value to your customers or they simply won't use it
- As a founder it is vital that you understand and can directly answer the following:
- What is the major problem your idea, product, service solves?
- Who is the ideal customer you are targeting?
- Who else is solving this problem for them and how are you going to stand out?
- What is your single value proposition and what are your core features?
- Now there may be some slight deviations as you gather feedback from users,
- But at the core, you will spend the rest of this course building an MVP to solve a specific problem for a specific user
- Remember you are not going to build your entire MVP in one day and the first version will not be perfect
- When thinking about an MVP Daniel Burka describes the best MVP as having Goldilocks quality:
- “The ideal prototype should be of Goldilocks quality. If the quality is too low, people won’t believe the prototype is a real product. If the quality is too high, you’ll be working all night and you won’t finish. You need Goldilocks quality. Not too high, not too low, but just right.”
- The MVP is meant to get your vision in front of users, gather feedback, and determine if your solution solves a big enough problem that people will pay to use it
Ideal Customer Profile
- Refer back to the "Coming up with an idea for a startup" section when you identified your ideal customer for your idea
- Where do these people live online? How will you get in front of them?
- What are you going to do to attract your first 5 users? Your first 20 users?
- Maybe you already have a small network of people who fit your ideal customer profile
- Maybe some subreddits make sense for you to frequent and become an active member of
- Maybe you join the Product Hunt community to learn and collect feedback
- Maybe you share your experience via blogs, Twitter threads, or TikToks.
- Starting your own conversations while building in public
- Early on it is okay to do the unscalable activities that will get your first users
- Find where your ideal customer is located and begin to interact with them
- Offer value, insights, and ask for feedback on your new solution that will solve their problem
- While building your MVP keep this ideal customer in mind
- Too often founders get distracted by a new shiny idea
- Stay laser-focused on your single value proposition and the user who needs your product
- You can not lose sight of who your target audience is in the process
- Gather feedback as early and often as possible
- Be careful only collecting feedback from friends and family
- Especially if they are not the target user
- But even if they are - people often have a hard time giving constructive feedback to close friends
- Expand beyond this group to collect insights on what you are building as soon as possible
Thinking Ahead
- It is a good idea to start thinking about:
- How you will make money
- Most successful companies have an idea of how they will make money from the start
- We will spend more time on business models in the coming sections
- So if you aren't sure right now, don't panic
- But it is worth keeping top of mind because if you can't make money, your idea won't work out
- Who is your competition?
- It is important to focus on your single value proposition, but you also need to be aware of your competition in the space
- Again, we will dig deeper into the competitive landscape in a coming section
- But for now, do a quick Google search and identify who is also solving the same problem
- It is not a bad sign if there is competition
- It shows that the problem is worth solving - others are doing it
- The key is to figure out how you are going to do it better, faster, and/or cheaper
- How is your single value proposition going to distinguish you from the rest of the field?
- What is your core differentiator?
- This will help you prioritize the features and explain to users why they need you
Start Small
- The M in MVP stands for minimum for a reason
- This does not mean you sacrifice the value that the user receives from your product
- The MVP must solve a real problem from the start
- It doesn't need to solve all the problems, but the main one is a must
- There are tons of examples of major companies finding success with their MVP
- For example, look at Uber (originally called Ubercab) and their MVP
- They had a singular focus that brought users value immediately upon launch
- Book and pay for a car from your phone
- It was simple and clear what the value was
- Uber started small
- They had three cars in one city (see original landing page below)
- And you order from the web, app, or text
- This single value remained the focus for a few years
- They iterated on this MVP based on customer feedback
- It was 2 or 3 years after the launch of their MVP before they started to deviate from the MVP and allow drivers to use their own, non-luxury cars
- So what made Uber and their MVP so successful?
- They were laser-focused on their single value proposition
- They offered the maximum value with a minimum product
- They identified their ideal customer and targeted them
- They collected feedback after every ride
- They iterated on their product
- They doubled down on what was working
- Then, when they were ready they added non-luxury cars and additional cities
- They have since added more offerings and deliveries
- Hear directly from Uber Co-Founder, Travis in the early days of the company
Episode Date: August 16, 2011
Jason Calacanis
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- Jason and Travis Kalanick Co-Founder of Uber discuss the following topics (and more) from Uber's early days:
- 42:30 How did you and Garrett come up with Uber while at Le Web in Paris?
- 34:45 How does Uber work?
- 46:00 Travis says there are going to be more Uber cars than town cars in each city.
- 47:00 Travis: Successful entrepreneurs can get their first round of funding done very fast.
- 48:30 How do you know when you actually have a good idea?
Building an MVP
- There are a lot of debates about how to and how not to build an MVP on the internet
- One of the most popular descriptions you'll find is for "building a car" (shown below)
- In the top "How NOT TO BUILD" image the user is unable to use the product until it is complete
- As mentioned before, customer feedback throughout the process is vital
- You want to build in a way that the user is getting maximum value as quickly as possible
- You could spend a lot of time and money building this first model only to find out that the car is not what the customer wanted
- In the bottom "How TO BUILD" image the user can be transported at every step
- This allows the user to provide feedback along the way
- Another positive consequence of building this way is you may discover that it is the "bike" stage of the product that differentiates you
- You could then double down or pivot based on this customer feedback
- If you waited to get that feedback until you were handing the keys of the car to the user - you would have missed that opportunity
- The cake model is another way to think about creating an MVP
- This model reinforces the importance of starting small
- The user gets no value if you simply give them the ingredients ("How not to build")
- It is better to give them a cupcake while gradually working towards the wedding cake ("How to build")
- Some argue that the cake model is a better representation of building an MVP because the user can sample the actual end product throughout the process
- Unlike the car example where there is a drastic transformation from stage to stage
- However, it really depends on what you are selling
- If they are selling transportation in the first model then one could argue the car and cake model are essentially the same
- If they are selling a car thought it makes sense that they want to differentiate steps in a way that more resembles a car along the way
- Regardless, the biggest takeaway when building your MVP is to ensure your users are always finding value and that you can collect feedback along the way
- The article MVP in Agile - Screw the MVP & Build Incrementally does a great job of laying out steps to improve your MVP in an implemental way
- If you commit to getting a little better every single day you'll notice drastic improvements looking back a month or a year from now
- In Atomic Habits, author James Clear points out the value of these small improvements
- If you can get just 1 percent better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year. - James Clear
- This concept applies directly to building your MVP
- James Clear explains this concept from Atomic Habits: How to Get 1% Better Every Day in this quick video
- As you saw with the two models above (and any search you do online) there is some debate about what an MVP is and how to build one
- We are not going to get caught up in all of that - there will be no test over vocabulary
- We are going to focus on building a great product that delights customers
Initial MVP Requirements
- You have already started to collect the initial pieces for your MVP through the previous activities
- You have come up with an idea that solves a specific problem
- Focussing in on a single value prop
- You will spend time revisiting who the ideal customer is that needs this problem solved and where you can find them
- You will also briefly look into the competitive space to understand who else is working on a similar solution
- You previously started to lay the foundation for what your product will look like
- The wireframe from section "No Code Intro" will act as a guide as you start to build your MVP
- Identify the key features that align with your single value prop
- Ask yourself if there are any templates you could use to build these features
- The Bubble templates we used from the previous section have a lot of great tutorials to get you started
- Is there a template that you could tweak to fit your needs and avoid starting from scratch?
- e.g. If I'm launching a company that is the Uber of Helicopters...
- A quick Google search for "Bubble Uber template (or clone)" pops up some useful examples
- How do you prioritize features?
- First, ask yourself if the feature supports the single value prop you've defined
- If it doesn't then put it in your backlog and don't revisit it for a while (maybe years)!
- If it does support your single value prob you'll have some decisions to make
- But ultimately the priority needs to come down to whatever provides the most value to the customer
- If you provide value the layout and design are not as important
- Think about Craigslist
- They identified their ideal customer
- Provide a service that their customers value
- They have hardly updated since the mid-1990s
- Now this is not to say that design isn't important - having things look nice is important
- Probably more so than the 1990s when Craigslist started
- But in terms of prioritizing features - value to the customer is top
- Remember your MVP is not going to be perfect, but it should solve a problem and provide value
- Trying to be perfect might even ruin your startup as described in this great resource: Don’t Be Perfect: 7 Reasons “Feature Creep” Will Ruin Your Startup
- If you are looking for a more specific steps to define key features, prioritize their development, and review some concepts we've discussed previously - you'll want to check out How to Prioritize MVP Features: 9 Useful Approaches
So just how far can you go with a no-code MVP?
- There are several examples of no-code products getting thousands of users, tens of thousands of dollars monthly revenue, and raise significant rounds before moving off of no-code platforms
- The platforms just keep getting better, and the solutions are able to support more and more users
- Chris Lu discussed in a recent interview how they built copy.ai's MVP on a no-code platform in around 4 weeks
- Within 8 months they hit $90k MRR and raised a $2.9M seed round
- Jason talked about the no-code revolution on The Knowledge Project podcast
- Jason believes it is possible to get to $10m-$100m in revenue fully on a no-code platform
- Episode Date: Apr 12, 2020
- You have been laying the foundation for the initial requirements of your MVP in previous sections
- Before you start building in the coming sections take some time to revisit and solidify your answers to the following:
- Does your idea solve a major problem?
- Who else is trying to solve this problem?
- How are you going to differentiate?
- Who are the people who have this problem?
- Find them
- Talk to them
- Gather feedback to help build a solution they will pay for
- What is your single value proposition?
- Stay laser-focused on providing value and delighting your users
- What key features are necessary for your product to deliver this value?
Additional Resources
- Creating an MVP: The Art of Small Steps
- Build your MVP without code
- A guide to get started and mistakes to avoid
- Don’t Be Perfect: 7 Reasons “Feature Creep” Will Ruin Your Startup
- How to Prioritize MVP Features: 9 Useful Approaches
- MVP in Agile
- 6 Great Minimum Viable Product (MVP) types You need to Look at Before Building your Product
Activity
🔲 Revisit your ideal customer profile from week 1
- Dig deeper into and continue tracking the following:
- Where is your ideal customer?
- How will you talk to them? What are they saying?
- How are they currently solving the problem they have?
- What is the main value you provide that will draw them to your product?
🔲 Complete an initial competitive analysis
- Dig deeper into and continue tracking the following:
- Who else is in your space?
- What are your distinguishing features?
- Why would a customer use you over their current solution?
- Will they pay to use your solution? Or how will you make money?
🔲 Key Features as part of Single Value
- Continue to update your wireframe
- Does the feature directly provide value to the customer?
- Create a backlog of features that aren't immediately necessary
- Prioritize the features that are core to. your product
- What feedback have potential users given you based on your initial mock-ups?
- You will begin to work in no-code next
- The more complete these initial wireframes are the easier it will be to jump right into building your application
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