How do you determine the scope of your MVP?
Three months ago, together with my team of three partners, we started working on Followr.ai, a social media management tool based on AI. We set out to launch the MVP in two months...
It has been three months already, and we still have several functionalities that we would have liked to launch in our MVP. However, on the other hand, I am very anxious to launch the product and have real users.
How do you determine the scope of your MVP before launching it? Is there a specific point where it goes beyond being an MVP and becomes something else?
I appreciate your comments 🙌
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If you have enough functionalities that can cover at least one user problem, release it, users will help you in the further build of a platform with their feedback
I think we have covered the main painpoint of our users with the functionalities we already have. After a few days of thinking and with all this comments we are already planning the launch 🙌
Thank you very much!
I think ideally you want to launch the smallest version that people would be willing to use.
In your case maybe people do not need to have crazy analytics, a nice calendar view, but rather just an ability to schedule tweets and have AI generate those.
Figure out what the most valuable thing you are doing for your customers and that will help narrow down what's your MVP. It's very easy to get to "We aren't ready, yet", "Let's add X first", but it's very important to get your product into users' hands — because you'll get real data on what they need and like — not what you think they need and like.
Hi there!
That last part you mention seems to me to be the key.
It is important to see what is essential for the users and not what I think is important for them. After all, they are the ones who have the problem to solve.
From what I have been hearing, I think that what we have to do is launch as soon as possible so that it stops being just an idea and starts to be something real.
Thank you very much!
I really linked the MVP from Y-Combinator on youtube (just search). Its built based on a lot of good understanding from various startups they have supported. I think you have passed this stage but certainly consider some of the points. Also people say no product is perfect. I would even say no MVP is perfect. For me launching the product (even if its barely working with core or some basic usecase) and getting user feedback is far more important than making it perfect or even making it complete. You never know what you would learn from users.
Thank you very much for the advice! I very much agree with you. I just looked for the YC video that you mention, and I started to watch Michael Seibel's video, I imagine that was the one he mentioned.
It makes it very clear with real examples that the best thing to do is to launch with the minimum you got and then go iterating along with the users.
I believe that is what we have to do now 🙌
Yes thats the one. YC really use a lot of experience from the startups tehy have sponsoned
My recommendation is to try to sell it before you build it then talk to the customers about what they want.
I'm doing this for my project Task Slayerz and it's help feel comfortable about our upcoming MVP launch (to do this I semi-sold it to one of my main company's clients as part of a contract [the validation has been in their response to how much they're loving what they're learning about the system])
However since you've already built it I think the best way to double check the MVP before launch is to test it with 10-25 potential users.
First have friends and family try the MVP to find any common errors that new users would easy run into.
Next you can do a soft launch where you go online and get a few people to demo the application during an interview where you watch them use it. To recruit people you can offer them 1-3 months free of the app when it launches.
Then before you launch you can analyze the data from the interviews and send emails/surveys to the people who participated to gain further data (or try to get them another as needed) to help do one more level of alignment before launching.
One thing to note is that you should also try to align the market with the app. The better you position your apps use cases and for those cases are for the more people will resonate with the idea of using the app especially if you can align it to beneficial outcomes.
Your website looks great (like really great), but I do recommend taking a look at the text a bit.
Hope this helps!
Hey there!
Thank you very much for the advice!
Although we have not done a validation as exhaustive as you are doing with Task Slayerz, we have partially validated the solution with 2 friends' communication agencies + the number of people subscribed to the waitlist which gives us to understand that it is a requested product.
As for the format to launch it, I find the tips you give us very helpful. At this time we have given access to these agencies that I was telling you about to hear their feedback, and what I think we will be doing in the next few days is giving early access to a few users on the waitlist. In this way, avoid collapses when launching and also be able to listen to their experiences with followr.
Thank you for your comments! Btw, good job with Task Slayerz! 💪
Glad it was helpful! Also thanks :)