Story time!

Imagine you came up with a great idea for a web or mobile app that you KNEW the rest of the world would love to use. You spend days, weeks, and maybe even months planning your product, getting developers and finally pushing it out to market. You sit and wait for your amazing idea to take over the world with all the customers that would be signing up on it. You get a trickle, and maybe even a few hundred people to sign up. You expected hundreds of thousands of users and amazing feedback from them about how they loved it. Instead, you got very few people that signed up. Even worse, terrible feedback.

You’re sitting alone wondering why the world doesn’t love your product and what you could’ve done to save yourself all this heartache, wasted time, and wasted money.

And this is when you realize, you could’ve built a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Now you may be asking what a MVP is.  

A MVP (minimal viable product) is the simplest version of your product with only the needed functionality built. It is used to validate an idea. It is the skeleton of your product. One example of a MVP is a landing page. Say you would like to build an app people can use to hire a personal stylist. Simply create a landing page where people can go and sign up for your services. If a good number of people sign up, then you know there is interest in the market. On that page you can also ask people if they are interested in an individual or group styling session and how much they would be willing to pay. Through this you will learn if there is a need for your service AND how much potential customers are willing to pay. This is one way of validating your idea. By creating only a landing page instead of a full service website or app, you will be saving yourself time and money.

Why should I focus on a MVP first?

So you might be wondering why you should focus on building a MVP first and not the whole solution. Well, let us look at the three reasons why you should focus on a MVP first.

1. A Minimum Viable Product saves you time and money

When you’re just coming up with your idea for a business, you typically have limited resources. You might not have thousands, or maybe even hundreds of dollars to spend on this idea. Even more limited is the amount of time you have to building this product and getting it out to market. A MVP allows you to build out a basic version of your product and test it out with much less money and shorter time. This will also allow you to bring your idea out into the market FIRST. The advantages of being the first-to-market with your solution can be what makes you successful somewhere along the line in the future.

2. A Minimum Viable Product helps you in validating your idea

We all have ideas on ways we can solve a huge problem in the world. But is it always the best? Is your idea as good as you have built it out in your mind to be? Before wasting a lot of time and money on it, you can use a MVP to validate your idea. Are you collecting a lot of emails from people who are signing up on your landing page ready to try out your solution? Are you creating a buzz around your solution? Do people seem eager to get a hold of your product? These are all good signs that validate your idea. On the flip side, if you’re not getting the same type of momentum going for your solution, maybe it is time to think of something else.

3. A Minimum Viable Product allows you to pivot

So you made the right moves and created a MVP that got a lot of attention. You have your solution being used and people are sending you feedback on what features they could really use. And you start to realize the market is pushing you toward a pivot, something that is similar to your solution but with a different twist. This is where you can take that plunge and pivot. Your MVP gives you the freedom to go where the market needs are. You can use the feedback from your first customers and build a product that solves a real problem.

Of course this is the simplest way to validate your idea and some MVPs require a little more work. We at REMHAI spend time with our clients learning the problem they would like to solve and work together to come up with the best MVP for your idea.
Do you have an idea you want to validate?  Contact us about your project and let us work together to create your MVP!