One of the most common characteristics of startups (in the digital and technological field) and other companies in its initial phase is the lack of resources. This lack makes them difficult to validate its business model and see if their “acts of faith “are held in some way and can lead them to build a profitable business for your computer.
In order to have knowledge validated by customers, always it has generated an interesting dilemma:
– Should develop the company or startup as a whole to see only if this new activity is held in a competitive market?
This problem usually tries to solve through “methodology” MVP.
What is an MVP?
This acronym comes from the English words: “viable Minimum product”, i.e. that minimum viable product that allows you to validate at least one part of your business. This will be the first prototype to take to the market to find the first reactions of your customers.
This phase is very important for 2 reasons:
– It will give the first clues to pivot the model or persevere in it (unless you’re a genius will play swing)
– You will enter into an “investable” scenario: by this I mean that today, 98% of investors are going to ask you’ve gone through this phase. But you cannot display numbers and metrics of your business, and that is very important for the investor.
Your key to design MVP
I arrived at this point; you throw some tips that in my view are important in this mission:
1- Focus on the essential features: a mistake often seen in this area is that the MVP and the final product are very similar. Fearing early reviews develops more than strictly necessary and just more resources that can cost you do not have enough money to “swing” and improve the MVP. The product will not be perfect; it just comes to a test and validates its viability.
2- Do not develop technologies that can be rented at an early stage: here I refer especially to the saas services (software as a service). In this category we could include web analytics tools, cloud solutions for group work, customer management programs…
3- Use a landing page to make a test of the main product: many entrepreneurs are determined to make a simple website at first to change it later. With a landing (landing page) you can and see if there is a real interest in the product.
4 Record a simple video explaining your product or service: you can incorporate your landing page to try to connect a little more with your potential customer.
5- Build your model “lean canvas”: this would be like a scorecard so you can capture your business model.
All methodologies to after all be what one to validate a business is model agile, quick and expending minimal resources. This is the great advantage of startups relative to larger corporations, the “take lightly.”
