{"id":3149,"date":"2013-10-30T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=3149"},"modified":"2020-03-30T23:21:17","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T03:21:17","slug":"mvp-wasting-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/mvp-wasting-life","title":{"rendered":"‘Minimal viable product’ is about not wasting your life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"not-wasting-life\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The term \u201cMinimum Viable Product\u201d (MVP) has become almost a religion to the startup community. The idea of a \u201cLean Startup<\/a>\u201d is gaining popularity, several high<\/a>–profile<\/a> companies have exited only after \u201cpivots\u201d, and the \u201claunch fast and iterate\u201d mantra is nearing ubiquity in startup circles. I have noticed, however, that the term is as misunderstood as it is pervasive. Entrepreneurs are constantly pushing back against the concept, arguing that they need a fully built product to launch, that they need a professional designer to get attention, etc. I believe this is driven largely by fear, namely the powerful fear of sucking<\/em>. After working with entrepreneurs for the last few years, I\u2019ve found that the only way to rid yourself of urge to resist lean techniques is to replace the fear of sucking with another fear: the fear of wasting your life<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The problem most entrepreneurs face is that they believe that they, or someone they know, is the arbiter of what is and is not a good idea. They believe, for whatever reason, that they have a great idea – that is for certain – and the only thing standing between them and success is making that idea EXACTLY how they imagine it. The truth is, if you\u2019re working on a product right now with that type of vision, you\u2019re almost certainly wasting your life. You have NO IDEA if your idea is good, because only your audience (the public) can tell you that, and the only way they\u2019ll tell you honestly is if you launch something. Trust me: if you launch, you will get a reaction, and from that reaction you will start to get an idea of whether spending more time on what you\u2019re building is worth it.<\/p>\n

If you take what I just said as gospel (which it is), then you\u2019re left with two choices, each with their own distinct risks:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Launch something before you think you have something awesome, and risk people telling you a few less than thrilling things about your product.<\/li>\n
  2. Launch something and figure out if you\u2019re wasting your precious, precious time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Look: you\u2019re going to die<\/strong>. The time you have on this earth isn\u2019t set in stone right now, but the fact that it is finite is. Start being terrified by this fact right now, and let that fear override all your other, less rational fears. You\u2019ll be amazed at where that gets you.<\/p>\n

    When my friend Justin<\/a> launched Coffitivity<\/a>, the site was broken in many ways and most of the people involved in the project thought it was a horrible idea. However, by doing a small launch by posting it on Facebook, I saw the problems with the website and helped him fix them, the team and I started working to get them on a few forums, and then the site blew up to over 1 million users<\/strong> in the last 7 months. Without launching, Justin had a website he didn\u2019t know how to fix that the majority of the team thought was a horrible idea. With launching, he had a fixed website and a viral sensation. This happened because he and ACe<\/a> (the other founder) set themselves a hard deadline to launch, and ignored the fact that the website was broken in several ways when they hit that deadline. I\u2019m now a part of that project, and I owe a lot to the fact that they weren\u2019t afraid of sucking – they were afraid of wasting their lives<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    Not all projects go viral – my latest project, for example, High Five<\/a> has had only 1000 downloads in the week that it\u2019s been out. However, we\u2019ve had a 20% conversion rate to active users and have grown in returning active users every single day since launch, showing us really, really positive trends that indicate the app is solving a real problem. When you launch – define the metrics you want to measure exactly this one thing: does anybody give a hoot?. If they don\u2019t, re-evaluate. If they do, stay the course and find more users. And for God\u2019s sake – LAUNCH ALREADY (and tell me when you do)!<\/p>\n

    Want to talk more? Chat with me on Twitter<\/a>. Discuss on Hacker News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Editor’s note: This story was written by Tommy Nicholas and originally appeared here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The term \u201cMinimum Viable Product\u201d (MVP) has become almost a religion to the startup community. The idea of a \u201cLean Startup\u201d is gaining popularity, several high–profile companies have exited only after \u201cpivots\u201d, and the \u201claunch fast and iterate\u201d mantra is nearing ubiquity in startup circles. I have noticed, however, that the term is as misunderstood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":965,"featured_media":33807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professional-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMinimum Viable Product (MVP) is about not wasting your life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/mvp-wasting-life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"'Minimal viable product' is about not 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