What is MVP, how to build, and how not to think about it?
Answers most of your questions like what features should I build first, where the failure happens, how long should it take to launch my MVP. Let's dig right in
Hey reader, This is Sanjai, and welcome to my first blog on Substack. I am a generalist who loves startups and memes. Also, I like surrounding myself with people who are funny and intelligent. You will find this blog useful if you’re
1. Learner
2. Entrepreneur
3. An employee in a startup/well-established company
4. A college student who would like to pursue an idea
5. Creator/Artist who wants to build a startup around your skills
Most of my knowledge for the following blog is from Ycombinator, Ycombinator Partners, First round blogs, and amazing people who inspire me.
To build a great MVP, you don’t have to be an expert at knowing what MVP is about. Instead, you gotta be an expert in knowing your users - Inspired from Paul Graham
Starting with the idea
If you are reading this blog, most probably you’d be having 100’s of ideas going in your mind. You could’ve already read many resources on what MVP is and how to get your idea kickstarted.
The best ideas are fragile. Because they sound silly to people. But you never know which idea works and which doesn’t. One good example of this is ‘Airbnb’. Many said, “This startup never will work”. It turned out that Airbnb is a 26 billion-dollar company now
The only way to test an idea is by doing it. You need to surround yourself with people who are optimistic about the future. It makes you perform better
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is great,
don’t let some idiot talk you out of it - Stan Lee
How to validate your startup idea?
It’s essential to think from first principles. It is important to ask questions at the very beginning and have a solid understanding of your users.
What are the questions that you need to ask while validating your idea
1. How did I get this idea?
2. How important it is for users to have a solution for this problem?
3. How much do I know the users?
4. What would be the unfair advantage that I could build for this particular problem?
Answer to these questions will help you in knowing what are your assumptions in this idea and how you can prove it.
Common failure while validating your idea: Focusing on solutions instead of the problem.
Which feature should you build first?
The title I gave for this heading itself could be mostly misleading or wrong. Because there’s no single obvious answer to it. Once you get a solid understanding of your idea, it’s mandatory to ask yourself ‘What is the most valuable thing users can gain out of my platform’ and you can start building right from there. One of the counter-intuitive things we do while building the MVP is, we strive for perfection. Unfortunately whatever we call as ‘perfection’ is often disregarded or people may even ignore it completely.
At a startup, while building the MVP, we are going to make a lot of assumptions on what works and what doesn’t. The only way to test which work is by putting your product in front of the user as fast as possible. Most of the decisions that you make while building the product are reversible, so you can do it fast and many times as you wish. But it doesn’t mean that you can ship a flawed product. No one likes a flawed product. But those who find the errors fast wins
Start with the one feature that's going to make your product indispensable. Build from there.
How do you define the value?
The term ‘Value’ itself is pretty much abstract. Defining value at a minimal level can be explained as solving user problems. Of course, there’s more to it apart from solving the problem.
Few examples:
For Doordash and Swiggy: Value for users can be explained as choosing a variety of foods sitting in the comfort of home at a minimal level. At a maximized level, the value can be defined as how fast they deliver food, how quality the food is, how easy it is to order, and so on.
For Dropbox: Value for users can be explained in how much storage does the user has and how fast it is accessible by being anywhere in the world.
So you need to define and build what exactly your product solves and your users really need to give a damn about what you’re building.
Where value can go wrong?
Imagine you are visiting a restaurant and had a pizza. The ambiance was good, it had some light music playing on the background which is perfect for a Wednesday night but the pizza was burnt. Do you think you’ll be visiting the same restaurant again? In most cases, the answer will be no. The ambiance, the music are vanity metrics which we care a little but not too much about. Food is the fundamental here and that exactly is the value. Being the founder or builder in a startup, we often tend to get attached to solutions but not the problems that we are solving, and that exactly where we focus on vanity metrics instead of metrics that matter. In this restaurant case, the metrics that matter would be how happy they felt while eating the food and how often they are coming back to the restaurant.
How do you know you built something valuable?
Straightforwardly, a video can explain this.
You can see how much does the kid loves the icecream once after he tasted it. This should be the goal of your MVP. Something irresistible
The real metric for both consumer apps and enterprise is — do someone’s pupils dilate when they use your stuff? Whether you’re handing them a demo or if you drew something on the whiteboard. Do they say, ‘You’re not leaving’ or ‘Where have you been all of my life?’”
What matters finally for an MVP is not the growth but the number of users completing the core action. Some completion of core actions examples are
Facebook - Connecting/Making friends and actively engaging with them
Youtube - Subscribing to channels and watching a lot of relevant videos
Canva - Making design and downloading it
Imagine the above cases, if a lot of users are visiting your website/app but not completing the core action, this really means your product may have a market but you are not quite solving it. More number of users visiting your platform might feel good for you, gives you a good dopamine rush, but if your users are leaving without completing the core action- Your MVP becomes no good. This is where you go around, talk to your users more, gain insights on why did they leave and fix it. It’s almost a never-ending process
Increase happiness per transaction. Not just transactions. Do small things that make the user fall in love with your product.
How not to think about MVP?
When we think of the minimum viable product, our brain natural tendency is to think that we can ship something unfinished product. It’s not that and It also doesn't mean you can create a product that users don't love. Imagine you are building a fintech product and you introduce it to a friend of friend. You've built a fantastic backend which you are proud of. But the frontend or what the friend's see didn't emote trust to make the transaction. Do you think you'll get a second chance to reach out to that friend and ask her to use the product again? Maybe a friend of a friend will accept it but most people don't do that. So you have to create an MVP that users love. Your user's face should light up when they use the prototype. If it's not lighting up or if they feel like 'meh' probably you won't get a second chance.
Andrew Chen in his article perfectly described this factor as creating a ‘Minimum desirable product’.
Minimum Desirable Product is the simplest experience necessary to prove out a high-value, satisfying product experience for users
And launch your product as fast as possible. Fail fast and iterate more. Those who find errors fast wins.
In summary
Ship fast, fail fast, iterate more to increase your probability of MVP’s success
Make something that the user wants
Try avoiding shipping unfinished products
Don’t aim for perfection. Instead, aim for providing value to users
Don’t fall for vanity metrics. Focus on metrics that really matter to your product.
Focus on features that make the user come back and double down on it
I’d optimize this post for value addition or insights as my knowledge grows. If you made this far and reading this, I really appreciate spending your valuable time. I also would like to hear feedback from you. Drop in the comments or mail me at smsanjaiast@gmail.com
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Got it!
Love this Sanjai!
Completely agree on how it doesn't matter as long as you're able to adjust, adapt and keep at it! 😁