The Problem with MVP

Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is widely accepted as one of the critical initial steps for creating a new solution to a problem. Unfortunately, there are several pitfalls that we see over and over again that are easily avoidable if you are aware of them.

Many new founders jump right into building a solution without validating the problem they are solving first. When you consider building toward product-market fit, understand that starting with the market is always best. The greatest marketing professor I had would say that the best thing to do before you do anything is to “shut up and listen.”

The key is to have conversations with people that may use your product and not just seek to validate your own theories of what their problem is or the solution that you have in your head, but to actually try to understand their trials from their own perspectives. Having conversations around what their day is like, where they face the most struggles, and digging into the why will yield much better understanding and insights than simply asking “would this awesome product I’m thinking of making help you?” Observing them in their day-to-day if possible can provide even better insight. Try to forget what you know and learn from the market first.

Once you’ve identified a key problem to solve, do consider before going forward whether that market is big enough. If you’ve spoken to five people and they represent the entire market, you’ll neither have the greatest impact nor be able to create a scalable business by solving their problem.

Constant improvement is the name of the game. An MVP is meant to give you the quickest path to building something to test your solution. Expect that it will evolve countless times, but do understand that it needs to actually work to solve the critical issues you identified in the market validation step. Stay focused and take baby steps to get there. Keep in mind that many great B2B products started out as spreadsheets. AngiesList started out as Angie being the directory: answering calls and manually finding the matching contractors. Low fidelity, manual and non-scalable solutions are your friend here. Then as you begin to see what people respond to most, you can begin to automate and build toward the more sustainable solution.

I’ve worked on software “MVP’s” that needlessly cost tens of thousands of dollars. Looking through the list of priority-one features was like reading a child’s Christmas list to Santa — lots of expensive, glitzy things that they probably don’t need. This ruins so many companies and causes numerous products not to see the light of day. Always ask yourself as objectively as possible: “will I still solve the most critical problem if I ship without X feature.” Definitely keep yourself in check with being pixel-perfect or getting caught in endless design loops. They are NEVER worth it.

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