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An MVP is a starting point. Generally an MVP is not market-viable; it's somewhere between a tech demo and a beta product. But it's complete enough to start havi
by exelius 13y ago
An MVP is a starting point. Generally an MVP is not market-viable; it's somewhere between a tech demo and a beta product. But it's complete enough to start having talks with potential customers / investors about where the product should go from there. When you're just talking about a theoretical product that doesn't exist yet, it can be hard to have a constructive conversation with people.
No two people will probably agree what an MVP is for a specific product at first; but it doesn't matter. I think too many companies focus on an MVP as a stage-gate versus just planning feature priority (and revisiting as necessary). The whole idea behind an MVP is that you don't really understand the market, so you build a barebones product to go start to learn what you're doing from a market positioning standpoint. Then you go develop features to reinforce your position.
- wpietri 13y agoI have come to see an MVP as hopefully viable for a very narrow slice of the market. In Crossing the Chasm, the author talks about readiness to adopt as a bell curve. At the very eager end of that curve are people who will put quite a lot of work in. For a product I'm researching now, I'm trying to find the smallest thing I can give to a very eager customer and have it produce value for them. Hopefully enough value that they will say, "Ooh, let me get my checkbook." That it will take a ton more work to be viable for mainstream customers is fine by me. If it were appealing to more than 5 or 10% of my target market, that would tell me I could have been more minimal.
- exelius 13y agoYeah; it shouldn't be appealing to the wider market: you don't even know what that market is at the point you're building your MVP. The MVP is as much a tool to help you learn about the market as it is an actual product.