A slight twist on MVP | Hacker News Reader

A slight twist on MVP

7 pointsybalkind6 comments

I came up with a system that I like to use to test ideas. It's similar to MVP but a bit more practical IMO.

After I come up with a product idea, I work on the brochure that I'll actually send to potential customers. This gets me to list the main selling points early. But being a sales document, it typically puffs up the product and lists everything that is cool and that I think will add value, so its a more a VP than a MVP.

To make this system work I have to decide what features need to be built BEFORE I feel comfortable sending out the brochure. This forces me to decide what needs to be done before I can approach the customer. Say for example I'm creating a service which helps companies attract interns by listing their profile on an online directory of companies who offer internships. My brochure might mention that they will get a detailed profile page with their logo and a contact form. I can easily send the brochure on the basis that the website is launching in two months time. So the website at this point is not a MVP. However, if I list as a selling point that I have a readership of 20'000 readers per month, and if I consider this selling point to be so important that I don't think it's worth sending the brochure until I have this, then I a have the first element of the MVP - to get a readership of 20'000.

This means that I probably do need the website as an MVP so that I can get the readers, but it gives me a bit of a purpose now when launching the website. I'm not launching it to impress companies yet, I simply want the readers. Then I can send out the brochure even if the important features are not built yet.

So the creation of the brochure forces me to decide what elements are crucial right now, and which elements are crucial for phase 2. It gets me in front of customers testing my concept in the shortest possible time.

I generally like your insight. The example seems to contradict your idea though—getting a readership of 20k is often much more difficult than getting paying customers from an MVP.

For the brochure, I would leave out specific metrics and data based results and instead keep the benefits high-level with tangible results.

If the brochure is merely an internal tool to help one focus on the important next steps, ignore above advice.

> I think will add value, so its a more a VP than a MVP. >To make this system work I have to decide what features need to be built BEFORE I feel comfortable sending out the brochure. >I can easily send the brochure on the basis that the website is launching in two months time

This is backwards of what is taught The Startup Owner's Manual. You should "get out of the building" and speak with a lot of customers and really learn about their hair-on-fire problems first. Preferably ten per day. Additionally you should be iterating as fast as possible while you search for that MVP--the two months without a release is too long. Remember you're not going for version ∞ you're going for alpha-alpha-0.000001 release that tests a hypothesis.

Creating marketing materials first clarifies a bunch of important things around your business: who your audience is, what your model is, how are you going to reach them. It also gets you speaking your customer's language early. All good things.

I tend to go this way too. In place of a speculative pre-startup business plan (though it grows into that, naturally, I find), this has a lot of the same benefits.

The downside is that I've produced a lot of vapourware, and have been in the position that I've conditioned potential customers to be disappointed. It isn't always easy to see what is feasible, and this can easily lead to over-promising and under-delivering.

If you can walk that fine line, it is an okay approach, I think.

That in nutshell is what the LEAN methodology is all about.

I know, but I always I always felt that LEAN and MVP thinking left me with more question than answers. This approach is probably not different, but I feel it a slightly more intuitive way of looking at it for me, and it helps me gain a bit of certainty about how to approach it.

I found it interesting that PG said in one of his interviews that when he's considering a pitch, he tries to visualize how a journalist could write an article about the pitch in a compelling way. Same idea.

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