What defines a successful MVP 🧐?
My co-founder and I are at the final stages of developing an MVP and we have a dilemma.
We have a mostly-complete product with some missing features so how "complete" does the MVP have to be before we launch?
Within a span of a month, it is simply not possible to develop everything and
since our initial users are going to see something incomplete, how do we best validate our startup idea and measure product/market fit?
Is daily usage a reliable metric to trust or are surveys and customer interviews more insightful? Is it more important for the MVP to demonstrate the potential it could have in the future as it evolves into a complete product or the current state it is in when we launch?
As Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, said “if you’re not embarrassed by your MVP you spent too much time on it”. MVP is exactly that minimum viable product. It should be something you put minimal effort in to allow you to get a semi-conclusive result on whether people like your product.
I would say the way to gauge it is more qualitative than quantitative at early stages. Speak to customers. The ultimate questions are:
+1 to this! launching is a process, NOT an event:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/the-product-market-fit-process-6f5592813b
and yes, it's painful. but, necessary — funny on hoffman quote:
cause, yeah!
keep going!
Just as a side question, after you have validated an MVP, do you move forward to building the "complete" product or iterate ASAP?
i mean, you're kinda on the pathway to do both, right?
... you iterate... as you get closer to "feature complete-ness"... right?
L(° O °L)
good question! anything else?
Ok, that might have came out as a funny question 😂. My question leaned more towards the timeframe of product development after the MVP. Eg: 6 months of product dev after all user feedback before launching again or what? Everything that comes after MVP is mysterious territory for me.
ah! the mvp should be the smallest version of value that you can deliver, quickly. then, ask your customer(s) for feedback and start building from there.
... it really is a feedback loop... as simple as that sounds, that's what it is.
Ok, thanks a lot for clarifying things up. Maybe I was just over complicating things 🤯.
maybe, but, give yourself a break!! you're doing great... asking questions is important; helps us think better and more clearly about the problems we're trying to solve.
keep going! here to help.
Some good responses here but unfortunately the answer to this is an easy 'It depends'.
Along with the comments here on this post I would say to look at your closest or biggest competitors and see if your MVP is solving your customer problem better than them. Better here can be - faster/smarter/easier/fewer steps/more enjoyable etc
Once you have something that's maybe slightly better than a competitor(s), send your MVP out. Don't overthink it.
I guess there's not a one-size-fits-all approach for every startup so I'll just launch and stop overthinking it. Thanks!
The concept of MVP was introduced as part of the lean startup method, to:
So the question is what are you trying to learn and can the MVP deliver that? If yes then it's ready. Write down what you want to learn so you don't trick yourself later.
Validation per se is a bit of a misnomer and it is more about having validated confidence to progress.
Nothing is 100% validated until you are flying over the moon on your unicorn with $1B in your back pocket or whatever goal it was that started you on your venture.
Thank you rab.
Also, if the MVP is just for testing our assumptions and learning about our customers, should we have a landing page with a demo video of the MVP or does the landing page come after validation?
Typically people will use a landing page as it's a cheap & easy way to gauge interest/commitment, even before an MVP is ready. Demo videos are more compelling but don't sweat. There are no hard rules and you can/should refine as you go. Best of luck
There is simply no answer to this question. It depends on the market. The MVP has the minimum feature-set that people will pay for.
Depending on the category your app is in, that could be a single feature, or it could be a hundred features.
Your market research and your experiments actually trying to sell it have to be your guides here.
Although not the direct answer to your question, a bit of 'what constitutes a MVP' seems to tie into what kind of product you're building.
Social or B2C products have a much larger emphasis on UI/UX. Users in general have fairly high expectations now days, and if it's sluggish and doesn't feel polished it will detract from the audience. It's probably better to have fewer features that are very nicely built than lots of features that are very rough.
As long as your MVP is solving the problem of your prospecting customers, then you can say your MVP does the job.
Once you hit this ground, think about how you can expand the spectrum, find more users who have the same problem.
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