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What is an MVP?
Since founding a startup can be risky, owing to the uncertainty that surrounds it, it’s important to minimize the risks involved as much as possible. Here is where the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) comes into play. This term, popularized by Eric Ries, the Lean Startup method creator, has become something vital in every startup or business’ initial phase.
For this reason, today from Opentop, the Valenciaport innovation HUB, we want to give you the necessary information so as to understand what is an MVP and how to make one.
Minimum Viable Product
An MVP is a new product or service’s prototype with the minimal features so its potential customers can try it. By doing this, the startup is able to know, before its launch, if their product awakes interest and if it really covers a necessity.
This prototype works as a test of a new product or service, and it allows, with the least amount of effort, to collect the maximum amount of information about it. Having an MVP is a great method in order to reduce the risk of your startup failing.
What is the Minimum Viable Product’s purpose?
As well as reducing the risk of a startup launch by decreasing uncertainty, using an MVP is useful too for:
- Knowing if your product or service really covers a necessity.
- Confirming your hypotheses.
- Learning about your customers and their interests as a result of their feedback.
- Gaining a loyal customer base from the early customers of your product or service.
- Perfecting your product’s design or functions with the collected data.
Therefore, an MVP is a perfect way to obtain the maximum information about your product and customers’ reaction with just a little effort and cost.
How to do a Minimum Viable Product?
First of all, you need to have enough information before making your MVP, so the first step is to identify your market’s necessities, your ideal customer, etc. Once done, the process of making an MVP can be summed up in four phases: build, measure, learn and accelerate.
- According to the hypotheses and the previous information collected about your market and customers, you build your MVP focusing only on the essential functionalities and developing just the necessary.
- Evaluate and measure the results of your product with the indicators you’ve fixed in order to discover if your hypotheses were correct.
- Learn from the results obtained. At this point, you may need to change the direction of your product or service and make some necessary changes according to what you have evaluated. Or, on the contrary, if your hypotheses were correct and there is nothing to improve, it’s time to accelerate your product or service!
From Opentop, the Valenciaport innovation HUB, we suggest everyone who has an innovative idea, a startup in its initial phase or a project in development, to have an MVP in order to successfully launch into the market.
