MVP of 2022: how not to fail?

Lisa Dziuba
15 replies
The concept of testing product ideas before building a fully-functional product is a new normal. From 3-person startups to 1000+ people enterprises β€” everyone is building MVPs now πŸ˜… Product owners at almost every team can evaluate what would be "nice-have" and what would be "must-have" MVP features, backing their findings with some data. πŸ€” But with millions of MVPs released, how can your stand out? What will make it a "fail" or "success"? When browsing Product Hunt, we see such a strong competition but only a few MVPs get people's love. And I'm not talking about magic product-market fit. I'm talking about something as simple as .... making people go open your website from all PH hunts and try that thing you build for the last 2 months. How to achieve it? Here are my learnings: 1️⃣ Start with the user and competitors' research. If you don't know for whom you are doing your product and how you are better β€” nothing will save your MVP from the fiasco. I bet, most of the first-time founders skip research because "we already know what to build". It's so wrong. 2️⃣ Make that value prop clear and loud. Your Product Hunt headline, description, value prop on the website β€” if it doesn't resonate with the user needs, then no one will even bother to open your website. Even for a creepy MVP, do your homework with value proposition and positioning. Don't make it "the last thing to put together from copied parts of competitors' offerings". 3️⃣ MVP is not "it works somehow" It's not 2012, it's 2022. We all work with tons of apps and we are used to a certain level of comfort when using something. If MVP is hard to register, hard to navigate via the website, hard to use, buggy, slow β€” well, we will close that app and will write the founder under his PH post "good job, congrats" and will never use it again πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ So, yes, it's"minimum" but "minimum good" comparing to other products. 4️⃣ Good UX is a must. MVP can not look horrible and feel horrible unless it's someting as important as medicine which saves people's lives. 5️⃣ Attracting early adopters is your job. Building a good MVP is important but "good MVP" does not guarantee that people will pay attention to it. Product-led growth is a real driver BUT for products that nailed a huge market need on a growing market with a low/zero competition and viral elements inside the product itself. And even those companies spent a lot of attention to marketing. So successful MVP of 2022 goes with GTM plan πŸ˜€ 6️⃣ Customer service from day 1. At this point, you probably think that my concept of MVP goes again the concept of "minimum". However, the "good service" can be done by a caring founder who replies to all requests and honestly tries to help all MVP users navigate to the product value. This list can go on, so please add your thoughts on what makes "MVP of 2022" successful πŸ€” πŸ˜‡ And if you need help with building MVPs with no-code, fast and affordable, our team can help: http://welovenocode.com/

Replies

Lisa Dziuba
A little bit of a long read but should be helpful to founders πŸ™Œ
Vedran Rasic
@lisadziuba shortening the path from 0 to MVP is the most important step #1. Thanks for making it simpler.
Zholdasbek Temirgaliyev
Always be prepared to make a pivot of your product. Experience shows that successful products are the result of refinements based on user feedback.
Daniel Andor
Great advice πŸ™‚ I would add just that there are so many things that can be done before building anything, to understand if there is a big enough problem or the solution that you thought is a good direction. While I talk with early stage startup founders, I usually recommend them to read Running Lean - Ash Maurya and based on the book, in one of the incubators I'm part of, we created a board to track the stage of the startups, so they can see were they are and what should do next.
Umar Farooq
Thanks for the great advice
John Zhivov
That's a great checklist! Thanks.
Artem Khudenko
yeah, that really neededπŸ”₯
Alexandra Zaitseva
The 5th point the hardest one Attracting early adopters is a long and painfull but in the end it will be amaizing
Darya Gerasimova
With building an MVP you fail a lot :))) Thanks for creating it! Super useful!
Nicole Ogloza
I would also have something on this list that represents the TEAM. Internal team and team drivers make these work, and having a passionate team behind the idea is the best way to go about it! I was able to put together a 34 person team, becuase they loved the idea, and all of them (for over a year) we volunteers!!!! They all worked on stock options before converting to full time...Team is my number one MUST HAVE that you can add to this list. Hope this helps! Curious to hear your thoughts?!?
Sharkes Monken
Very useful information and thank you for sharing this
G. M. Mehdi
Thanks for the interesting read. Any case studies for successful MVP launches here?