MVP development. The Lean Startup Way

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When you establish your own startup the important thing you need to understand as soon as possible that there is no some kind of a ready-to-use business plan you can utilize. Startups try to create innovative products and discover new markets. On one hand, it might give you some freedom due to lack of competition when you create something unique, but on another hand, you get in the atmosphere of extreme uncertainty.

Lean Startup approach

Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn’t matter much if they do it on time and budget. The only thing that matters is how fast a startup learns and makes strategical pivots in order to achieve the product-market fit point:

• Groupon was started as a social network for activists
• Instagram originally was called “Burbn” – an extremely overcomplicated location-based iOS application for check-ins
• Youtube was a video dating site from the beginning

Surprising, huh?

MVP goes from “Minimum Viable Product” and the keyword here is MINIMUM. Many entrepreneurs forget about this particular word or feel ashamed of releasing simple non-stable versions of their product. Successful entrepreneurs consider MVP app development as an entry to their learning lifecycle and try to launch their products as soon as possible.

As a real example, read our case study about launching a quick MVP project to validate an idea.

Determine Leap of Faith Assumptions

Before building a new feature or a product ask yourself 3 simple questions:

• Do your target audience recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve?
• If there a solution, would they buy it?
• Would they buy it from you, but not from someone else?

While answering these questions you will create a list of assumptions (because nobody can be 100% sure about that).

After that, define the leap of faith assumptions. It is pretty easy to recognize them: if your leap of faith assumptions fail, the overall product idea seems not to be working.

Everything you can do is to run experiments and learn from your target audience.

Congratulations! Now, you know the goal of your MVP: to check your leap of faith assumptions in the quickest possible way.

Read more in the MVP development guide.

About the author:

I have passed a long way from Software Engineer to CEO of own software development company. During the last 6 years, I’ve participated in 20+ IT projects and gained experience in a variety of business domains such as: entertainment, social media, ridesharing, advertising, banking, real estate and many more. I know how to build successful IT products & companies and share my knowledge with our clients at datarockets.