MVP
Build your first MVP
You can plan as much as you want, the reality is always different and customers always handle the products differently than you expect. That's why it's so important to give customers a version of the product as quickly as possible and see how they deal with it and find out whether it solves the problem. There is no question that the product may look different later on and is not yet perfect. There is even a saying in the start-up scene: "If you are not ashamed of the first version of your product, then you have waited too long to release it".
Many start-ups would like to work towards the big release, the "launch", of their product, where they make their product available to the public for the first time and then all the customers pounce on them. Unfortunately, this is just an illusion and the sad truth is that with this approach, nothing happens at launch and customers are not suddenly interested in you just because you offer a product. What's more, until the first customer uses the product, you don't know whether it solves the problem at all and whether all the work was worth it.
We take a different approach: start quickly with a first version and regularly publish better versions of your product or service. Learn with every customer. Your product/service will get better and better and step by step more and more (potential) customers will find out about you.
An MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is the first step. It is a highly scaled-down version of the finished product that you have in your head and should help you to know early on whether your approach is the right one and give you the opportunity to gradually grow with your challenges. The MVP is already a finished product with which you go to market. It is not a design prototype or a project outline, but already creates value for customers, who ideally will even pay for it. You don't develop an MVP in several months or years, but in just a few hours, days or weeks, depending on the design of the solution. That's why you really need to focus on the elementary value of your product that you want to communicate and test with the MVP. Take the critical hypotheses from last week as a basis and see how you can generate value for customers as easily as possible and test your solution.
The MVP should not be a prototype that shows part of the idea and how it should look, but should already solve your customers' problem. In other words, don't focus too much on exactly what your website, app or product should look like and what functions it has; instead, look at how you can solve the customer's problem and generate value for them that they may even be willing to pay for.
Here are three examples of MVPs:
Stujo.net:
Problem: Jobs for students are hard to find and existing platforms are confusing.
Idea: The student job platform StuJo provides a job platform, similar to StepStone, where companies can post jobs on a website and students can apply for these jobs.
MVP: A Facebook group on which the founders of Stujo post jobs for students that have been published on other job platforms or company websites. For the first users, they invited all their friends to the group and asked them to invite the rest of their friends as well. This quickly built up a user base of several thousand students and made it possible to test what the students liked and talk to them to determine the requirements for their own platform.
chatShopper:
Problem: Online shopping is not mobile optimized and it is difficult to find the perfect product on a smartphone.
Idea: A chat app in which you can simply write what you want and immediately receive suitable product suggestions from an expert, which you can buy via the chatShopper.
MVP: A WhatsApp number and landing page that advertises that you only need to write to this number with your product request and you will immediately receive suggestions. When a request comes in, the founders quickly search for a suitable product at Zalando, Otto, Amazon, etc. and send the customer the link. The founders came into contact with customers very quickly, learned that the approach appeals to customers, what kind of products they are looking for and where the difficulties lie in the process.
Zappos (foundet 1999):
Problem: Finding the perfect pair of shoes is hard - and you can only do it at the mall.
Idea: A website where you can browse through shoes and buy them online.
MVP: Founder Nick Swinmurn went to his local mall and took pictures of the shoes on the shoe rack and posted them on his website. Whenever a customer was interested in one of the products and placed an order, Nick went to the mall, bought the shoe, packaged it and sent it to the customer.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel when building the MVP, but use existing tools as much as possible and don't shy away from manual work and get stuck in yourself.
To give you another example of a startup path, watch the first part (the first 15 minutes) of this video, in which the founder of the delivery startup Doordash explains how the first few months of his startup went:
As you can see, you can start with something very simple to get the ball rolling. From there, you can continue to improve your product.
Michael Seibel, founder of the video platform Twitch and CEO of Y-Combinator, has summarized his experience of creating an MVP very well in a video here and gives you all the necessary knowledge about MVPs along the way:
Now it's your turn. We have a really ambitious goal for you to have a first version of your product by next week. Try to think as simply as possible and see how you can offer customers your service without having to build too much yourself.
Task 1: Start with your MVP. What is your elementary value proposition? How can you test this quickly and offer your customers a product?
Useful Tools 📲
Canva: Create appealing designs easily and free of charge. Whether it's a logo, social media post or flyer.
Wix: Create websites without programming. Also possible for online stores. Basicversion is for free! / From 5€ per month.
GlideApps: Create apps without programming using data from Google Spreadsheets. Basic functions free of charge.
And many many more. Just have a look at our notion page "tools".
Tasks for this chapter💪
Weekly Report Template
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