Question for the community about MVPs
Hey everyone, I just joined, and this is my third post here.
My first post was some designs for an MVP for a 1-on-1 advice platform where I got super useful feedback which winded up getting me to this: https://xd.adobe.com/view/47605349-163e-45c3-7725-59394beacb92-3151/
On my last post https://www.indiehackers.com/post/bd1bca3773 where someone, a Googler it turns out, commented, saying that what I should do is start a fb group where people can offer advice and then tally scores to mimic what the product would do. If I get a few 100 followers, invest my time into building it.
I was a bit put off by this, but, I'd like to hear what you guys have to say. Isn't designing a good product all about how it works? This seems to be saying, well, prototype a car by having a bunch of horses covered over with a plastic sheet to see how it works. Well, maybe... but, the idea of offering advice isn't novel (ask any mother in law) - what's novel is the implementation - the flow - where people get to offer short quick advice and get immediate feedback in a fun way and then share their scores.
Bit of a ramble here, but, am I right about this or not?
Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion!
I tend to agree with you. The fb group is a poor proxy and the app sounds trivial to build at least a prototype of.
They were trying to help you by showing you how to take the current temperature. Advice websites like Quora are clearly successful but timing and trends matter. Quora was also started by some of the most experienced and proven entrepreneurs in the world and I'm not sure if it's even profitable yet, although the founders probably made a lot from it.
Why were you put off by the idea? It's a free way to quickly learn about an audience. The reality is that no person or test can accurately predict anything about any business but wouldn't you prefer to know the outcome of that experiment as opposed to not, even if it doesn't change your direction?