The Startup Therapy Couch™: Critical Factors for Startup Success - #3 MVP

In this series, we're diving into the most critical factors for startup success. These are the criteria that most often are present when a startup "makes it".

The third critical success factor is... MVP! Acronyms can be lovely little things (HA), but they're only useful if you understand what they mean. MVP means "minimum viable product". The very first word is MINIMUM. This means building as little as you possibly can and still provide value to user one, day one.

So many people try to boil the ocean in their very first release... This means they try to build everything they can possibly think of that their app or technology or website could or will ever do. And it usually translates to a project that never gets to market at all, or that costs so much money in development that it ends up wasting a lot of investor capital.

So build as LITTLE as you possible can and get to market as fast as you possible can, while providing value.

BONUS: If you do this right, once you have users getting value from your MVP, they'll tell you what they want next. So you will only build what your users want and when they want it, and you can CHARGE EXTRA for additional features! If you build them all up front, there's no incremental monetary opportunities.

Go small, or go HOME!

Go back to Critical Factor for Startup Success #1 TEAM.
Go back to Critical Factor for Startup Success #2 TALK.