MVP is the minimum viable product concept. It gained popularity after the publication of the book “The Lean Startup”. Its author, Eric Ries, understood this concept as a product that has only the basic and necessary functions.

 

Why is it important to create an MVP?

 

In order not to leave entrepreneurs in the dark, the author of the concept, Eric Ries, defined MVP as the version of the product that allows the team to collect the maximum amount of validated knowledge about customers with the least amount of effort.

 

In other words, in the initial stages of business development, it is possible to determine whether the product meets customer expectations, learn additional criteria. And based on this, draw conclusions about the future fate of the MVP: proceed to the next iterations of development or realize that it is worth abandoning completely.

 

 

MVP development services for startups help reduce the time and effort needed to test before developing a full-fledged product. Also:

 

•  Test the hypothesis with real data and prove its viability;
•  Reduce the possibility of financial losses from launching an unsuccessful product;
•  Reduce development costs by eliminating unnecessary features;
•  Get ahead of the competition by capturing the market early;
•  Streamline product testing and accelerate bug hunting
•  Build an initial customer base before a full launch;
•  Go to the market and attract investors. Or raise money through a crowdfunding system;
•  Identify audience needs that were not considered when the product was designed.

 

An MVP can be real software with a minimal set of features, the basic ones needed for validation. You can use it to narrow down the target audience, get feedback and analyze it, and focus on testing.

 

 

Examples of how creating an MVP helps a business

 

Attract potential customers. This is what happened with the Buffer and DropBox services. You need to spread the word about the development of new sites by asking people to test them. In this way, you can attract customers who will then promote the product to their peers.

 

Get investors. A good example of an MVP is the Restream project, an American-Ukrainian multi-stream cloud service. It is used to stream content to Linkedin, YouTube, Twitch, etc. The founders of the startup created a minimally viable product in 2014, which attracted a business angel to their project. And at the end of the summer of 2020, the developers received $50 million of invested funds.

 

MVP perfectly eliminates the fear of the beginning, shows a clear path for the development of an idea. In addition, a working product perfectly motivates and convinces product managers that the functionality is quite viable.