Forget what you know about MVPs, we need a new definition. Here’s why you should stop focusing on ‘minimum viable product’ and start thinking about ‘minimum buyable product’.
TL:DR available at the end of the article.
What Do We Mean by Minimum Viable Product?
Viable is defined as ‘capable of working successfully; feasible.’ Sounds about right. But in reality the issue here is in the feasibility of viability, that is to say, how rough around the edges can a product be and yet still be considered ‘capable of being successful’? This is where many-a founder has struggled with their products; they can see the end goal, they know its capabilities, yet they are trying to bring their product to market when it’s still barely off the ground.
In short: Just because it’s viable, doesn’t make it desirable.
The Mistake of the Highly Sought-after MVP
The MVP is redundant. Yes, really, it is. We keep looking at the production of technology using this practice: build a product that just-about works. What does this mean in the grander scheme of things?
It means days, months, even years spent building something that:
- Is barely usable
- Isn’t remotely loveable
- Isn’t remotely buyable
- Cannot compete with existing (or similar) products on the market
We need to understand that nobody will use something that ‘just about works’ when a better option exists on the market that ‘just works’ (to use the old Apple adage). Faces crumble when I tell aspiring CEOs and founders this, but it’s true. Your first iteration of a product can’t be in barely working order, it has to have a unique quality that is enticing and accessible to the customer or at the very least a product that has a laser focus on your GTM audience.
MVPs Are No Longer Applicable
There was a time where a clunky, difficult to use with rough-cut aesthetics MVP was viable. (I should know, I’ve built a few of them…) They can – and to some extent may still – work in genuinely new products that have no competition. As I’ve met and worked with founders of start-ups over the years, I see them doing their best to follow the formulas of other successful companies. Often, they do so without understanding some of the why, resulting in them taking what they hear and read too literally. ‘Minimum viable product’ started to become a buzzword, thrown around by early start-up teams to excuse half-finished products. In some instances (very few, in my opinion), the MVP satisfied it’s cause for creation; the concept needed to be demonstrated in some doggedly created monster of an MVP, in order to push the start-up forward. In reality, half-finished products don’t cut it.
I worked with one of my clients recently to figure out why they were struggling with traction. Their product was visionary for their sector and would potentially change the way people communicated. However they needed to get their MVP built first which meant making sure they had all the basic features users would need and want. Essentially after a year of hard work they had built a product that was deemed MVP. Yet, despite being technically viable, in substance it wasn’t. It was the same as everything else on the market. Even worse, it just did it badly. The start-up hadn’t yet built the key features that would define them and set them apart from the competition.
I increasingly see the concept of MVP misleading start-ups into investing in the creation of a product that offers little of substantial value. There are no key impressive features and yet they still hope to win the market with it in the future. They may be on the journey to building something viable to the user, but the end result itself is not impressive enough to prove that they could or should invest further in their product. If MVP is a test of the market’s desire for your product then we shouldn’t be looking at prototypes that are simply viable; they should be genuinely desirable.
The Power of the Minimum Buyable Product
Often, MVPs are the bare minimum of acceptable. They work, but they glitch. They work, but their aesthetics are lacking. They work, but they’re not fun to use. They work, but they don’t emotionally engage the customer in a positive way. I’m no stranger to product pitches that include a few slides of intentional product output and a lot of explanation and support when testing the existing product. Here’s what I’ve learned needs to change to give future founders the best chance of success.
We need to redefine what the ‘minimum output’ of the MVP should be using these four elements:
- Desirable
- Loveable
- Buyable
- Usable
Minimum Desirable Product
Starting with the basics, will the customer want to use your MVP? Why? What are you offering right now that doesn’t exist right now, and why is it something that the customer will change existing behaviours and habits to use? How will a customer desire it? What are you doing to ensure that that desire isn’t a fleeting experience?
Minimum Loveable Product
Different (but connected) to desire is love. Customers need to love products, even if it’s in a understated and underappreciated way. Today, we can take everything from a banking platform to a rideshare app and make it a fun experience. We want customers to love our products and services. We want them to have fun, and emotionally engage with their experience with the product. Often, I see MVPs present as completely unlovable, other than to the founder, whose sense of pride in it’s creation isn’t shared by a customer. Make sure your product is loveable by all who encounter it. Make customers fall for it, and other hiccups they encounter will be less aggravating and irksome.
Does your MVP offer enough to make it loveable? Consider what you could do to change that.
Minimum Usable Product
There is a big difference between a product in conceptualisation and a product in the hand of a customer. Assume the customer is disinterested in using your product, has a short attention span, and lacks intuition with technology. This is somewhat exaggerated, but equally presents a challenge worth pitting your MVP against. Can your MVP engage, satisfy, and deliver to this customer? Can this customer achieve what they want in record time, without losing interest, becoming frustrated, or hitting a usability wall? Often founders will pitch the most incredible product and then deliver an MVP which is a gimmicky piece of tech or the bare basics of an idea in it’s primal stages, at best unpolished and at worst unusable.
How can you ensure that your product ultimately delivers the user experience and gets the customer from A to B? No matter how short that journey may be, the MVP has to be usable at every stage.
Minimum Buyable Product
At this point, it could be easily argued that your product could look primitive, even be unlovable, but if it’s buyable, it insinuates that it fills a necessary gap in the market. A minimum buyable product is one that can deliver value and do what it’s set out to do: have an impact, solve a problem for the customer, be the radical change that’s needed in that sector.
Would your customer buy the product? Is it something that would lead customers to part with their hard earned cash to have access to your MVP?
The Evolution of the MVP
MVPs started out as a necessary tool to force perfectionists into building something, anything that was deemed ‘good enough’. It has existed to help people create and in its growth into a standard process in the development of a new product, it has become the proverbial thorn in many a start-ups side. Shoddy MVPs are derailing companies and causing more harm than good. It has frequently been abused and misused, causing many founders to create minimum viable products that aren’t viable at all.
MVPs are still, in my opinion, a necessary and important step for many founders creating their new products and services. But in order for an MVP to be truly effective, truly viable, you have to ask; is it loveable, is it usable, is it buyable?
TL:DR
- Both the term and the concept of the MVP isn’t compatible with today’s pace in start-ups.
- Viable does not equal desirable.
- If you can’t solve a problem or deliver a fully desirable service at launch, you don’t have a product.
- When creating an MVP you should consider your GTM audience and what they want, need, and love. Skipping this step will add months of complexity and wasted spend as you work to solve the problem you should have started out with.
- For an MVP to be truly effective you have to ask; is it loveable, is it usable, is it buyable?
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