Tag: MVP

How to Launch Your MVP in the Market the Right Way?
The idea of launching an MVP has erupted significantly in recent years, it’s a standard procedure both for entrepreneurs and formed tech giants. However, like most ideas that become popular, there’s a lot of misconception.

So let us start from the basics.

What is MVP?
Things You Should Know Before Creating MVP
How to Launch MVP?
Examples of MVP Launch
Advantages of MVP Launch

What is MVP?

The MVP is the edition of a fresh model that enables your group to gather the most authenticated knowledge about consumers with the minimum effort. It is a tiny product with three essential aspects:
- It is either used or purchased by folks.
- It is simple to use.
- Using the resources at our disposal, we could send it as we want it.
Things You Should Know Before Creating MVP

To create an effective MVP, you must first identify the purpose.

User Section

A team of members sharing related attributes. It is critical to determine who the merchandise is for, and who this isn’t for. A popular brand blunder is to try impressing all and risk appealing none.

Issue

Don’t try to solve all of your issues in one go; instead, tackle them one at a time. It’ll assist you in focusing on one primary problem that irritates clients the most. Once you’ve resolved that issue for people, you could move on to more issues.

Workaround

After you’ve settled on the issue, you would like to fix, you may come up with more creative solutions. It is critical to narrow down to a viable solution. Focus on the appropriate alternative and what it’ll involve then you can get input rapidly without wasting a lot of money.

Limited User Interface

This implies that your MVP must be sellable and usable. You must determine and draw a line between an item that can be utilized and an item that folks will use. Test on your own and with your group to determine what is suitable for rollout.

How to Launch MVP?

Thorough Analysis

Before you begin, you must recognize the issue and its quick fix. You’ll respond to a series of queries, including:
- What issue is your MVP supposed to fix?
- What types of customers will be ready to buy?
- What are the currently available solutions?
Recognise and Prioritize Elements

This part focuses on the elements you are including in your item. You must create your product edition and outline the elements you want in it. After that, you must prioritize them. At this point, you’re probably to have one key focus element that communicates the product’s essence.

Tactic Selection

You should determine what type of MVP you’ll use. It could be a no-product, item replica, or a single-feature MVP. Your decision must be built on the concept that needs to be authenticated as well as the tools accessible.

Identifying Critical Success Factors

Before you begin developing your MVP, you must decide how you’ll assess it. Create a list of implementable measures and success factors that you’ll monitor.

Create a Storyboard

It’s a necessary step to list your attributes and create the product roadmap. It is made up of four main parts: an aim, actions, user stories, and tasks. It’s a useful tool for identifying the benefits and drawbacks of your product.

Launch MVP

It’s time to put your MVP out and get some input from your first users. Focus on keeping track of the critical factors when evaluating the success of your MVP. The primary goal is to assess your product with actual humans. Even if it failed, it’s a good indication that you should manoeuvre and concentrate on fixing various types of user problems.

Examples of MVP Launch

Following are the types explained by using examples.

User-facing Workaround

Consider Zappos. The pioneer hoped to see if consumers purchase boots without first trying them on. It wasn’t possible to shop online back then. He merely shot the boots he planned to sell, and if a buyer placed an online order, he’d go purchase the boots from the shop and dispatch them, which worked well.

Targeted User Section

Consider Tinder. The app was created because you feel at ease approaching people if you realize they would like you to. Because social media sites primarily linked you with folks you already knew, a gap existed in exploring someone else.

Its app stepped in to fill the void and calm the mind. They’ve got an opt-in system that shows you another party is willing to talk to you and, in most cases, the geographical area is close by, making you feel completely safe.

Key Issues and Use Instances

Consider Airbnb. San Francisco hosted an excellent design summit. The group planned to give inexpensive lodging during this situation and uploaded the information online. So they focused on a key issue and use the instance: “San Francisco summit invitees.”

They hoped to find a solution that was tailored to that particular use case. Shortly, three guests expressed interest in spending for this bare-bones service. This backed up the business overview that prospective buyers would be ready to pay to reside at another’s house instead of a hotel.

Streamlined Features

Consider Spotify. Previously, the music business was experiencing challenges. Because of file-sharing websites, some folks paid for songs. Two Swedes recognize that this will never work.

So their initial plan was to make a free streaming app and monetize it through advertisements. How did it fare against rivals? The pioneers noticed that most startups were putting their money into fancy sites and apps before even putting their concepts to the test.

Spotify’s team tried something new. They developed a minimum viable product in the form of a computer app with one central aspect: song streaming. Later, they gave the choice for people to pay a monthly fee in exchange for an ad-free interaction and other attributes, and this journey enabled them to test their concept while maintaining their costs low.

Advantages of MVP Launch

Resources Savings

By incorporating MVP, you can find a balance between supplying core aspects and remaining cost-effective. It also allows for the handover of a user-friendly item in a particular timeframe and is simple to execute.

Understand Your Crowd

It enables you to discover more about your customers’ perceptions of the item, allowing you to design and optimize what you could handle about it.

Enhance Progressively and Stepwise

MVP is critical in assisting you to create a basic edition that includes the key aspects and reveals it to the consumer to gather input and optimize it. It helps you organize your muddled thoughts and frame them in an orderly fashion.

Conclusion

Starting your MVP Inception point must no longer be as daunting. It doesn’t have to be flawless! To create it, follow the instructions and tactics outlined. It is a method that allows startups to learn a lot about their customers by using a viable prototype without wasting precious time and money.

Thank you for your time.

FAQs

How to launch the MVP of a startup?

Conduct Market Research, Conduct Customer Research, Create A Product Roadmap, Conduct User Testing, and launch the product.

What is the MVP approach?

MVP is launching a minimum viable product to gather the feedback of the consumers to build a much better product.

What should an MVP look like?

An MVP should be small, fast and cheap and should not create a negative impact.
July 9, 2022
SaaS Startup Founders on Deciding Features for MVP
Understanding customers is the key to selling your product in market. Gaining an understanding about your customers’ interest in your product gives you an idea of getting success in the market. A minimum viable product (MVP) is a minimal version of a product for early customers. It helps in validating a product idea in the early stage of product development. An MVP should have enough features to be usable by early customers which can help in learning about customers and the market.

Here are insights shared by entrepreneurs on how to decide the features for MVP to get to the market fast.

Shayak Mazumder, Co-founder, Eunimart

Shayak Mazumder, Co-founder, Eunimart

Studying the customer profile will tell us the intersection between what are the biggest problems, the most in-demand solutions, and our USP. This intersection set is the prioritized list of features needed to go to market early.

Robin Das, CEO of Brandintelle

Robin Das – CEO of Brandintelle

Here are certain ways you can decide what to keep in MVP-
- Groom your backlog using good product prioritisation techniques.
- Make sure your do not spend too much time in building complex features and focus more on quick releases.
Pramod Gummaraj, CEO, Aprecomm

Pramod Gummaraj – CEO, Aprecomm

Aprecomm is solving everyday problem faced by the general Internet customers. Domain Expertise and firsthand experiences faced by our teams helped us to select the MVP. As technologists, we tend to focus on overly sophisticated features and think that would be the key differentiating factor, but they may not be the need of the hour to the customer. This is where we must think very differently. Reach out to customers and talk to them. Mostly, it would be 3 out of 10 features that you have planned that are what the customers’ needs. At Aprecomm, we have focussed on these features as our MVP to hit the markets faster.

Arjun Gupta, Founder, Courseplay

Arjun Gupta, Founder, Courseplay

This brings me back to my first answer – talk to your customers. They will tell you which features are nice-to-have and which features are must-haves. Cut out all the nice-to-haves (and half of the must-haves) and you’ve got yourself an MVP. When we first launched Courseplay we only had the bare minimum learning features on the web. Our employee experience suite for coaching, mentorship, individual development plans, behavioral scorecards, mobile apps, chatbots all came later on. You will be surprised by how little you need to launch the MVP. Stay minimal and stay agile.

Shreyan Gandhi – Director and Co-founder, Comket Solutions

Shreyan Gandhi – Director and Co-founder, Comket Solutions

Because building the software product is always an ongoing process, it makes sense to start with features available at the moment. We’ve adapted the same philosophy in our release timelines. Currently the card allows you to share all sorts of links, but other integrations such as loyalty reward points, multi-brand store to redeem points and other products are to be launched in the 2nd phase. The iOS and android applications too have been scheduled in phase 2 since, our web based platform allows for a dynamic experience without them.

Sarvagya Mishra – Co-founder & Director, SuperBot (PinnacleWorks)

Sarvagya Mishra – Co-founder & Director, SuperBot (PinnacleWorks)

The features which are of utmost necessity to launch the product and get the execution in the process are the ones to keep in MVP. The refinement and addition of features and the evolution of the product is a never-ending process. And if we plan on launching the product only once all the features are live, then the product will never be launched at the right time to capture the market.
March 10, 2022
How to validate your SaaS idea before building an MVP?
The best way to validate a SaaS idea before building an MVP is to have the problem that you are solving for. Especially in SaaS, because you aren’t looking to create another entertainment platform, but instead solve a business need for a customer in exchange for them paying you money. So, if you consistently run into an issue and aren’t satisfied with the existing tool set you can decide to go out and build your own.

But before diving in the steps to validation, let’s clarify a few things.
You need to identify a problem and its solution, yes, but a huge part of your guess (i.e. idea) resides in who you think will want to pay Rs.X per month or year to get their problem solved. This is also called “customers”. This is what will make you filthy rich. For example, the initial guess of Metrics Watch was that digital agencies would be willing to pay for Google Analytics alerts, white label them and send them to their clients. Wrong. So wrong. The point of this post is to help you avoid that kind of mistake and avoid building something people don’t want to pay for.

So, you have an idea and a ton of will to take over the world, a market or just have a fun lifestyle business. We want to validate that it’s legit and has some chances to work. Validating your idea is all about risk mitigation.

What needs to be validated exactly?

First, we need to validate that the problem exists and that people are willing to pay for a solution. We also need to make sure that your proposed solution is a good one that people will be motivated enough to use and pay for. That’s as “simple” as that.
Now before you do that you should, evaluate the market. Have you really tested all of the solutions that are currently out there? Then hone in on your pain point. Why is that you don’t like the existing solutions.

Steps to follow to validate your idea

Clarify your idea

Before pitching your idea to anyone else, first the idea should be completely clear to you. To clarify your idea try to answer these questions:
1. What problem would my SaaS solve?
2. Does this problem actually exist?
3. How would my product work exactly?

Then after that, you need to research about the things such as:
– Identify competitors (crunchbase, google, app store, etc.)
– Does your idea exist already? (Google Patents)
– Can you do it better, faster, cheaper?

Brainstorm your idea

The last thing to do is brainstorming to identify huge opportunities to disrupt the market:
– How are people addressing the problem now?
– What disruptive technologies can solve the problem?
– Where is the competition missing the mark?
– See non-competitive products for more ideas

Plan – Narrowing the Focus of your Product

Now after the idea is completely clear, you have to devise a plan for your SaaS. You have to document your assumptions, make a UX hypothesis, set goals for the product and define the MVP of your product. You also have to think about:
– What features are required to sell the product?
– Connect the functionality to the product goals
– Define metrics for success
– Define customer personas

Define your target customer

Understanding your target customers is crucial from the beginning to ensure that your product will be accepted by them. To understand your target audience, you need to segment the different types of buyers. Segmentation can be done based on various factors such as budgets, needs, decision makers, problems and goals.

When starting up your SaaS company, strive to grow with your audience. Keep in touch with your users through email, social media and blogs to know what features they want and get other important feedback about your product.

Sketch – How to Use a Quick Drawing to Determine the Interface

Now, you need to think about the interface of your product or service. To do that, proceed in the following manner:
– Create a sitemap of the product
– Use pen/pad to sketch the interface
– Design whole tasks that testers can complete
– Show the connections between the screens (information architecture)

Test if there is an open market for your potential product

You can use these tools:
1. Google Trends:
  It helps you have a bigger picture of the market where your potential product will land.
  Trend charts can tell you if your target market is shrinking, stable or growing.
2. Online Ads:
  The idea is to create a cheap ad campaign for your future product. This allows you to test people’s reactions.
  In this way, you gain a better insight of the market, as your ads will focus on your target customers. The clicks received will be your response.
Create a Realistic Demo of How the Product will Look and Work

To create a realistic interface, use the following tools to mock-up flat designs for each screen that you sketched
– Desktop: photoshop/sketch or Axure or a similar program
– Mobile: AppCooker or Proto.io or a similar program
– Use Invisionapp.com to connect the flat designs so that the user can click/tap on the buttons and transition from screen to screen. This will give the tester a ‘real enough’ experience to complete tasks and answer questions about its viability

Look for your early adopters

You have several options to find them:
- Ask your colleagues or friends. They might be interested in your idea. If not, they could still help you giving some referrals
- LinkedIn. Go to your connections and browse for potential clients.
- Stalk your target customers via Facebook or other Social Media.
- Forums. Join groups of people who might be interested in your solution.
8) Schedule interviews with your early adopters

Try to follow this scheme to get the best results out of them:
- Validate the problem
- Get to know about the pains of your potential clients
- Validate the solution
- Show them how you can solve their issues with your product idea
- Ask them if they would pay for your solution
If they are willing to buy it, this means your idea is successful.

Receive an evaluation from your early adopters.

It’s the most precious information they can give you. It’s reliable and it reflects reality. You can get three kinds of feedback:
1. Positive response: your idea is useful and people think it’s a must-have to solve their problem. You can go to the next step. Start designing an MVP for a more detailed SaaS idea validation or go finding you first paying customers.
2. Negative response: your idea is not solving customers’ pains. If you pursue it, your future business will fail eventually. Thanks to this valuation you can move on and find a better idea to be successful.
3. Suggestions and recommendations: they can help you improve and develop your initial idea. You can get feedback not only from early adopters but also from people close to you.
However, it’s not 100% useful as they might want to please you and support you.
This doesn’t mean you have to avoid their opinion. Just be aware of taking it with a pinch of salt 🙂

Conclusion

Lastly, just because you do it better doesn’t mean that you will get product market fit. There may be continued refinement that you need to do that makes your product 10x better in order to really grow market share. So, remember, that after you build the right product, you still have to market it. Marketing isn’t about spending ad dollars, that’s advertising. Marketing is really about what is the message that gets your customers excited and want to tell their friends about your product.
And now it’s your turn. Give yourself a try with this strategy and tell me if it works for you as well.
January 19, 2020