Business ideas come in two forms: those that exist only in your mind and those that have been tested in the market. For most of us, ideas stay in our minds, and we are either confused or don't find the courage to test them in the market. Before long, we discover that another startup has executed the same idea with great results. For the second form, we have ideas that add value to an existing market, but we hesitate to execute them due to the fear of failure or lack of confidence: will it work, or will it not?
Some of us approach startup ideas overenthusiastically, going all in, raising money, hiring teams, developing products, only to know after months of wasted money and time that the idea was not worth investing in or that the execution phase needed expert attention.
The easiest and most effective device to mitigate these issues is to start your startup with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
What does MVP stand for
The term Minimum Viable Product was coined by Frank Robinson. Later on, it was popularised by Eric Ries; he defines MVP in his book The Lean Startup as:
"A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort."
Each word in the term is self-explanatory and carries weight; let me shed light on each word:
Minimum: focused on essential features only; stripped of complex designs and extra features to validate the core business idea only.
Viable: it must be completely usable and functional to validate a business idea. It should solve a real problem.
Product: it must be an actual product, an app or landing page, where users can interact with it and make purchases, giving startups actual user feedback.
Difference between Prototype, MVP, and PoC
People often confuse MVP with a prototype. A prototype is a non-functional visual model to test design and usability. One can have tens of prototypes for a single product, but they are not interactive; on the other hand, an MVP is an interactive product where users can take actions.
The following is a comparison between a prototype, MVP, and PoC. Learning the difference between these services can help businesses make informed decisions about which services to hire or outsource, saving them time, budget, and hard work.
PoC
- What is it
- An experiment proving an idea or technology can work.
- Answers
- Can we actually build this?
- Who uses it
- Developers and the internal team.
- Features
- Only what tests the technical idea.
- Cost
- Lowest.
- Validation
- Very limited.
- Time
- Days to a few weeks.
Prototype
- What is it
- An early model showing how the product could look or work.
- Answers
- What will it look and feel like?
- Who uses it
- Designers, stakeholders, test users.
- Features
- Simulated or partly functional.
- Cost
- Relatively low.
- Validation
- Limited.
- Time
- Days to several weeks.
MVP
- What is it
- A usable product with enough features to solve the main problem.
- Answers
- Will people use and pay for this?
- Who uses it
- Real users and customers.
- Features
- A focused set of working core features.
- Cost
- Higher than both, far below a full build.
- Validation
- One of the main goals.
- Time
- Several weeks to months.
How MVP benefits startups
Founders can benefit immensely by starting with an MVP. Let me explain this with an example: suppose you started a pizza shop in New York, with a huge restaurant, a delivery fleet, a loyalty program, and 20+ employees. Only to find out, after making huge investments, that the customers do not like your product. On the other hand, you can start the same business with a small kitchen and a simple way for customers to place orders, record customer feedback, and track demand for your product in the neighbourhood, expanding your business gradually. The second approach saves you time and money, and that's essentially how an MVP works in the software industry.
Focus on the core business proposition
You can isolate the single most acute problem your audience faces and develop an MVP for it. An MVP validates your startup idea's core proposition in the least time.
Minimum development costs
An MVP is built to showcase a minimum set of essential features; this lowers the development cost in comparison to full-featured software.
Faster time to market
An MVP allows you to hit the market fast. You can launch a basic version of your product and start learning from user feedback without waiting for months for a full-featured application.
Early user feedback and loyalty
A Minimum Viable Product helps you learn about your business from real user data and interaction, and you can make improvements based on user behaviour. Early loyal users can help you make your app better and help you take it to a wider audience.
Risk reduction
It helps you minimize the risk of spending large sums of money on a product users don't want. Furthermore, it helps you find serious issues and weaknesses early and mitigate them.
Scalability and growth potential
An experienced MVP development company develops your MVP with scalability in mind. After all, your brilliant business idea is here to perform and expand, so your MVP should be scalable into full-feature software.
Fundraising and investor pitching
When we approach investors with an idea on paper, it is hard to secure funds. On the other hand, showing them a working product with actual market traction boosts investor confidence and helps in fundraising.
What makes an MVP good?
A good MVP should have the following.
It should solve a real customer problem
The goal of an MVP is to solve a pain point for end users. It should solve a real problem to attract early adopters for feedback and market analysis. It should successfully test the core hypothesis on which the entire business depends. For example, Buffer identified that social media users had to spend time manually posting on social media every day. They came up with an idea for a social media scheduling tool and tested it with a two-page web application with fake pricing, gathering email records to measure market demand. After they had the data, they went for a full-feature program.
Cohesive user flow
As much as an MVP is the bare minimum software, it is much more complex than a prototype and should include design and features that enable users to complete desired actions easily.
Tailored to target audience
A complete product discovery before writing a single line of code enables founders to foresee what their product would look like, and it should be aligned with the expectations of the target audience.
Functional feedback loops
A good MVP has functional feedback loops that allow us to track user behaviour and product performance in real markets, and help us make informed changes in future iterations.
Solid, scalable codebase
An MVP's goal is to develop in accordance with user feedback loops. If the codebase is messy and tangled, adding or making changes to existing features can break other features. Furthermore, if an MVP gets instant traction, messy code can cause it to break down.
How to build an MVP for your startup?
First things first, you should be confident that the problem your product solves should be tested in the market with an MVP. If you already have some application or demand for your product on different platforms like Meta or X, you don't need validation anymore. If you are already confident about the market demand for your product, you don't need an MVP.
If you have no market data and you want an MVP before handing any of your ideas to the developers and asking them simply to build this or that, you should undertake the following important steps.
Preparation stage
Before thinking about features, define the problem. Ask yourself:
- What problem am I trying to solve?
- Who experiences this problem?
- How are they solving it today?
- Why isn't the existing solution good enough?
- Would people actually pay for a better solution?
Your startup should not be entirely based on assumptions. You should go and do thorough market research, social media research, read on forums like Quora and Reddit, read surveys, and find out if anyone else is already selling the product you think is novel.
Hiring MVP developers
After brainstorming ideas and finding that they are worth taking a shot at, the next step is to hire developers. Some companies have in-house development teams, but most startups have to outsource their project to MVP development companies.
Decide what your MVP actually needs
You have a long list of ideas. Now you have to cut it down. One useful approach is to divide features into categories:
- Must-have: the product cannot work without them.
- Should-have: useful features that improve the experience but aren't essential.
- Could-have: nice additions that can wait.
- Won't-have: features you deliberately leave out for now.
Remember, leaving something out doesn't mean you'll never build it. It simply means: "Not yet."
Create the prototype
Before writing lots of code, you can create a prototype showing how the product will work. This gives you something you can review with potential users and stakeholders. You can test things such as:
- How users move through the product
- Whether the navigation makes sense
- Where users might get confused
- Whether the main action is obvious
- Whether the overall experience matches the problem you're trying to solve
Finding these problems before development can save considerable time later.
Build the MVP
Now it's time for development. Your development team takes the validated requirements and turns them into a functional product.
But remember the goal. You're not trying to build the final version of the product. You're building the smallest version that can deliver the core value and generate useful feedback. That distinction can save a startup months of unnecessary development.
Conclusion
As a founder, you should not wait and dedicate your time and energy to building your MVP. If you want any help or expert opinion, we are here to help as one of the leading MVP development agencies!
FAQs
How long does it take to develop an MVP?
Building an MVP is one of the least time-consuming tasks in the software industry. Depending on its scope, a typical MVP can take about 10–15 working days or 80–120 hours.
When should you start with an MVP?
You should start with an MVP if you have a brilliant business idea, but you have doubts about the market demand. Starting with an MVP here saves you time and money.
What is feature prioritization in MVP development?
Minimum Viable Product, as the name suggests, should have the bare minimum features required to validate the core hypothesis of your startup idea.