Why first versions of a product don’t have to be perfect?
The following post presents the concept of the MVP according to the theory presented in The Lean Startup book by Eric Ries.
The Minimum Viable Product
An MVP or Minimum Viable Product is the simplest possible version of a product or service, which allows an entrepreneur or a startup to test and validate their most important hypotheses:
- Does my product/service provide real value to my intended customers? (Value hypothesis)
- How will new customers discover my product/service? (Growth hypothesis)
The objective of an MVP is not to deliver a perfect first version of the idea, but rather to start learning what are the most important features of your product/service are to the market you are trying to introduce it, all while taking the minimum amount of time and effort possible. This stops entrepreneurs and startups from overspending valuable resources in features that are actually not that important to their customers.
It is crucial to present this MVP first to early adopters, the type of customers who are willing to adopt new technologies/products/services. This type of customers are capable of seeing the value in your vision and even in your flawed version of it, and their feedback is extremely valuable to understand which are the features worth spending time and effort into.
Some MVP examples
The video MVP
Dropbox developed a video showcasing a dummy version of their product to be able to validate if potential customers got excited by seeing it.
Current situation: Dropbox’s market value stands at 9.3 billion USD
The Concierge MVP
Food on the table started by offering their service directly to their first customer and using this experience to start building the features that the customer deemed valuable, eventually getting more customers and automating the service provided.
Current situation: Acquired by Food Network after raising 2.2 million USD
The Mechanical Turk MVP
Aardvark: The artificial intelligence services offered by this company were fulfilled by actual persons when they started testing their product, avoiding to develop a full social artificial intelligence algorithm that they were not sure was going to generate enough interest.
Current situation: Acquired by Google for 50 million USD
Conclussion
If you want to validate an idea realistically in a market build an MVP with just enough functionality to demonstrate your idea to the early adopters. Don’t stress over perfection of the first versions of your product and use the feedback to focus your time and effort appropriately.