{"id":3512,"date":"2018-10-25T09:30:58","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T07:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/?p=3512"},"modified":"2020-01-22T12:15:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-22T10:15:43","slug":"mvps-a-confusing-name-for-a-needed-tool-examples-and-real-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/2018\/10\/mvps-a-confusing-name-for-a-needed-tool-examples-and-real-cases.html","title":{"rendered":"MVPs: A confusing name for a needed tool. Examples and real cases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/2018\/09\/mvps-a-confusing-name-for-a-needed-tool-concepts.html\">theory<\/a>, let&#8217;s apply it to some real projects:<\/p>\n<h3><b>Physical device, hardware product.<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I had been working with many of them at <a href=\"http:\/\/hardware.co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">hardware.co<\/a>. Let\u2019s think about a device with some technology behind it. <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Experiments<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: You can run many experiments to find the perfect size or design. You can also present the potential customer different renders or non-functional version of the product. You can test the functionalities with working versions (but not with the final size, autonomy, design..)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Minimum selling point<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: A web page where you can pre-order, and pay, for the product. It can include a crowdfunding campaign as well. For this you\u2019ll need some renders of the product, maybe a prototype, a video, and the complete list of features<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>First version of the product<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: You have to create the product, a real one. Maybe 10-100 units, but you need to have everything validated before you manufacture it.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A good example of it was <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/747044530\/miito-the-sustainable-alternative-to-the-electric\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Miito<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> where they validated that people (many) will pay around 100\u20ac for a teapot. After that, they faced any kind of problems to build it, and finally failed, they validated, in a good way, that the idea was great.<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"padding: 56.25% 0 0 0; position: relative;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/131239557\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3><b>Physical product. Smart jewel.<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>This is a real case\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/zerojewels.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>https:\/\/zerojewels.com\/<\/strong><\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eoi.es\/es\/espacios-coworking\/madrid\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EOI Coworking Madrid<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Jewelry line is focused on a providing gift for special moments, so everything in its marketing talks about something unique (as well as the name of the product). Its pricing can range from 100\u20ac to 200\u20ac.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Experiments:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> everything related to design, forms, pendants or earrings, materials, textures, and colors. We learned about the interest of people, how much they spend on a gift and if it fits to this kind of gifts, and the founder did kind of pre-sales (but more promises than money).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Minimum selling point:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a pre-sale site with a date of launch, and with pictures of some of the prototypes. It also has good branding and good design showing a high-value product. But, if the pictures are not good enough, people won\u2019t buy it\u2026 so until you have the first real product, with the right materials and ending, and really good pictures, the website is not working.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>First version of the product:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the product itself, a few of them in different materials and colors. But it\u2019s not only the product, it\u2019s the packaging (and that means 10 different components and a large first batch of production), and the digital experience\u2026 so a complete proposal based on quality and design.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The example is similar to the first one, but knowing how others companies did, we tried to go faster to the Minimum selling point, but we realized that it was\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not possible to create it as soon as we would like to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here you can see the complete product and the components present on it:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zerojewels.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-3513\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/zero_jewels-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/zero_jewels-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/zero_jewels-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/zero_jewels-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/zero_jewels.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h3><b>App for taxis\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>We had this business idea in several Startup Weekend event, at least once in <a href=\"http:\/\/communities.techstars.com\/spain\/cordobaodb\/startup-weekend\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">C\u00f3rdoba<\/a> and once in <a href=\"http:\/\/communities.techstars.com\/spain\/marbella-spain\/startup-weekend\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Marbella<\/a>. The idea was to share a taxi or order a taxi at night, with extra security issues.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s think in something similar to Uber or MyTaxi.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Experiments:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> after the interviews, you can launch a landing page where people could order a taxi. Behind you\u2019ll have a spreadsheet, and you call manually to a taxi. You can do it in 1 hour.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Minimum selling point:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u00a0the same. If you like to test your fee, talk with the taxi drivers, or a paypal button (and control it manually).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>First version of the product<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: the same. You can start automatizing some emails and processes with zapier or similar\u2026 or maybe just add more people.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here you can go directly from the beginning to a product that can last for years. Of course with the time you can improve usability, search on a map\u2026 and at the end, you\u2019ll create all the back and system required but after few hundreds of customers and maybe several thousands of transactions<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>App for teaching maths<\/b><\/h3>\n<p>I used it as an example for a long time, but finally, I found some similar situations in reality. It applies to many app-related ideas.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s think in an app to teach maths to kids from 8 to 12 years old. Here there are many options ready in the App stores (and that\u2019s happening with many apps).<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Experiments<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: you can sell the app of competitors. Show it, learn what people like or not, if a translation is needed\u2026 you can do it previously during solution interviews.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>Minimum selling point:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> you can create a landing page, sell coupons, or make people pay for be some of the first ones.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b><i>First version of the product:<\/i><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> your first version of the app, (only Android or IOs or web) with the first lessons and features.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Conclusions<\/h3>\n<p><strong>The main conclusion is that there is not a single answer or path to go through. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>That depends on the product\/service you&#8217;re creating and on the value proposition you have. But usually, it&#8217;s simple to do the first experiments and the minimum selling point, where we will learn a lot of lessons, sometimes painful, about how to create and sell the real product.<\/p>\n<p>With these different concepts of MVPs\u00a0(Experiments, Minimum Selling Point, First version of the product) I think it&#8217;s clearer to know it what phase we are and what&#8217;s the next step. It&#8217;s clear what we are trying to learn and what are the risks associated, and I hope it will help entrepreneurs to do more MVPs, something that many times they find scary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the theory, let&#8217;s apply it to some real projects: Physical device, hardware product. I had been working with many of them at hardware.co. Let\u2019s think about a device with some technology behind it. Experiments: You can run many experiments to find the perfect size or design. You can also present the potential customer different [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121,128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","category-lean-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512","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=3512"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3626,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512\/revisions\/3626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wlappe.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}