Developing a minimum viable product (MVP) allows startups to validate their ideas and avoid overbuilding. But how do you rapidly test your riskiest assumptions without breaking the bank?
Follow these steps to build and test an MVP in a fast, capital-efficient way.
Define Your Problem and Solution
First, clearly articulate the specific problem you are solving, the target customers, and how your proposed solution uniquely addresses their needs better than alternatives. Resist building anything until you can crisply explain these elements.
Identify Your Key Assumptions and Risks
Outline the core assumptions underlying your idea and the risks associated with each.
Common examples include the assumption that:
- Your target customer will buy this type of product
- Customers will pay a certain price
- Your solution solves their pain point
- The market is large enough to sustain the business
uncovering which assumptions have the highest risks and impact is crucial.
Design Your Experiments
For each major assumption, design rapid experiments to test whether it holds. For example:
- Conduct customer interviews to assess if they experience the “pain” you solve.
- Create a landing page with your offerings and pricing to measure interest.
- Develop prototypes to gauge reactions from prospective users.
Well-designed minimal experiments allow you to validate your riskiest assumptions quickly.
For example, in one of our startups, we set up a Telegram bot that mimicked the process of our desired app, and by answering several questions, our customers got a (lean) response. Then we asked that if they found it valuable, they could pay as much as they wanted, and the vast majority did pay, an amount that exceeded our expectations by quite a lot.
Build Your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Construct an extremely stripped-down “minimum” product focused solely on testing your assumptions. This may be as simple as a landing page, explainer video, basic prototype, or highly manual first version of your product.
Resist building anything complex. The goal is not to deliver a functional product but to rapidly test if users respond favorably to your proposed solution.
Test Your MVP
Release your MVP in small pilot groups and gather feedback. Run users through your experiments.
Call or interview them afterward to assess their reactions.
Key questions to understand:
- Do users find value in your solution?
- How likely are they to adopt/purchase it?
- How can the product be improved to better meet their needs?
Testing with real users reveals flaws in assumptions faster than anything.
Learn and Iterate
Analyze results to determine which assumptions held and which did not. Extract key user insights and determine necessary product pivots.
Feed these learnings into an updated MVP and repeat the build-measure-learn cycle. Each iteration gets you closer to problem-solution fit.
Benefits of Rapid MVP Building/Testing:
- Fail fast – Identify flawed assumptions sooner when easier to change course
- Preserve scarce resources – Avoid over-investing precious time and money
- Reduce risk – Challenge your riskiest assumptions first
- Accelerate to value – Arrive at product-market fit faster
- Build traction – Turn early adopters into advocates
Rapid cycles of learning from lean MVPs test your vision, fuel improvement, and maximize chances of startup success. Adopt a mindset of speed and experimentation rather than perfection.
Deliver ongoing value to delight users, not just features.
By embracing agile development and customer feedback, your innovative idea can evolve into a startup people love.