🚀 What to build for your MVP?

3 tactics on building MVPs

🔨 Build less, learn more 

• Start testing your most important assumption about how to solve the problem (e.g. customers are willing to pay double the price of X if it can be delivered 10x faster), and build the simplest product to test that assumption. 

• Test assumptions with no product (e.g. mockup, landing page, video demo, crowdfunding), or simplified product (e.g. manual backend).

• Minimize input (e.g. time, money) for maximize output (e.g. users, revenue, learning). Iterate quickly based on what’s unexpectedly hard or easy.

😍 Nail what your customers care about most

• Integrate all insights from your tests and iterations into a fuller product.

• Understand the user’s why, so you can prioritize ruthlessly—focus on building and launching features that matters most to your users.

• Follow the framework of MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have)—and stick to "Must haves".

🪄Deliver ‘ah-ha’ moments

• Design small but powerful interactions that help users see why your product is 10x better (e.g. faster, cheaper) than alternatives for your specific audience.

• Consider these key questions:

  • How quickly can you get users to experience their first ‘ah-ha’ moment while using your product? 

  • How can you repeatedly delight users?

  • What would get users to rave about and share your product?

2 traps to avoid

🚨Falling in love with the solution

• Don’t fall victim to sunk cost fallacy or your own assumptions of the solution.

• Fall in love with the problem and learn from users’ actions and feedback.

🚨Writing code too soon

• Do as much as you can manually even though vibe coding makes it easier to build than ever before. The less you build, the less to maintain.

• Build when you need to scale and the task becomes recurring.

1 tool to leverage

⏰ Best practice for launching MVP quickly

• Aim to launch your MVP within 2 weeks. Test iterations in 1-week cycles.

• MVPs should not take longer than 2 months to build and launch.

• When you’re ready for automations, leverage tools like Zapier.