What makes a good MVP?
What makes a good MVP? Or more precisely, how do you manage to get a good MVP (i.e having your first clients/users) in a very short period of time ?
I have a ton of ideas, schemas, plans for products or services but if there is one thing I struggle to do is to create an MVP.
I read so much blog posts about how to make an MVP but I always have the same question : how is it possible to have a good service/product in only 3 months (or a bit more) ? Do people really buy a product that is limited in features (ex one core feature), that has a simple UI/UX?
I always end up by having too much things to do for an MVP :
- the website to present the product and allow people to register
- payment/subscription system
- email templates / automate emails
- social networks
- domain name, servers, configs, automation...
- databases / event systems
- build the service / product with a first version (mobile, desktop or web app)
- UI/UX
- Tests
- Find the first client (s)
Even with services like stripe, MailChimp, etc .. Are you really able to do that in 3 months as a solo dev when you just have few hours per day to work on your project? What am I missing? A realistic deadline for me would be 6 months : the first 3 months to make research, build the first blocks, explore, and the next 3 months to clean everything and make sure I have everything to acquire my first clients (no bugs, clean processes, good ui/ux, maybe some marketing, ...). But at the end you already spent half of a year just to know if your project will work or not.
How do you do in practice?
Thanks !
Some have made a front end with pictures of products from a store, taken orders, and then went to the store to buy the product.
Others have simply directed click-throughs to a "Coming Soon" page.
The goal can be as simple as to measure customer interest. This can be used to attract a team and investment. You can also begin to interact with your potential customers in order to build the product that they want by interacting with real customers.
IMPORTANT NOTE: ALWAYS, show respect and gratitude. You can thank people who show early interest in some meaningful way (even say that when you have finished the product they will get it for free - even though they clicked to pay for it).
The MVP strategy helps you fail quickly or succeed accurately by interacting with customers to iteratively build what they desire.
Hope that helps! Good luck!
Thank you !
I like the idea of building a solution on top of the other just to measure the interest. Seems like the easiest way for me right now regarding my project, but at the same time sounds like it's not really transparent for the users, so most of the time I avoid this.
I will think about measuring customer interest. Maybe with a completely fake app made to showcase my core features and get feedback. But it's not really an MVP at this stage, more a prototype. But still highly valuable.
I hope I will have the chance to iteratively build with my first customers. Certainly the most exciting part ! Or fail fast as you said and move on something new 😊.
Thanks!
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Thank you for taking the time to answer!
It comforts me in my current understanding that while you want to validate your core proposition as early as possible, you still need to deliver a very polished version of your product or you will lose potential customers (and maybe miss a successful launch).
For me this is where the complexity lies in finding an MVP that is well balanced between TTM and overall quality. Do you have examples of MVPs and their development time so I can refine my expectations in terms of time?
Thanks!
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago
Thanks for taking the time to answer ! I plan to build a SaaS that provide a mobile infrastructure for developers. So it involves cloud infrastructure + network operations + desktop app. This is what I need to develop the core features.
So definitely using templates, pre-made designs for the website will help me to focus on the product value proposition.
Optimizing later is something that I need to follow more, as a developer I tend to being a bit biased there. But my main targets are solo developers and small teams, so I still need to care about security and performances.
I suppose the TTM also depends on the product, but I wonder how much I can cut at the beginning. Following your advice I could remove everything that is not the desktop app and handle account/registration with oauth. So for example just a webpage with a download button. I'm reluctant to do this by fear of losing potential clients by "not providing enough".
Thanks!