{"id":3675,"date":"2013-12-02T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/creator\/?p=3675"},"modified":"2020-03-30T19:09:48","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T23:09:48","slug":"defining-vision-minimum-viable-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wework.com\/ideas\/professional-development\/defining-vision-minimum-viable-product","title":{"rendered":"Defining your vision with a minimum viable product"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bicycle_two\"<\/p>\n

You have an amazing idea! Now, all you need to do now is turn it into a reality and customers will be lining up. Right? Well\u2026if you plan to spend months developing and perfecting, what happens when the \u201cfinal\u201d product is built, and no one is in the queue?<\/p>\n

To prevent loss of time, money and expectation, a Minimum Viable Product can help you find your sweet spot. So, what exactly is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The term, popularized by entrepreneur Eric Ries<\/a> in his bestselling book, Lean StartUp<\/a>, is a strategy for gaining critical feedback in the early and most crucial stages of product development.<\/p>\n

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Fueled<\/a>\u00a0founder Rameet Chawla<\/a> (Editor’s note: a client of the author<\/em>)\u00a0says an MVP is particularly useful because it allows products to grow and evolve by challenging teams to test and rework their ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst time entrepreneurs are stuck on the idea of perfection,\u201d he says. \u201cThey will spend months building and perfecting their vision. But, as soon as a product is tested in the real world, I guarantee that vision changes. You\u2019re not building your product for yourself, you\u2019re building it for others. An MVP allows you to observe how people react to the product and if it works the way you want it to work. While the core idea will remain the same, testing a raw product gives you the power of information to improve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Decide exactly what your unique selling point is, present it clearly to your customer and see how they respond. Rather than building a company first around a product that may or may not flop, putting out an MVP in early development buys you time to gather data and gauge relevant consumer interest.<\/p>\n

Many companies, large and small, have utilized MVPs in different ways.<\/p>\n

Rent The Runway<\/h3>\n

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The online dress rental company, Rent the Runway<\/a>, tested its model in person before building the original concept online by providing an in-person dress rental for female college students. Anyone could try on dresses in person before renting them and 34% of the women walked away with dresses, validating Rent the Runway\u2019s MVP.<\/p>\n

Groupon<\/h3>\n

In an excerpt from Eric Reis\u2019 The Lean Startup, Andrew Mason, the Founder of Groupon shared the company\u2019s MVP, which was essentially a WordPress blog and hundreds of PDF coupons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we did was we took a WordPress Blog and we skimmed it to say Groupon and then every day we would do a new post with the points embedded. It was totally ghetto. We would sell t-shirts on the first version of Groupon. We\u2019d say in the write up, \u2018This t-shirt will come in the color red, size large. If you want a different color or size, email that to us.\u2019 We didn\u2019t have a form to add that stuff. We were just, it was so cobbled together. It was enough to prove the concept and show that it was something that people really liked. The actual coupon generation that we were doing was all FileMaker. We would run a script that would email the coupon PDF to people. It got to the point where we\u2019d sell 500 sushi coupons in a day and we\u2019d send 500 PDFs to people with Apple Mail at the same time. Really the first, until July of the first year was just a scrambling to grab the tiger by the tail. It was trying to catch up and reasonable piece together a product.\u201d<\/p>\n

5 years since its November launch in 2008, Groupon is now a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ and actually gave away $100 million in Groupon credits this past week<\/a> for BlackFriday.<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t think of a way to get your MVP into the market? Here are 4 creative ways to see if your product vision has wings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. Use Tumblr<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Tumblr\"<\/p>\n

Before you even start coding, bring your idea online using an easy platform like a Tumblr page.\u00a0Of a Kind<\/a>, an online shopping site for exclusive clothing and accessories from young designers, was the first store to be built on Tumblr. From offering two products a week when it started in 2010, it now offers entire collections from thousands of designers in the U.S.A. Its humble beginnings on Tumblr allowed the founding team to gain a loyal following and the support it needed to move to a more substantial website and serve a larger market.<\/p>\n

2. Utilize a landing page\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The more visits a site receives, the more you can be sure there is an interest in your product. On the landing page, ask for an email addresses and respond, \u201cThanks, we will let you know when it\u2019s ready.\u201d You can even encourage sharing and potential virality by using products like\u00a0LaunchRock<\/a>\u2018s \u201ccoming soon\u201d page.\u00a0Give yourself some time to see if demand exists before jumping in head first.<\/p>\n

Bear CSS<\/a>\u2019s landing page has a very short and concise explanation of what the product does:<\/p>\n

\u201cHelping you build a solid stylesheet foundation based on your markup.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A tagline like Bear CSS\u2019s is an important element; it helps people \u201cget it\u201d quickly and it will become synonymous with your product, similar to its name and logo.\u00a0TinyLetter<\/a>\u00a0is another great example. It\u2019s appealing, uncluttered and accessible. The engaging tagline:<\/p>\n

\u201cEmail for people with something to say\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

is in the center of the page, bolded. The site has three bullet points that explain how the email platform works in under 100 words and the sign-up button sits prominently at the top of the page no matter how far down the page you scroll. The page also features a video explaining the product is and how to use it, which brings us to number three on our list.<\/p>\n

3. Launch a product video<\/strong><\/p>\n