Comments on: 10 examples of minimum viable products

By: Dan Hodgins

Dan Hodgins — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:39:00 +0000

Wish I knew about the MVP in September when I quit my job to start my startup. Could have saved months in development time, and arrived and product/market fit or non-viable product in weeks instead of 4 months!

MVP applies to everything I do now.

I’d like to share two other examples of MVP with readers:

1. Tim Ferris: testing book titles using Google ads driving traffic to landing pages.

2. Selling Blue Elephants: for these fellows, an MVP is a set of elements including a headline, photo, and randomized benefit list shown to thousands of people in hundreds of combinations. In this case MVP combines with Multivariate testing to provide powerful insights about people’s nuanced preferences. In their framework, there is one magical set of elements that people like and will buy.

I am interested in more examples of people’s creative interpretations of MVP!

By: Joris Witteman

Joris Witteman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:19:49 +0000

An MVP is not only a quick way to bootstrap and save money and time, it also forces you to define the essence of your product. What does it do at its very core? The answer to this question is vital to a successful product, its design and its development. Anything else is just noise.

By: Innovation [2009-11-16] – PEG

Innovation [2009-11-16] – PEG — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:05:42 +0000

[...] 10 examples of minimum viable products [Venture Hacks] Brilliant products are rarely the result of brilliant ideas. Most products start small, as minimum viable products, and then grow as the customers and developers work together to learn what the product should be. [...]

By: Mohan Arun L

Mohan Arun L — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 04:35:55 +0000

Point #2 – for collecting customer feedback you could use plug n play tools like Kampyle (used by Mozilla), uservoice, and Get Satisfaction!. These are also no-or-low maintenance just like Google Docs.

FYI – I have content about related topic –
‘Crowdsourcing as a way to develop and refine product ideas – questions to ponder’ right here

http://interestsblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/my-notes-questions-that-crowdsourcing.html

By: Mark Essel

Mark Essel — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:22:22 +0000

The minimum viable product were a couple of images on these two blog posts:
1) http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/06/21/monetization-for-web2010/

2) http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/06/23/notional-framework-for-monetization-web2010/

Now the concept is “alive” on my blog (right hand side) thanks to bumping into someone more capable than myself.

There are additional evolving services, check them out at http://victus1.victusmedia.com

By: Customer Development Oriented Lead Developer for Start-up – EventSession

Customer Development Oriented Lead Developer for Start-up – EventSession — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:27:14 +0000

[...] Eric Ries revisited it (I answered a few of the criticisms brought up by people on Hacker News). Venture Hacks and others were nice enough to note my write-up and comment on it as [...]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:47:45 +0000

From George S. Patton… “A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later.”

By: Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:14:00 +0000

We engage and then we see.

By: Ryan Nile

Ryan Nile — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:38:03 +0000

Simon Cowell is the king of MVP and Customer Development with American Idol, Britains Got Talent, X Factor etc

Acts = MVP’s every week

CD = the audience chooses who they will buy into

By: Nik

Nik — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:17:30 +0000

I dont know if Greg/Right Now qualifies as MVP but definitely in the customer development category.

http://www.sramanamitra.com/2008/08/02/the-montana-mogul-rightnow-ceo-greg-gianforte-part-3/

The relevant part:
=============
Now here is a good lesson in bootstrapping. I did all of this before I had a product. When I asked if they would buy it, they said no. Better to find that out early on! I then asked companies why they said no, wrote their answers down, and moved on to the next phone call. This was an iterative process that took about 400 phone calls to complete, but when I was done I was able to hone in on an initial product. In just one month, which is how long it took me to make those 400 phone calls, I knew exactly what customers would buy. That is when I went and built the initial product which took just 45 days because I did not have to build a huge application, just the pieces that I knew customers wanted.
========
FYI- I wrote a customer development post about using AdWords to determine Market type:
http://www.nikhileshrao.com/post/664/using-adwords-to-determine-market-type-in-a-customer-development-process/