The Balancing Act | Startup Conundrums

The Balancing Act |Startup Conundrums

The MVP.

The most used term in the startup space for the past five years is in jeopardy. 

What this comes down to (in my mind) is the entrepreneur or founding teams understanding of what MVP is. The way I look at MVP is this; an MVP is the minimum thing that we can build, design or test that validates a customers propensity to pay (or use, depending on your business model).

Therefore an MVP can come in various forms and doesn’t even have to be working hardware or software. It could be a landing page, a PDF, some wire-frames or something entirely different.

The CTO of Edgelabs once explained to me the difference between an MVP (Minimum Viable Product), an MUP (Minimum Usable Product) and an MCP (Minimum Commercial Product) for the type of venture myself and my team were embarking on. This was really insightful but more on that in a later post.

Have a read of the TechCrunch article from Bill Aulet and his positioning of the MVP conundrum. In my mind he’s spot on.

I also love how he (Bill) talks about the why and getting that right before you focus on the how and what. I’m sure you’ll find the read just as rewarding as I did.

 

Illustration Credit: Marius Ursache