The Death of the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in Competitive Markets
blog.groovehq.com
blog.groovehq.com
2) The cycle of expectations that your product needs to be as feature rich as your competition on day one leads to what Eric Ries calls the large batch death spiral where it always seems like a good idea to add that one last feature (I've been there, it's painful, and really difficult to pull out of).
3) RE: fear of ruining your reputation if your MVP isn't shiny enough-- good news: no one knows who you are when you launch, so you have nothing to lose. Don't launch your MVP in the press, court early adopters, listen to your customers, and focus on building value until your product kicks the competition's ass. If you hide from customers out of fear you take the biggest risk of all: building something no one wants. Even if you have the best product idea in the world, the only way to know if the features you add are having a positive impact is to measure the behavior of real, live, human users.
Unfortunately I think what we're seeing is the lean startup backlash where people use the terms but don't really take the time to understand what they mean. The Lean startup movement is a powerful set of lessons that can empower entrepreneurs and save us from wasting our time and effort building the wrong things and chasing the wrong metrics, but maybe some of the lessons just have to be learned painfully through experience.
Absolutely, but I'll add this posit: What "viable" means is heavily context driven. If the goal is to learn about whether or not your specific take on things is valid, then what your MVP will need to look like will depend on the kind of market your pursuing, whether or not their are already existing players in your space, how radically different your approach is, etc.
IOW... if you wanted to launch an MVP of a "Facebook Killer" and the "secret sauce" was something, like, oh... some gamification thing... badges or accomplishments related to making new friends, let's say. That's enough like Facebook (or g+, etc.) that the expectation for a potential user would be based around Facebook... your "secret sauce" is only an incremental improvement, so you'd almost have to roll out something as feature rich and visually polished as Facebook, in order to find out if you can compete. That sucks, but one that's why there are both pluses and minuses to entering an established market with an incremental improvement. :-)
Now if your "secret sauce" is something world-changing and totally new, like say, "automatic Frombleglizzits when you Gwizztickum" (whatever that is), then you may ONLY need to build enough to make people understand what "automatic Frombleglizzits when you Gwizztickum" is, and then you can find out if that's compelling to them or not, in isolation. If it turns out it isn't, you would have wasted a tremendous amount of time building a complete Facebook clone just to find that out. You have more uncertainty in this case, but this is exactly where the Lean Startup approach helps... eliminating waste in the face of extreme uncertainty.
good news: no one knows who you are when you launch, so you have nothing to lose.
Exactly.
Unfortunately I think what we're seeing is the lean startup backlash where people use the terms but don't really take the time to understand what they mean.
Absolutely.
TLDR: In established markets, viable != minimal.
Or something like that... :-)
So it's not possible to target a niche with a specialized product that only has 20% of the competition's features, but does those 20% properly for that niche?
However, in cases like healthcare or finance, or certain B2B applications, viable may entail a much more mature product.
"Never" is an awfully strong statement, but I mostly agree with that sentiment. I see this as orthogonal to the point I was originally trying to make though. My example was probably to hastily constructed and may not have been very clear.
Of the several articles decrying the MVP that I've seen hit the HN frontpage in the past few days, every single one of them (and or the associated comments) have shown a profound misunderstanding of what it means to follow the Lean Startup approach. Hint: being a Lean Startup does NOT mean developing a buggy, shitty looking, incomplete application, releasing it to the public and hoping for the best.
Also note that the strategies for developing a product in an established market are NOT the same as when you're creating something truly novel. If you don't understand that, go back and re-read The Four Steps to the Epiphany.
In fact, if I could assign homework to random people, I'd assign re-reading that book as homework to any and every body who's tempted to write another blog post commenting on this subject. :-)
Just to re-iterate: A couple of the major tenets of the Lean Startup approach are to learn continuously, and specifically by gaining validated learning, AND to eliminate waste, by not building something nobody wants. Ergo, a true MVP represents the intersection of the least you can build and still gain some useful, validated learning (context matters here, see above about established markets, vs entirely new products), while avoiding building stuff in advance, that will ultimately become waste.
That's it... nothing requires your MVP to be incomplete, buggy, shitty-looking, unstable, or any of those other things... BUT, and this is a key but, it might actually be any of those things, IF it can be and still meet the above goals!
Also nothing about the methodology per-se requires you to launch your MVP to the entire world from day one. Ok, maybe there's something about your scenario that dictates that the ONLY way you can gain any validated learning is through a worldwide launch to the public... I don't know, it's your startup not mine. But for most of us, MVPs are meant to be shown to a handpicked set of early prospective customers, preferably ones who have already been through the earlier stages of the Customer Development process with you.
Edit: To be fair to the original author, the title does specifically mention that he's referring to "competitive markets" and I do acknowledge that the exact criteria for your MVP may vary when you're entering an existing market. The one point I'll add about that, is that while Customer Development and the Lean Startup approach still apply in this setting, they seem to be most optimized for startups that are creating entirely new markets for radically new products.
- A good idea comes along that makes a lot of sense
- Starts to gain traction
- Some people get a bit too religious about it which annoys some other people.
- Some do it well and lots do it badly
- The annoyed people try use the examples of it done badly to make generalisations about it, smear its name and generally miss the point entirely.
- on and on we go
It's like reading about people complaining BLT sandwiches have no meat if you leave out the bacon...
Am I missing something?
As @alexmturnbull suggests, the equation is a little different when your scope is large just to be a contender in a space.
People wanting to "do a startup" are most likely in for a world of hurt. If you're not writing code on a daily basis (because that's what you do!) and eventually writing code to solve a problem you're having, or just cause you have a cool idea, then the likelihood of success is basically nil.
Now if you look at a project through the lens of "even if it fails as a company, I win anyway because of the lessons I learned from building it" or something similar, then I could see the argument for disregarding this approach. But the idea really just reduces to "build what you want to build, but do it iteratively and combine some validated learning about your market along with your development."
You could argue that they hit their MVP and that's when everything took off but the mindset was definitely "I'm going to build something cool" opposed to "I'm going to build an MVP so I can have a startup".
These founders eventually left post-acquisition and have since continued to crank out new projects without regard to commercial viability. Not what the business schools teach but they have "won" so I don't think they care.
That said, I feel like it is something that has a chance commercially, and we are actually employing the Customer Development / Lean Startup model to things. I don't necessarily see that as incompatible with "doing cool stuff." I'm just prioritizing the "cool stuff" a little, based on feedback from potential customers. That's a sacrifice that I, personally, can live with. YMMV. :-)
The whole POINT of a lean startup is not to go running for cash the instant you think you have a good idea. With today's scalable cloud platforms that start at zero dollars, low cost or free development environments, and plenty of freelance help when you need it, WHY do people still think they need $10 million to launch a website or build an app?
Especially their first one?
I contend that if you are building a product for the sole purpose of taking a juicy exit, then you are just taking part in the gold rush (and he's right, it is a gold rush). In that case, no amount of practical advice applies to you, because if you're being honest with yourself, your whole mission is to create the "Minimum Viable Pitch" that gets the VCs interested and then hang around long enough to get acquired.
And that has nothing to do with creating really good stuff.
Here's an idea: think of something you HAVE to build because you can't wait to start using it yourself. Define the "Minimum Viable Product" as that thing you have to build before you can start happily using it yourself. Now, go show it off. If people are interested, sell it or put in ads or whatever you have to do.
If it starts going like gangbusters and you need financing to grow or else you're really going to start pissing your customers off, then go looking for money with your now very REAL track record in hand. You know, because at this point you really NEED that money.
Seems like common sense to me. Also seems a lot more authentic and ethical.
But what if you really ARE building the next Facebook and need $50 million to spend on servers and office space and Aeron chairs and....
Well that's probably not your first startup, so nothing in the article is news to you anyway. If it IS your first startup, you crazy.
The point of an MVP is to learn about a market/problem-area. If there are established players, it's easier and less expensive to learn from them. The goal is to learn as much about the market/problem-area as fast as possible. In new markets, that usually requires a MVP. In established markets, that might require an MVP testing a new solution. If the goal is to compete in an already competitive market that demands a polished solution, anything less is likely to fail.
MVP: If you are in a brand new market with few competitors you should put out an MVP. You will likely beat your competitors to the punch on visibility and customers will be willing to pay because of the relatively few quality alternatives.
No-MVP: If you are in a mature market your MVP will get you nowhere because there will be many competitors already there who are already competing with very mature products. (Ex. how many people will buy your MVP car made out of a hunk of steel, wheels, and a mower engine... 0 people)
So why all this talk of MVP...
Because many of the tech and startup markets of the last 5-10 years are maturing.
If you are creating a Fart iPhone app - that thing better be polished and be the best damn fart app because that market has become mature (well i suppose the wrong word choice but you get my drift).
On the other hand, if you are creating an iPhone app that lets you control your microwave, an MVP version would most likely be beneficial because its unknown if there is even all that much of a market for that.
"minimum viable" != "shitty", it means the bare minimum that is required to gain the validated learning in the product's market context. In a mature market, a product will generally have to be more polished to reach viability..
Maybe I should know this, but are these guys some kind of 37signals offshoot, or have they just copied the 'hq' thing?
>Groove is a hosted customer support and engagement platform that helps companies manage customer support across all types of channels - email, web, live chat, mobile, Twitter and more.
Tells me nothing. Nobody signed their name to this piece of whatever, and I have no idea why I should be paying any attention to it. Who are they, and why are their obviously self-submitted pontifications worth my time?
Unfortunately, the majority of work for a startup is about finding product-market fit. A la Steve Blank, a new product rarely survives first contact with customers. As such, spending too much time on something that will inevitably be changed doesn't make much sense.
Also, some people who are testing out ideas are probably just exploring, playing with the idea in their own head. It helps to send something out to friends simply to generate conversation and get quick feedback.
Don't hate.