{"id":3505,"date":"2018-09-26T16:10:04","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T14:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/?p=3505"},"modified":"2020-01-22T12:15:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T10:15:43","slug":"mvps-a-confusing-name-for-a-needed-tool-concepts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/2018\/09\/mvps-a-confusing-name-for-a-needed-tool-concepts.html","title":{"rendered":"MVPs: A confusing name for a needed tool. Concepts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is one, probably<strong> the critical step in Lean Startup<\/strong> methodology. It\u2019s needed to check the validations and the interaction with customers and users. And together with the price, <strong>it\u2019s essential to understand the \u2018Product-Market Fit.\u2019 <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trick is the word \u2018product\u2019 inside. Many entrepreneurs understand it like \u201cthe product = my baby\u201d and all the flexibility and the chances to pivot are lost. Note that when we talk about the product, it usually means product\/service, until the examples, we are not going to differentiate them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Don\u2019t forget that any experiment or MVP should keep the core values of your proposal<\/strong>. It doesn\u2019t mean all the functionalities, but the values. If you sell luxury, exclusive design, or \u2018easy to use\u2019 values, they should be in any experiment you do. If not, you&#8217;re validating a different concept. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An MVP is really an experiment, something that allows us to learn something. But I think it\u2019s better to explain this in three categories. <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Experiments<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Anything, apart from interviews, that let us learn something about our project. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>Minimum selling point, MSP<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: the place where you\u2019ll sell your product. You can start the sales after doing experiments and before having the real product.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>First Version of the Product<\/strong>:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A first product that is giving value, and functionality to our customer. A solution for a problem&#8211;maybe a simple one.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3506\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/black-and-white-blackboard-business-356043-1024x626.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/black-and-white-blackboard-business-356043-1024x626.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/black-and-white-blackboard-business-356043-300x183.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/black-and-white-blackboard-business-356043-768x469.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s go deeper into each one of the categories:<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><b>Experiments<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s the first approach to interact with users or customers after the interviews. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It will measure the real reaction of customers, get their feedback, and we can check to see if they will pay for something and how much. More importantly, it puts us in front of the challenge of attracting the first customers. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Typically they are landing pages, fake products, non-functional versions of hardware\/software, or mockups\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: center;\"><b>But we are always selling the promise of the product, not the product itself.<\/b><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><b>Minimum selling point<\/b><b>: <\/b><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s the first time you\u2019re <strong>asking for money in a \u201csystematic way\u201d<\/strong>, so after interviews. Your show the complete value proposition and all your features, and you can get real money. And it puts us in front of the challenge of attracting customers in a recurrent way, so we will start understanding our marketing operations and costs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It could be a crowdfunding campaign, a pre-sales site or a e-commerce, or just a PPT and a contract to close a B2B deal\u2026 but the real product is no ready&#8230;sometimes the customer knows it, other times no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Many times it\u2019s happening in \u201creal life\u201d with consolidated businesses. When we but consultancy or a course (off\/on-line) we have reduced information, just an explanation, but the product itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: center;\"><b>We are selling sometimes the product, sometimes a promise and many times we sell the product when it\u2019s not still ready, but the customers don\u2019t know it. <\/b><\/p>\n<h3 style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><b>First Version of the Product:<\/b><\/h3>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it is the first simple, ugly, and shameful version of the product. It solves a problem and could be the company, and its income for several months. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; text-align: center;\"><b>We sell a functional product, not a promise, that it\u2019s adding value to the customers.<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> But it could be consulting, or what it\u2019s better, an e-commerce or Mechanical Turk approach. So doing manual processes that will be in the future (or not) automatically, this is something not relevant for the user. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Because you&#8217;re solving a problem. <strong>It\u2019s worthy to be paid for it and to be paid again and again<\/strong>. There it\u2019s possible to understand the behavior of the user. Do they pay monthly or do they use it every day? <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can understand the first metrics of our product. Future versions of the product will improve functionalities, the satisfaction of the customer and metrics. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Maybe we can realize that so much more is not needed and we can stay with this version for a long time<strong>. Usually, these MVPs last longer than expected.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The key is to do something very simple. If you complicate it, the product is not an MVP. It\u2019s the main risk, overcomplicate the first version. Just check that you&#8217;re adding value, any kind, is enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>How to organize it?<\/h3>\n<p><b>Should I go step by step?: n<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>ot necessarily,<\/strong> sometimes we start with experiments, then probing the sales, and finally delivering the product. Other times we won\u2019t need to create experiments and we can go directly with a first product to the market. \u00a0That depends on the type of product we have and on how much we learned and validated during the interviews. We will understand better with some examples in a next post.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is one, probably the critical step in Lean Startup methodology. It\u2019s needed to check the validations and the interaction with customers and users. And together with the price, it\u2019s essential to understand the \u2018Product-Market Fit.\u2019 The trick is the word \u2018product\u2019 inside. Many entrepreneurs understand it like \u201cthe product = my baby\u201d and all the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lean-startup","category-insights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3505"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3551,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3505\/revisions\/3551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}