You have an idea to develop software for your startup with tons of complex features, the next step is to develop software with all those features right away? Hold on, because this is not the time to test your ideas. Twitter, Instagram, Airbnb, Uber,… developed MVPs in the beginning, and MVP’s approach helped them succeed. Why? In this Tech Town article, we will explain and give you 5 reasons to start with an MVP before progressing to full software development.

What is Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

To better understand MVP, we need to analyze its 3 core elements:

“Minimum” means the maximum reduction of resources such as budget or effort required to complete a software product.

“Fable” is an adjective to describe that a startup’s software product is already usable and ready to enter the market with the aim of attracting early adopters and getting feedback from them. These feedbacks are the most important and the main purpose of developing the MVP.

“Product” is simply a product, service, or software created for use by customers.

According to Wikipedia, an MVP has enough features to satisfy early customers and provide feedback for further product development in the future.

It should be noted that the term “product” has a broader meaning that can be applied to a business or even as a method of testing a startup’s business hypothesis.

This method is based on the Lean startup approach with certain principles provided by Eric Ries. With a clear goal and important early features, startups will increase their success rate in creating a fully featured and well-received product in the future.

Now consider the reasons why the MVP approach is the best solution for testing hypotheses and what benefits it can bring to your startup.

Why startups should start with MVP

1.   Focus on the value brought to customers

With the MVP approach, startups have the opportunity to define their ideas clearly and specifically. It makes startups focus on creating the specific value you want to deliver to your potential customers. As a result, startups learn to set clear goals and make the right decisions so that important functions should be developed first, and less important functions developed later.

Instagram’s startup story shows why startups should focus on one specific feature rather than multiple extensions. Instagram was originally created as a GPS-based application, and is now a popular photo and video sharing social network.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger – the developers who founded Instagram said that it is a software project with diverse features such as checking locations, planning, posting photos … However, they quickly realized It turns out that many of these functions become too complicated for the user. So they decided to focus on one specific feature, which is photo sharing.

This example shows that the demand for the product is not based on the number of features, but on the value they bring to the customer. Let’s start small and keep updating the product with additional functions after receiving positive feedback from the first customers, that’s the main idea of MVP, it gives great benefits for startups.

2.   Cost-effective

Developing MVP helps startups reduce software development costs. Because when startups build software with small scale and minimal functions, developers will not need much time and effort to complete. Therefore, the cost you have to pay for them is much less.

When the product needs to scale, startups can spend their savings to develop extended functions to meet user expectations.

By receiving early user feedback, startups can develop additional desired functions in turn and improve on existing ones. This way, you have made the project less expensive than creating a full-featured product in the first place.

3.   Attract investors

Many investors say that they expect initial interest from customers about a particular product, so products that show great appeal will have a better chance of attracting investors and investors. receive investment funds.

In this regard, the MVP approach is optimal to demonstrate that users have a need to use startups’ products or services. After receiving positive customer feedback for MVP, startups can bring that MVP to present to investors, who will easily agree to invest because of the feasibility of the idea.

4.   Launch to market fast

From the above information, you already know it won’t take too long to create an MVP. Remember that the point of MVP development is that there is no need to create a perfect product yet, because it is much easier and faster to develop basic features. All startups need to do is find a minimal and specific function to help solve the needs of their target audience.

Importantly, the sooner a software product is released, the quicker startups will gain valuable experience. In addition, creating an MVP before developing the complete software will help startups save a lot of effort, which is a premise to create a wise start-up plan and expand the business scale appropriately.

In addition, rapid product launches allow startups to test multiple marketing strategies and sales channels sooner. This section should not be skipped, because even the best products will not succeed without effective marketing tactics.

5.   Feedback from first users

This is also the main purpose of developing MVP. It’s the startup’s job to pick one or two features that will delight the first customers and build a relationship with them as soon as possible.

The first adopters of the product will be very active in expressing their opinions and wishes for changes in terms of existing functionality, new functionality, or the next update. In this way, they will help startups validate their MVP and make it more relevant to customers. More specifically, users often like to discuss the great products they find, startups can even create a community of users around your project.

Last but not least, early adopters will likely become the first paying customers. So startups were able to get revenue from the very beginning.

Maybe startups have a situation where none of their target customers are interested in their product. Don’t be discouraged, try to introduce your MVP to some other target group to find users who appreciate your product.

What Tech Town can do to help startups develop MVP

At Tech Town, the projects we develop go through stages of the custom software development process, which ranges from idea validation to MVP implementation and product scaling.

In the early stages of building the MVP, our team will discuss the requirements of the startups and advise on a solution to turn these requirements into a complete software product.

We then create a prototype with an interface designed based on the preferences of the target customer and the purpose of the project, the prototype as the most visual example of the complete software of the future. Once qualified, we will proceed to develop the MVP according to the latest standards in the field/industry. That gives our partners a solution that is secure, scalable, on-time, budget-friendly, and guaranteed for future maintenance.

When collaborating with Tech Town, we don’t end with launching MVPs of startups, but will continue to monitor the software product to fix problems immediately if any, to help partners own a product. high quality and efficient software products. We believe our service will be a good help for startups.

We hope that the information we have provided will be useful to you.

Tech Town knows how to turn your ideas into reality. Please contact us to discuss your ideas.

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