MVP process

I have helped several companies build their MVP as a developer and have built several for myself.

Here's the advice I wished someone gave me before making the first couple that went nowhere:

Figure out how to test the app in the simplest form possible.

You doing the backend work manually is best if you can do it.

The frontend can be an email list of customers, a wordpress site, a google spreadsheet, a task management app, etc. Something that already exists and gives you some flexibility without taking a ton of effort.

If you are solving a problem for your customers, they won't mind doing things more like a service at first.

Apps are incredibly expensive to build and iterate, so you don't want to pay a developer while you figure out the best way to serve your customers.

You can easily make changes to a manual process (for cheap!) while you are working out your solution.

Once you have everything dialed in and happy customers, it is much easier to take an existing process and turn it into a software product.

You can even do it in stages to reduce up front cost, by eliminating individual steps in your process, until you build up to the final product.

Or if you want to go the long run solo - learn programming. As said above - Ruby on Rails is good for quick development of web apps.
Some years ago I did not find a good (functions+cost) solution for my business => learnt ruby and wrote the whole app that perfectly fits my current business processes. So I moved the 20-year-old business from paper and spreadsheets to a business app with the cost of only my time. Although, it took me 2 years. Ups and downs :)

Read Sprint (https://www.thesprintbook.com/). It's an amazing, inspiring read about how to prototype and test fast!

I'd be happy to help (email in profile). Let me know deets.

Thanks everyone for your input. I'm still absorbing it all. Much appreciated!

Send me an email (in my profile) with what you feel you might need built. I’m in Philly as well and happen to know a few developers in and around the city (family 😉) that might be able to help you out.

I regularly make MVP's using Excel, Zapier other SaaS products. Testing calculations or scoring related to given answers is done quickly and efficient that way.

After 5 to 7 versions things tend to settle down and I proceed towards specifications and defining the MVP product that needs to be coded.

Works for products that have a result dependant on input (questions, parameters, other API's..)

It really depends on what your product is. There is a lot of tools for no-code startups these days but it's always gonna be a tradeoff between flexibility(custom) and saved time(tool).
In general, I'd agree tho that you should figure how to test it in the simplest form as @jasonforrest mentioned because that will help no matter what way you decide to go for in the end.

Depending on what your app is, you will probably need to write the code or hire someone. If you need to hire someone, message me. I’m based in South Africa and my rates aren’t too high. Also, if you have time and wanna learn how to code it I could advise you on which technologies to use and how to go about doing it :)

Hey! When I made my app I outsourced the project through upwork and created our MVP that way. Is that the info your looking for?

This comment was deleted 7 years ago