| That really depends on what kind of MVP it is and what you're bringing to the table. Some startup ideas can be hacked together quite simply by reusing a few existing services, tools and a bit of programming. Others may require some prototyping and fund raising (e.g. hard tech). Whatever it may be, the MVP is a hack and experiment to prove product-market fit. It's the tiniest, minimal effort you can expend to build a test to prove that there are real people who desperately need something you could provide them. An MVP is more marketing and sales than it is developing. Building your MVP should consume a fraction of your time and resources compared to the effort you'll spend trying to get people to see your hack and validate it. It's more market research than product development. You just want enough proof there's a business opportunity to continue spending time, money and energy on it. For software startups, there's a few patterns you can employ to build an MVP. One of them is the Wizard of Oz test, where you provide a facade of a real product but do all the hard work behind the scenes manually (until you can automate the rest of it). Another is piggybacking on other existing services and solutions, modifying them to your specific business domain (e.g. form builders, communication services, integration services, open source, BaaS, etc). Then there's the launch page strategy, that attempts to lure sign ups or "beta subscriptions" to show demand without building anything more than a few prototype designs and a landing page. It seems more compelling to just build it from scratch, but researching options and planning a more clever solution may save lots of development and money down the road. Treat it like a science experiment with incremental solutions and gather as much feedback as possible. There's quite a bit written about building MVPs. Here's some resources and inspiration: - Lean Startup - Sprint (Jake Knapp) - Product Hunt Began as an Email List: http://ryanhoover.me/post/69599262875/product-hunt-began-as-... - Building Your SaaS Startup’s Launch List: https://medium.com/@cliffordoravec/the-no-bs-approach-to-bui... - Successful SaaS MVPs: https://belitsoft.com/custom-application-development-service... - Wizard of Oz test: http://blog.ycombinator.com/ask-yc-upfront-technical-investm... - Shameless plug--I wrote more about MVPs here: http://jameskoshigoe.com/how-to-build-an-mvp/ |
I think this is totally overused these days. It was OK the first few times but now I feel sort of used when I see this.