3 ms·

Show HN: Weekend Project - My MVB (minimum viable business)

28 points by thehodge 15y ago

thehodge 15y ago
Evening HN'ers, Thought I'd share my weekend project with you and see what you think, I run a few events in the UK (Conferences, Barcamps, Hack Days) and I decided to take my learnings and see if I could help other people who want to run events (we have a reputation for doing things a bit differently). I'm still learning rails so projects like these are as much about learning a new language as they are looking at a potentially new business. I hope this interests someone and if you have any questions, let me know
pknerd 15y ago
Very Informative post. It would be much better if can share how would you scale it in future and what's your business model. Thanks and best of luck!
- thehodge 15y ago
  Scaling is easy for this, I have a team of people we use for events who have agreed to come onboard and help with any contrats we get for this. Our business model is to charge people for organising, hiring or providing items or advice
rokhayakebe 15y ago
I scanned the post, and I have no idea what service you offer.
- trafficlight 15y ago
  http://www.excitingevents.co.uk/ http://www.excitingevents.co.uk/
- thehodge 15y ago
  Hmm I see what you mean, I guess I was trying to make the post more about how/why I built it in a weekend rather than trying to sound like I was trying to sell the company to the readers... I take your point though, thanks :)
derefr 15y ago
I wouldn't really call this a "minimum viable" anything—as you said, you had already purchased the necessary equipment to run your own events with; at that point, you had invested 99% of the start-up cost for an events company, that just happened to not exist yet. I would say this is more of an extension to your current business (it's re-using its assets, after all) than a new venture. I mention this because it makes the advice you've given a bit less general than you've made it out to be: the "step zero" of your MVB seems to be "have some uncommon set of skills and knowledge, and own some expensive equipment, that could have already been a full-time business operating at scale if you had just gotten off your lazy butt earlier and marketed it as such." That's a bit different than the nominal idea of an MVP, which is more "put up a page offering X, and only bother to invest in the resources+knowledge required to make X at scale if there's demand for it."
- prodigal_erik 15y ago
  An MVP actually offers crude but working versions of the features you're evaluating. A page offering something that doesn't exist at all is not any kind of product, merely false advertising that can only tell you what people think they might want without having tried it. It also poisons your reputation among people like me who care about an efficient market that isn't filled with chaff.
  - derefr 15y ago
    You missed the words "at scale." An MVP is when you offer a service X, but only build the capacity to handle, e.g., one customer, until you have 2+ customers. Sometimes this is done by not building anything at all, but rather by manually creating what the service would create for the person. The idea is that you only invest in automating/scaling/tooling up when you actually determine that there is demand, rather than building something for no reason. It's sort of like TDD: you have a facade (your storefront) that presents a finished product, and have customers make requests through it—then your business does the simplest thing that could possibly work to satisfy each request, only adding code/equipment/people/etc. when a request can't possibly be satisfied without it. In the case of the article, an actual MVB (as done by someone who doesn't already own event-staging equipment) would be to put up the page, and then only rent the equipment needed if-and-when people actually set up an event.

28 points by thehodge 15y ago

Evening HN'ers, Thought I'd share my weekend project with you and see what you think, I run a few events in the UK (Conferences, Barcamps, Hack Days) and I decided to take my learnings and see if I could help other people who want to run events (we have a reputation for doing things a bit differently). I'm still learning rails so projects like these are as much about learning a new language as they are looking at a potentially new business. I hope this interests someone and if you have any questions, let me know

pknerd 15y ago

Very Informative post. It would be much better if can share how would you scale it in future and what's your business model. Thanks and best of luck!

thehodge 15y ago
Scaling is easy for this, I have a team of people we use for events who have agreed to come onboard and help with any contrats we get for this. Our business model is to charge people for organising, hiring or providing items or advice

rokhayakebe 15y ago

I scanned the post, and I have no idea what service you offer.

trafficlight 15y ago
http://www.excitingevents.co.uk/ http://www.excitingevents.co.uk/
thehodge 15y ago
Hmm I see what you mean, I guess I was trying to make the post more about how/why I built it in a weekend rather than trying to sound like I was trying to sell the company to the readers... I take your point though, thanks :)

derefr 15y ago

I wouldn't really call this a "minimum viable" anything—as you said, you had already purchased the necessary equipment to run your own events with; at that point, you had invested 99% of the start-up cost for an events company, that just happened to not exist yet. I would say this is more of an extension to your current business (it's re-using its assets, after all) than a new venture. I mention this because it makes the advice you've given a bit less general than you've made it out to be: the "step zero" of your MVB seems to be "have some uncommon set of skills and knowledge, and own some expensive equipment, that could have already been a full-time business operating at scale if you had just gotten off your lazy butt earlier and marketed it as such." That's a bit different than the nominal idea of an MVP, which is more "put up a page offering X, and only bother to invest in the resources+knowledge required to make X at scale if there's demand for it."

prodigal_erik 15y ago
An MVP actually offers crude but working versions of the features you're evaluating. A page offering something that doesn't exist at all is not any kind of product, merely false advertising that can only tell you what people think they might want without having tried it. It also poisons your reputation among people like me who care about an efficient market that isn't filled with chaff.
- derefr 15y ago
  You missed the words "at scale." An MVP is when you offer a service X, but only build the capacity to handle, e.g., one customer, until you have 2+ customers. Sometimes this is done by not building anything at all, but rather by manually creating what the service would create for the person. The idea is that you only invest in automating/scaling/tooling up when you actually determine that there is demand, rather than building something for no reason. It's sort of like TDD: you have a facade (your storefront) that presents a finished product, and have customers make requests through it—then your business does the simplest thing that could possibly work to satisfy each request, only adding code/equipment/people/etc. when a request can't possibly be satisfied without it. In the case of the article, an actual MVB (as done by someone who doesn't already own event-staging equipment) would be to put up the page, and then only rent the equipment needed if-and-when people actually set up an event.