If this is your first time reading, I recommend you start with my 6-month challenge, week #1 choosing an idea and market validation, week #2 talking to others, building an MVP and focusing on value vs. growth and monetization, week #3 narrowing focus further, learning about gluten free, social shopping and eating experiments, week #4 building out my MVP, talking to advisors, learning how to pitch VC’s and pitching Greylock, monthly review #1 introspection and lessons learned and week #5 shipping my MVP, getting out of the building and staying productive.
tl;dr This week has been mostly been spent iterating on my MVP from version 1 to version 2 based upon feedback from users. It’ll be short and sweet – and since I’ve gotten some requests on what my MVP looks like, this post will include some screenshots for your viewing pleasure 🙂
Surprisingly, coding and hacking takes awhile to do! Sometimes I feel like coding is kind of like being bipolar — it’s slightly depressing and very disappointing when you accidentally break something in your code and have absolutely no idea what just happened (and it may take four hours or more of Googling to find out why, no joke); on the other hand, it’s the greatest feeling ever if and when you find out what happened and fix it. Am I right, or am I right? 🙂
Let’s first briefly revisit what a minimum viable product (MVP) is from Eric Ries himself.
First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
Some caveats right off the bat. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. If your goal is simply to scratch a clear itch or build something for a quick flip, you really don’t need the MVP. In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics.
– Eric Ries, Minimum Viable Product: a guide
I. MVP assumptions
II. MVP version 1
III. MVP version 2
IV. Some development advice and thoughts
V. Next week and lessons learned
[Read more…] about Week #6 – MVP assumptions, iterations of MVP version 1 and 2