Is your minimum viable product truly minimal?

As the co-founder at Kays Harbor Technologies, I have consulted a number of technology startups looking to add a layer of expertise to their LEAN development efforts. We generally assist them with building of their initial Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and then help in scaling the product throughout the iterative improvement cycle to better meet the needs of the target users.

Time and again, we have observed that entrepreneurs’ ideas of what makes for a viable MVP are often misguided. Rather than focus on building a functional yet bare-bones interface, many instead want to build a poorly functioning, low-quality product, thinking that they have introduced their customers to a legitimate MVP.

Your MVP is your chance to make a great first impression

The LEAN Startup cycle relies on the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as a way to minimize costs at the beginning of the software development process. However, less investment doesn’t mean that you’re building a poor quality prototype that could potentially drive users away before you’ve even launched your services. The MVP remains a low-cost investment in the early stages because you haven’t focused resources on the bells and whistles that go into packaging your initial product.

Entrepreneurs whose ventures fail before they’ve leveraged the MVP into a working product have neglected a very simple reality: MVP is not poorly made, but rather it is well made and highly focused. It is essentially the most basic interpretation of your solution to the problem you set out to solve for your target audience. It’s the first impression users will have of your business and your first real chance to draw them into your vision of how your product will help them, so better give a second look to the MVP you are set to build.

For example, today’s version of eBay is much flashier and polished than it was when the site launched as Auction Web in 1995. But even in its earliest form, eBay founders had a very focused and functional product; just that the functions highlighted on the core proposition of creating a marketplace.

Build an MVP that is focused and unique, but scalable

The LEAN Startup approach is about remaining agile throughout the development process. Your MVP might go through several cycles of improvement, pivot multiple times, and ultimately end up being the solution to an entirely different problem than the one your organization originally set out to solve.

In order to facilitate a more effective cycle of development and ensure agility through every phase, you should have a clear understanding of what your competitive edge is, relative to others in the market. And if you’ve taken the proper approach to the development of your MVP, your competitive edge will manifest in the features you include in it.

While your MVP should be focused and unique from the outset, it can accomplish neither if the MVP is not designed for full scalability and customizability. It is equally dangerous to the survival of your business venture if you are over- or underwhelmed by customer response. If your MVP lacks scalability, you can’t adjust performance in the face of heavy traffic due to positive response. Similarly, if you lock your MVP to a large non scalable database and server room, you risk being stuck with expensive infrastructure and being unable to adjust if customer response requires your firm to pivot. There are many Web framework solutions available to developers that allow features of your MVP to be changed rapidly. The costs and accessibility of modern infrastructure solutions such as cloud computing and storage are also now less prohibitive than in the past, allowing your company to control costs while providing access to instantly scalable resources.

As you set your entrepreneurial sights on creating the market’s next must-have product, it’s important that you stay focused on the aspects of the business you want to test through the MVP. But don’t forget that while functionality needs to be minimal, you still need to build a product worthy enough to present to your audience and create a killer first impression.