How to Quickly Build an MVP
Building an MVP Like Buffer, Uber, or Airbnb.
You want to start a company and you’ve got an idea.
Maybe you even think: “Well, that idea is GREAT” but you just don’t know how to start?
In this case, you are feeling like almost every other founder out there. Even the founders of big companies like Airbnb, UBER, or Buffer felt like that.
No worries. Take a look at what they did successfully.
They built an MVP first and you should too.
Let’s dive in.
What is an MVP?
The definition behind the word MVP is “Minimum Viable Product”.
To break it down, it means a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers and to provide customer feedback.
The goal here is to be really minimal and basic. It doesn’t have to be fancy or completed. It’s just the concept you sell to users.
Look at it as the best way to satisfy users’ requests, collect reviews, and to test the market demand.
That should be enough. Let’s talk about how to build one.
The Process of Building an MVP.
The process consists of two stages, such as the Customer Development or Marketing part and the Development Part itself.
1. Marketing stage
Before building a product no one wants (which happens if you do not validate the market) try to gather as much feedback as possible.
The sad reality is that almost half of the startups’ failures are related to the absence of necessity. Why so? Those solutions did not solve the users’ problems.
That is why it is extremely important to carry out detailed market research and analysis before getting started.
What we all should do is:
Market Research
Do market research and figure out whether it needs your idea/product. Is there a market for my product?
Could it be possible that people want it?
Are there competitors yet?
Identify the target audience
Identify your target audience, its values (how do they correlate with yours?). Imagine the user and his/her needs and fears AND validate them.
Try to gather as many people as possible around your product.
Ask questions ( a lot)
Ask your target audience to find their problems and maybe they even combine with your basic idea. With this information, you can create a list of the features and benefits of your MVP.
Try to prioritize the features from critical to nice to have. We at epap use Productboard for this and the whole roadmap itself.
Promotion
Start by creating awareness and by using organic marketing to attract prospective customers. You want to act budget-friendly.
Answer questions like where is my target audience located (like Social Media) to know where you have to be.
You gathered a lot of feedback, you’ve got a tribe around your idea/product, you clarified which features are part of the MVP and people would love to have it because it’s a pain killer?
Alright, let’s move on to actually build an MVP.
2. Development stage
The main process here includes the initial product development and its subsequent revision.
Design process
The final product, or rather, its minimum viable version, should be convenient and understandable to use. Look at the product from the user’s view.
Don’t forget that the users’ number will increase over time. Your platform should be ready for the load as well as you have to resolve the technical problems of a large number of users at the same time.
Develop MVP on time or faster
This stage is devoted directly to development and monitoring. All emerging technical flaws must be caught immediately and fixed. That’s called customer support.
Run and measure product demand, analyze, and consider reviews
What to do after MVP is developed? Test it, analyze reviews, make changes. It will be an ongoing process.
The user experience is constantly changing, users are becoming more demanding, they want to spend minimum efforts and time interacting with any application or site. And don’t forget that a product is never finished.
Create the loop Eric Ries talked about in his book “The Lean Startup”.
Give users what they want. What do users want? You got the answer to this question at the preparatory stage, doing marketing research.
Check what users want, test the product, collect feedback. Do not forget that you have created a product to solve end-users’ problems, not yours.
If you want to level up your game, you can start to explore user’s behavior in your product and pay attention to numbers like CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs) and LTV (Life Time Value).
But at this stage I’d personally focus on creating a decent solution because mostly your numbers will be low, so no worries about that.
Last question before exploring some very interesting examples. How minimal should a product be?
It must:
- Serve at least one specific audience
- Solve one key problem
- Should be easy to use and quick to iterate
If your MVP is not delivering these features — then it is not minimum and neither viable nor valuable.
Great MVP Examples
Airbnb
They launched a landing page to invite strangers from another city to spend a week or more with them in shared rental housing. The Airbnb Founders were interested in watching how comfortable it would be for everyone to share a common area. As a result, they revealed that everyone was satisfied with services and rest.
Buffer
At the very beginning, Buffer was just a landing page with small pricing and a signup form. With it, Buffer’s Founder wanted to figure out the demand and it worked perfectly fine.
Conclusion
Building an MVP is one of the most important steps in building a successful startup. It serves the need of testing the market demand while creating value for your customers.
Take a look at what the big startups did and try to learn from it. I guarantee you that you will skip a lot of trouble with it.
