I stopped building an MVP and focused on building an MPP and this happened

Hi everyone,

I am Emmanuel, cofounder of HelpAI.

HelpAI is using artificial intelligence to help founders find cofounders easily. Need a cofounder, use this form https://forms.gle/fViVFrWBQfptNTjm6

I started this platform because it took me 5 months to find a cofounder while building personarise.com. I know this is a niche market but I've been enjoying it and learning a lot.

Now to the purpose of this article.

During my journey as a startup founder, I learnt about MVP and which is the first startup should have.

While building personarise.com, I focused on building our MVP using CMS in 2 weeks (I achieved it) but couldn't get anyone to pay for the solution.

So, I started thinking why spend so much time developing an MVP if one can just validate his idea before even spending a dime investing in product design or coding the solution?

I began to ask questions and read a lot of resources.

In my quest to other what makes one startup successful and another failed, I found a pdf titled "$10k SaaS Roadmap" on Twitter.

In that PDF, the founder documented how he went from 0 - $500 MRR through pre-selling and I said this is it.

He broke down what he did to get to $500 MRR, $100 MRR, $5k MRR and $10k MRR. I spend 4 nights re-reading this book to ensure it sunk into my brain.

I told myself this is it.

I said I am going to build a minimum payable product instead of a minimum viable product. I decided that I want a product people will pay for starting from day 1 as I do not have a lifeline on income.

So I did this:

1. Created a social media presence and started creating brand awareness through communities of my targeted market.
2. I build trust with everyone in the startup community where I am.
3. I created a google form to collect founders' interests and details.
4. I shared the benefits they will get with a link to the form as CTA.
5. Sent an email to all leads and started speaking to all founders to understand their pain points better.
6. I brought in payment and noticed founders without a startup pushback or loss of interest when asked to pay a fee. This made me understand which of these customer segments will pay for the solution and which is good to have.
7. I made matches manually and closed deals.

It is a short time but filled with so much learning.

Lesson learnt:

1. Focus on building an MPP (minimum payable product) instead of an MVP. Build a product customers are willing to pay for from day 1.

I am still learning and feel like sharing my progress so far with the community.

Let me know if you have a question.