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© Shardul Mehta 2013http://streetsmartproductmanager.com

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Minimum Viable Product (MVP)Lean Startup Machine DC

Shardul Mehta

May 31, 2014

http://streetsmartproductmanager.com/



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Hi. I’m Shardul.

VP Product Management and Product Marketing

@shardulmehta http://www.linkedin.com/in/shardulmehta

http://streetsmartproductmanager.com [email protected]




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What’s an MVP?




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Not a buzzword

Lazy thinking

• You don’t sound cool

• It doesn’t make you “lean”




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What is not an MVP

• Version 1.0

• Beta

• “First market launch”

• Soft launch

• “First customer ship”

• Smallest collection of features you can deliver

• A half-baked product

• A buggy product

• A landing page

• Smoke test

• Mockup

• Prototype




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Not about product delivery

Say wha…?

But it is about delivering product




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It’s about validated learning

So customers’ problems are squarely at the center, not our solution




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Reality check

Customers don’t care about your solution.

They care about solving their problems.




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Fundamental truth

Your solution, while interesting, is irrelevant.




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Whoa… mind bender?




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Not really

• Think problems– Not solutions

• Think learning– Test your assumptions

• Think hypotheses– Be deliberate about learning




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So what is an MVP?




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That version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

- Eric Ries




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MVP, despite its name, is not about creating minimal products… In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics or analytics.

The definition’s use of the words maximum and minimum means it is decidedly not formulaic. It requires judgment to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense.

- Eric Ries




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MVP breakdown

Product

• Useful

• Deliver real value

• Tangible

✗Landing page

✗Smoke test

✗Mockup, prototype

Viable

• Solve real world problems

• What will customers “pay” for?

✗Half-baked, buggy

✗Smallest collection of features

✗Don’t ship s**t!

Minimum

• The absolute necessary features needed day 1 to solve customers’ top problems

✗Version 1.0

✗“Beta”

✗First market launch




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Key concepts

• Maximum amount of validated learning

• Be systematic about identifying riskiest assumptions

• Formulate testable falsifiable hypotheses

• Use MVP to prove or disprove your hypotheses




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Concierge MVP

• “Manual” version of your ultimate solution

• Short-term solution to gain critical insights on your customers– They’re needs what do they actually care about?– They’re actual behaviors what will they actually pay for?

• Short-term solution to gain critical insights on your solution– Most important elements your solution will need (features)– Most important benefits your solution provides (value proposition)– In terms of importance to the customer (not you)




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Online Payment Forms

Concierge MVP

• Manually-coded HTML forms to take payments

• Almost 100 built!

Most common types of payment forms desired

What’s most important to them in a form

Frequency of changes Reporting Potential early

adopters!

Learnings

MVP

• Code put through rigorous UAT

• Sales preparedness

Learnings

Buyer vs. User personas Sales model Pricing Value prop & competitive

positioning Generate revenue

$0.5 million payments

Target customer segment

Messaging, positioning

Usage

New problems/opportunities to validate

Timeframe: 4 months




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Reconciliation

Concierge MVP

• E-guides

• Excel macros

• Remote & in-person training

Deep insights into problems

Deep insights into current workflows

Deep insights into data

Learnings

Demo

• Specific hypotheses

• Data validation via prototype

• Customer interviews with mockup

Learnings

Types of users UX design Data algorithm Early clients

MVP

• Specific hypotheses

• Validation from early clients

• Test other aspects of the product strategy

• Roadmap for GA product




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Q&A

@shardulmehta http://www.linkedin.com/in/shardulmehta

http://streetsmartproductmanager.com [email protected]




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Important Stuff!

This material is licensed to you under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

View the license at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

© shardul mehta 2013 this work by shardul mehta is licensed under the creative commons...

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