A swan will glide upstream looking calm and majestic. But below the waterline it’s a different story – its legs are moving frantically to keep moving forward.
The first thing you need to do with your business is to prove that customers will buy what you’re selling – that the products or services are right (and correctly positioned and priced) and the buying process is easy.
Up front all is calm and majestic – perfectly presented, with a beautiful purchase experience. In the backroom all hell is breaking loose because you just got another order. That’s OK to get you started. You’ve created your minimum viable product.
One of my businesses is web-based, so rather than spending £30,000 on a bespoke development, I learned how to build my own website for a few hundred pounds, using one of the plethora of website building tools. Why would I spend thirty grand on a business concept that I’d surely need to change a few times before getting it right? My home built website looked great, and did the job. It needed lots of changes to get the customer offer right, so I did them myself. All my customers and their details were entered onto a spreadsheet to start with – and I found out what information I needed to hold about them. Then I could develop a bespoke customer management tool later.
The minimum viable product gets you to market quicker, by deploying just enough of the core features of your product or service to gain customers. It enables you to validate your offer without spending a fortune. And that makes it quick and useful.
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