Publication date: December 6, 2024
Written by Luca Di Domenico
Founder of MVPFast.agency
A strategic and practical guide to Minimum Viable Product (MVP): from definition to implementation, designed for entrepreneurs and startup founders who want to validate their business idea.
In this comprehensive guide, you'll discover:
By the end of this reading, you'll have acquired the necessary tools to avoid critical mistakes in launching your startup and maximize your chances of market success.
A complete roadmap to transform your idea into a market-validated product.
A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is the initial version of a product that includes only the minimum essential features needed to be usable by a startup's very first customers, who can then provide feedback for future product development.
The Minimum Viable Product serves to validate a business idea with minimal investment.
Once the MVP is developed, the entrepreneur can launch it to market and attract early customers or beta testers, who will begin using it and provide feedback about the product's utility, its limitations, and potential future developments.
To better understand what an MVP is and its purpose, the best approach is to analyze MVPs from some of the most successful startups.
Below, I'll show you the MVPs developed by Airbnb, Twitch, and Stripe.
Airbnb's Minimum Viable Product was launched as a simple website with only two core features: the ability to view rental room listings and the ability for property owners to post listings.
Important note: Airbnb's MVP did not include the following features:
Let's look at Twitch (initially called Justin.tv), the famous live streaming platform.
Its Minimum Viable Product was a ridiculously (in the founder's own words) minimal website:
Stripe's Minimum Viable Product (initially called devpayments.com) was also extremely limited.
Specifically:
Despite all these limitations, these Minimum Viable Products allowed the founders to validate market demand for their products.
I hope these examples have helped you understand the concept behind a Minimum Viable Product: validating your idea by creating a product with minimal features that can be used by early customers and subsequently improved based on their feedback.
The three examples mentioned above are software MVPs, but a Minimum Viable Product can be built in different ways and with varying levels of "automation."
Now that you should understand what a Minimum Viable Product is, let's examine together the 7 types of MVPs, with real examples of successful startups that have used them.
Description: Software that offers only the core functionality of the product to test user interest.
Example: Airbnb
Airbnb's Minimum Viable Product was a simple website that allowed viewing and posting rental room listings, without online payments or maps. The offering was limited to air mattresses for conference attendees in a specific city.
Description: Create a video that explains and shows how the product would work, without actually building it.
Example: Dropbox
Dropbox used a video demo to explain how their product worked. The video showed how to sync files between devices, convincing users of the idea and collecting thousands of waitlist signups.
Description: The product appears automated and functional, but everything is manually managed behind the scenes.
Example: Zappos
Zappos started by testing interest in online shoe sales. The founder would upload photos of shoes from local stores and, once an order was received, would personally go buy the shoes and ship them to the customer.
Description: Offer a personalized service for each customer to better understand their needs.
Example: WeWork
Before becoming the co-working space giant, WeWork simply offered furnished office spaces and managed every aspect manually, carefully listening to their early customers' needs.
Description: Combine existing tools to create the product without building anything from scratch.
Example: Groupon
Groupon started with a simple WordPress blog and manually sent emails. Discount codes were managed with hand-generated PDFs, validating the idea before creating the platform.
Description: Use platforms like Kickstarter to raise funds in advance and validate product interest.
Example: Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift launched a Kickstarter campaign, showcasing a prototype and raising over $2 million. This demonstrated strong interest in their virtual reality product.
Description: Present an idea through slides to attract investors or partners.
Example: Buffer
Buffer created a simple pitch deck to illustrate how their social media post scheduling service would work. They used a landing page to collect emails and feedback, attracting investors with a clear, focused approach.
Before developing an MVP, it's essential to follow these 3 steps:
You'll need to conduct what's called "Market Research":
Alternatively, your Minimum Viable Product might solve a problem you face yourself every day in your work.
This approach greatly simplifies idea validation because you know firsthand that you would be willing to pay for that product.
As we saw in the previous chapter, Successful MVP Examples, it's crucial to integrate only essential features into your Minimum Viable Product.
This allows you to launch the product quickly to market, enabling your early customers to use it and provide constructive feedback for improvement.
This approach is crucial and represents one of the main mistakes made by many startup founders: it doesn't make sense to spend months developing an MVP.
The faster you launch it to market, the sooner you can validate your idea and add or optimize features based on real customer feedback.
For this reason, MVP development should never take more than a month.
Remember, you're probably not the only one working on a similar idea.
Whoever reaches the market first gains a significant competitive advantage over the competition.
The choice of technologies largely depends on your technical skills and the type of software you want to create.
Today, many MVPs can be developed without writing code manually, using no-code tools like Bubble or leveraging artificial intelligence for programming, for example, with Cursor.
If your goal is to create an eCommerce site, it's more efficient to use ready-made solutions like Shopify or WordPress WooCommerce, rather than developing from scratch.
However, no-code solutions have advantages and disadvantages that are important to consider.
Pros:
Cons:
If the solutions I've listed so far don't suit your needs, then the only alternative is to hire a professional developer.
Today, MVP development has become much less expensive for 2 reasons:
Choosing the right framework is crucial.
It doesn't make sense to use tools designed for enterprise applications to develop an MVP: it would be like trying to shoot a pigeon with a tank!
Choose lightweight, flexible frameworks suitable for rapid initial project development.
The advent of artificial intelligence has drastically reduced application development costs.
In the past, creating an MVP required a team of at least two developers.
Today, a single developer can create a complete and functional Minimum Viable Product.
For example, at MVPFast, I develop MVPs in just 28 days.
An MVP should never take more than a month to develop.
If it takes longer, you probably aren't building a true Minimum Viable Product!
Even with no-code solutions, with dedication, you can develop a product in less than a month.
In the case of an eCommerce site, tools like Shopify allow you to create a functioning platform even more quickly.
So, how much does it cost and how long does it take to create a Minimum Viable Product? It depends.
Based on your needs, you must choose the most suitable tools for your project.
The key is balancing speed and functionality, without losing sight of the main goal: validating your idea in the market as quickly as possible.
You can distribute your MVP to hundreds of users for free from day one!
Here are, in my opinion, the most effective methods to promote your Minimum Viable Product:
After finding your first customers and collecting their feedback, it's time to improve your Minimum Viable Product.
Focus on adding new features and optimizing existing ones, following exclusively your customers' feedback.
Remember: they're the ones who pay!
Carefully listening to their needs will help you build a product that truly responds to market demands, increasing the chances of success for your startup.
I hope this MVP guide has been helpful in preparing you for your next venture.
If you're thinking about turning your idea into a business, you can book a free consultation with me.
I'll be happy to advise you on how to approach the first steps and help you identify the most suitable technologies for developing your project.
