how different minimum viable products helped us understand customers

Effective use of a Minimum Viable Product

-by Pushkar Gaikwad CEO, Enter Tech Solutions / CubicleProjects Entrepreneur at Start-up Chile

Myself

• Pushkar Gaikwad – Chemical Engineer from IIT Bombay

• 5 Years in Oil & Gas Industry

• Started working on my startup “cubicleprojects.com” in May 2013

• My experiences taught me planning to minimize risk in a start-up

Cubicle

• Work Management for Engineering Projects

• Combines ERP with Project Management Tools

• In these slides I will share my experience of using Minimum Viable Products (MVP) for early customer validations

Idea

• Product / Service

• Customers

• Competition

• Capital

• Team

• Industry Trends

Basically I started with an idea for an ‘Integrated Project Management Platform’

while working as an Engineer

But there were MANY different factors which influenced viability of the IDEA. And

each one needed to be tested.

Showstoppers?

• Getting started

• No Product / No Customers

Often people have a great idea. But give up without any execution. And then 3 years

later you see someone else making millions with the same business

So if you decide to execute, make sure your product is technically feasible AND SALEABLE. Most start-ups fail because they can’t find any

buyers.

Risk Assessment

• Technological feasibility?

• Do you solve a PRESSING problem?

• Single dominant player in market?

• Long enough financial runway?

• 10X changes approaching?

Customer Development – Steve Blank

Customer Discovery

Customer Validation

Customer Creation

Building Company

MVP

Minimum Viable Product

• Test customer needs

• Determine minimum feature set

• Fix Bugs and Defects (code + workflow)

• Start making money!

MVP is a tool you can use to test certain assumptions about the market. And if the

MVP is good you can also monetize it.

MVP for Cubicle

1st Powerpoint Workflow Diagrams

2nd UI designed in Excel

3rd HTML Prototype

4th A functioning demo version in the cloud

For Cubicle, we started talking to customers from Day0, using different MVPs parallel to product development to validate

whatever we were doing.

Powerpoint

Animations

Videos with

workflow

UI Mock-ups

In Excel

Functioning software

prototype that

can be monetized

Different Tools for MVP

Excel Sheets – Quick to make, Testing not scalable

Powerpoint Presentations – Quick to make, Difficult to scale testing

Functioning App Prototype – Take longer, but Scalable Testing

Improve knowledge about customers

Improve product structure / features

Make some money

MVP for Flying Drones with Cameras

Drones Cameras Spectral Maps

What should be the MVP ?

http://www.linkedin.com/influencer/95015

To summarize…

It’s never too early to talk to customers

Basic market research can help a long way

Use MVPs and minimize risk

To summarize…

It’s never too early to talk to customers

Basic market research can help a long way

Use MVPs and minimize risk

Build a team

Raise money

Start your journey !!

www.cubicleprojects.com

Good Luck !!!

pushkargaikwad@cubicleprojects.com