What is minimum viable product and how you can use it to jumpstart your business? Minimum viable product (MVP) means a product that is not perfect, but good enough to see if there is a market for the product.
The minimum viable product should not be too minimal either. If you plan on selling cars, just selling the tires won’t do it. You will have to make some kind of car that you test the waters with. If there is demand for it, then you can spend time perfecting it.
Why minimum viable product can help you
MVP can help you gather data from customers to improve the product with small upfront costs. When you don’t have to complete the expensive product development based on your imagination, but based on actual data from customers, you will increase the chances of success.
Minimum viable product can also help you to see if there is market and demand for the product. There is no point spending enormous amounts of money into product development, if you are not even sure if there are buyers for your product.
You can also start making some initial money back with your MVP. Afterall, even if your product is not finished, you don’t have to give it away for free.
You can even try to launch a lot of different products. Then see, which one/ones are the ones with most potential and start further improving those. Maybe forgetting the others that didn’t perform as well as the best ones.
How to define MVP
MVP definition minimum viable product means that the product or service is just good enough to satisfy some needs of the customers. It is the marketable version of the prototype.
As an example, if you are starting a lawn moving and gardening business, you could start with just a lawn mower. Then from there, if there is demand for more specific products such as cutting branches off trees or trimming hedgerows, you can improve your business by expanding your services to those things as well. In this case, just the lawn mover is the minimum viable product.
How minimum viable product can help your business
You can use MVP thinking in other aspects of your business as well, not just with the final product you sell to your customers.
When starting a business, you don’t have to do everything perfect in the beginning. Make things just good enough so it works. You don’t have to fully renovate your office. Make it just good enough to make it through the beginning phase of your business.
This will not only save you time, but also make it less risky, since you don’t have to spend so much time and energy into things that don’t really impact your businesses success. After your business has taken off and is making a profit, you can return and fix those things, such as renovating the office.
You don’t want to spend time and money making everything perfect just to see that your business wasn’t as profitable as you expected. Try to make things move with the smallest possible effort, if it proves to be profitable, focus more on it.
Minimum viable product examples
If you make a website, make it just good enough that it works. You don’t have to spend hours perfecting every single color and aspect of it. You can return to those things after you have proven there is a demand for your service.
Gardening or lawn mowing business, like mentioned above, can be started with just a lawn mower. Afterwards, if there is demand for other gardening services as well, you can buy equipment to offer them too.
Creating a new app or program, you don’t have to spend time perfecting the colors and theme. Just make it work like it should and test it. You can add other features afterwards.
What comes after MVP?
After you have launched your MVP and it has shown some signs of success, such as demand and satisfied customers, you can start improving it. You should also collect information from your customers about what they like and dislike about the product.
After MVP, you will start to finalize and perfect the product, making it the final product. Like I mentioned before, you can try out several different products and then choose one or more best performing ones and develop them further. Not every idea you have has to be a winner.
Final words
Minimum viable product thinking can save you a lot of time and recourses. Not every idea is going to be the next Microsoft. That is the reality. However, testing MVPs is not as costly as making the products perfect every time just to see there is no demand for them.
When you try a lot of different MVPs, chances of one being a success are increased.
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Hopefully this was helpful to you, have a nice day.