building a minimum viable product
DESCRIPTION
Best practises when building your Minimum Viable ProductTRANSCRIPT
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Robbert van Geldrop| Founder, BackupAgent
Building a Minimum Viable Product
Workshop
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Agenda
Part 1: Defining the MVP
Part 2: Tools, practices and pitfalls
Part 3: Forms and examples of MVPs
After presentation: Your MVP
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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’
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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
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An example of Maurya’s Running Lean Kanban
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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
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Tools, practices and pitfalls
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Focusing on Product/Market
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Remember! Build, measure, learn
Not every change is a pivot
Practices
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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
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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
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Mixpanel, KISSmetrics
Unbounce
Google Apps
Twitter Bootstrap
Amazon Webservices (including MTurk)
Balsamiq, MockingBird
3D printers
Tools
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Video
Concierge & Wizard of Oz
Mock-ups
Restricted product or service
Forms of MVPs
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Forms of MVPs - Video
Promise of a product to which your target customers can relate and which convinces them to pay or register.
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Forms of MVPs – Example Concierge
Value is delivered to customers by personal and manual labour.
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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
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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.
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Forms of MVPs – Senz Umbrellas
The first Senz umbrellas were hand-crafted out of existing umbrellas.
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Forms of MVPs – Restricted product
This service actually works as a stripped-down version to serve a beachhead market
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Forms of MVPs – Restricted product
Once your MVP is live, you can validate extra features using the ‘coming soon’ strategy
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Forms of MVPs – Restricted product
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Your MVPs
Now it’s time to discuss your MVPs
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Case – Quer.io
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Case – Quer.io
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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
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+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
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
@rvangeldrop