1. entrepreneurs shouldn't waste any time getting their ideas to collide with reality
2. Building an MVP, that helps visualize their ideas, should be the first thing a startup should build
i. Does this hold up to your experience?
ii. What are the pros and cons of this (MVP first ASAP) approach?
iii. Are there better approaches that have worked better for you?
That can be MVP or it can be something else. For example if you're a FinTech lending startup, then you better prove that your loan algos/model are profitable, rather than building UI wireframes and mockups. You can do this by backtesting your models or building a simulation.
"The Lean Startup" book by Eric Ries is already 10-11 y/o, so it's not up-to-date and with lots of gaps.
Also, ignore most of the data-driven methods, as they require lots of data which will not be available for pre-launch product. Instead you need to build a theory about your potential users' needs, and focus on shipping something first.
I suggest to get familiarized with the following methodologies:
- JTBD (Jobs To Be Done)
- 5 Whys
- GIST (Goals->Ideas->Steps->Tasks) method (partialy data-driven)
- Google Ventures Research Sprint
- Google Ventures Design Sprint
Agreed - but, if I were to break out startup risks into the following, which one is the highest?
- Market
- Product
- Channel
- Business model/unit economics
> "The Lean Startup" book by Eric Ries is already 10-11 y/o, so it's not up-to-date and with lots of gaps.
Can you mention just a few of the gaps?
> Instead you need to build a theory about your potential user's needs, and focus on shipping something first
What's the most effective way to discover:
- who these potential users are?
- what their needs are?
2. In many places it's just hand-wavy. Many case studies, but no formal methodology how to do Build->Measure->Learn feedback loop.
3. The needs and desires at a particular time/situations. Personas don't work. For example the same person may want a luxury meal in one situation and a hotdog in another. See JTBD.
Agreed and I recently mentioned it elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318531
> For example the same person may want a luxury meal in one situation and a hotdog in another
Sure - but would it be wrong to say the same person may have different Personas depending on the context?
> In many places it's just hand-wavy
Do you feel there can/should be a better way to discover customers?
Persona is Persona, Job is a Job (as in JTBD).
Products are answering Jobs, and the same Persona/Consumer may have multiple Jobs, depending on the context.
Consumer->Job->Product
Consumer->Product
So that strongly aligns with your Consumer->Job->Product
Here, you mention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30319105
> "The Lean Startup" book by Eric Ries is already 10-11 y/o, so it's not up-to-date and with lots of gaps.
Can you mention just a few of the gaps?
Interested to hear your thoughts.
Definition of MVP: an actual product being built to "validate the product" with the beachead customers needs.
It's important to call out and define what an MVP means because other people might mean "cheapest market discovery tool" instead of "cheapest product validation tool" - very different things
Right - I am assuming you are comparing to vs. starting with a backend heavy prototype where it could get very expensive before exposing to customers?
> It's much faster and cheaper while still being effective
Effective as in effective in getting customer feedback as to whether the product makes sense to them?
but what if there were faster, cheaper and effective ways to get customer feedback than a UI prototype for a fresh startup just a few days old?
When I see scope reduced from a functional minimal-product to a non-functional one. I usually see accompanied with that more time spent on producing a higher-fidelity UI-'prototype' which is clearly not a better use of time/resources.
Don't you think that iterating on a software MVP is more wasteful than iterating on a prototype? By the time you finish to setup the dev environment for your MVP you could've finished the prototype. And you don't have to carry any technical debt going forward.
> while maintaining a semblance of what it is used for.
and how do you know how it will be used for and by who without actually talking to users and understanding if, why and how they will actually use it?
said differently, would you agree that market risk (there's no one who cares about the product at all) is higher than the product risk (we can't build the product)?
The main goal is to find Product-Market fit as a first priority. This is done through prototyping, mockups, user-testing, etc, etc. Often this will be considered/called 'making an MVP'. This is an ongoing iterative process and the phase ends when you know what the core function or value proposition of the product is and who it is for.
At that point you move to the phase of building a higher quality (hopefully still very feature limited) v1.0 product.
Agreed.
I want to see whether you realize that in the "Product-Market fit", the only thing you control is Product - you can manage/change/affect it as a builder.
However, you do not control the Market.
So, would it stand to logic that reducing the thing that you do not control - Market Risk (there's no one who cares about the product, we are going to build, at all) should be much higher priority than the Product Risk (we can't build the product)?
Not entirely true. Part of finding Product-Market fit isn't only to shape your product, it's also to possibly redefine your target user as well. Often you will discover a use-case that is stronger than the one you set out with at the start with only minor changes to the original product idea.
> but what if there were faster, cheaper and effective ways to get customer feedback than a UI prototype for a fresh startup just a few days old?
Like what?