building a minimum viable product

1

Robbert van Geldrop| Founder, BackupAgent

Building a Minimum Viable Product

Workshop

2

Agenda

Part 1: Defining the MVP

Part 2: Tools, practices and pitfalls

Part 3: Forms and examples of MVPs

After presentation: Your MVP

3

Defining the MVP

Minimum:• the least amount of effort required to offer some value to customers

Viable: • a full product or service which completes the value consumption or convincingly

demonstrates its availability• a way to collect the maximum amount of validated learning

Product:• a product is also a transaction, so a customers buys something or vows a strong

promise to buy something after which you already deliver value

• Quote from Otto Hilska, FlowDock: ‘Asking for money was one of the best decisions. Customers took us more seriously, and we started getting better feedback’

4

Minimum Marketable Feature

MVP =

MMF + MMF + MMF=

Set of experiments that focus on a part of the business model

Read all about Ash Maurya here

5

An example of Maurya’s Running Lean Kanban

6

Defining the MVP

An MVP naturally comes in later stages of Customer Discovery:• It’s a rudimentary solution to a problem worth solving• An MVP must still trump any alternative solution which your

customers have used or considered• Basically, it’s the next step after building some landing page and

running an AdWords campaign to validate some demand

MVPs will attract early adopters: • Customers who can live with its limitations• People who buy into the vision and the ‘why’ • Customers who buy NOW and are relevant for Validated Learning

7

Tools, practices and pitfalls

8

Focusing on Product/Market

9

Remember! Build, measure, learn

Not every change is a pivot

Practices

10

Practices – other considerations

‘Reduce waste’ = work around your missing competences

‘Minimum’ = deliver value to customers faster and with less effort

If you users do not pay for the service, it can still be an MVP only

if those users are part of your ‘leap of faith’ assumption

11

Too minimum: • Can lead to false conclusions. • This is because the product is not viable and promises or produces

no value.

Testing the wrong part of the business model: • Entrepreneurs sometimes falsely assess their 'riskiest assumption'

Procrastination: • Spending months to produce this 'MVP' and not being able to deal

with disappointing results • Leads to more effort into the wrong direction because of 'loss

aversion'

Pitfalls

12

Mixpanel, KISSmetrics

Unbounce

Google Apps

Twitter Bootstrap

Amazon Webservices (including MTurk)

Balsamiq, MockingBird

3D printers

Tools

13

Video

Concierge & Wizard of Oz

Mock-ups

Restricted product or service

Forms of MVPs

14

Forms of MVPs - Video

Promise of a product to which your target customers can relate and which convinces them to pay or register.

15

Forms of MVPs – Example Concierge

Value is delivered to customers by personal and manual labour.

16

Forms of MVPs - Mockups

The mockup is equivalent to the video, since no real value is delivered. Mockups are great in sales-heavy business models

17

Forms of MVPs – Lit Motors

Created a 1/4 ratio scale prototype which excited a property owner so much that they got an order for a 3-year lease.

18

Forms of MVPs – Senz Umbrellas

The first Senz umbrellas were hand-crafted out of existing umbrellas.

19

Forms of MVPs – Restricted product

This service actually works as a stripped-down version to serve a beachhead market

20

Forms of MVPs – Restricted product

Once your MVP is live, you can validate extra features using the ‘coming soon’ strategy

21

Forms of MVPs – Restricted product

22

Your MVPs

Now it’s time to discuss your MVPs

23

Case – Quer.io

24

Case – Quer.io

25

Twitter Bootstrap: UX and design covered

Windows Azure: integrates with Visual Studio 2010

Amazon MTurk: outsource questions, replaces algorithm

99Designs: cost-effective logo design

KISSmetrics: captures usage

Paypal API: easy payment, voluntarily after receiving

results

We worked with a team of two

Total effort was approximately 2 man weeks

The service was completely functional

Quer.io – tools used

26

+300 visitors in a week (promoted via personal twitter accounts)

+60 people used the service

Nobody paid

Referrals were limited

We had to do small iterations to deliver real value

We got some press coverage by Sprout

Key learning: journalists were very enthusiastic and used it as a

tool to outsource and speed up desk research

Quer.io result

Contact

Follow us

www.backupagent.com

sales@backupagent.com

Tel: +31 88 700 8000

@BackupAgent

facebook.com/BackupAgent

youtube.com/user/backupagent

linkedin.com/company/backupagent-bv

Questions?Thank you for listening

Robbert van Geldrop

robbert@backupagent.com

@rvangeldrop