MVP development for startups in 2023: When and Why Answered
When you have a startup, you have to spend your limited financial resources wisely. You cannot start spending it here and there.
Developing a mobile app or a web application is a costly affair. Even if you don’t have any budget constraints, being a startup, you need to take into consideration many things.
What will happen if you have developed a feature-rich application and your target audience rejects it? Not just financially, it will break you down morally too. Your potential target audience will also feel that you have let them down.
When you open a new business, there are many things you have to struggle with such as productivity, the right research for products, efficiency, competition, performance, and others.
Being a startup, you need to identify the right problem and propose the right solution for that.
Also, you will need to identify the right market to approach. Also, you have time constraints, thanks to the competitive nature of the market.
Earlier, people used to go for full product development. However, today, thanks to the Lean Startup concept, people follow an MVP approach.
Rather than developing a full-fledged app, you should go for MVP development for startups. In this post, we will discuss everything about MVP, when you should go for it, and why you should opt for it.
Stay tuned!
What is an MVP?
Do you know that 99% of startups fail miserably? Do you know the reason? The main reason for their failures is not to offer the right solutions that people are looking for. They lacked research, competitor analysis, and customer expectations.
An MVP, also called Minimum Viable Product, allows startup founders to not go for full-fledged product development.
Rather than developing a full product, they can develop an MVP after thorough research and available customer feedback for MVPs.
If we have to define an MVP, it is the smallest version of a product that can be developed by developers to get validation from customers whether they are looking for it and willing to pay for it or not.
An MVP is not developed to earn money, it is, on the other hand, developed to create a roadmap for the actual product development. All you need to do is to create a basic version of the product and give it to your potential customers.
They will use it in a real-time environment and give their feedback and suggestions. Based on these inputs, you can start the actual product development.
Remember that developing an MVP is not as easy as it seems. You will need to understand it first and define its purposes to avoid any misconceptions and common pitfalls.
Why Do You Need a Minimum Viable Product?
Almost all startups look out for funds, especially while developing a product. However, they need to make sure that the idea they have has feasibility or not.
Do they have the right audience for that particular idea? Does their target audience look for such a product?
The best way to get all these answers is to develop a Minimum Viable Product. It will not cost you much and can be developed easily and quickly. Just hire professional MVP development services for startups and discuss your idea with them.
Once you have an MVP, you can release it to the market and ask your customers to use it. You can ask for some rewards for a few first customers who use the product.
The primary aim of any MVP is to validate the product idea and gather some information from the market about the demand, supply, competitors, target audience, etc.
Having some data insights will help founders to know whether it is a viable business model or not. If it is not, founders can save a lot of time, money, and effort. If it is a viable model, they can start developing the product from the scratch.
Even the lean startup methodology supports MVP development. Earlier, the lean methodology was limited to manufacturing and production sectors only.
However, after 2005, Steve Blank supported this methodology and asked tech companies to use it for software development.
The Lean Startup methodology is all about minimizing effort and promoting data and value-based product development. It emphasizes more to develop products that the customers are looking for. It functions on a three-aspect model called Build-Measure-Learn.
- First, you need to build an MVP with minimum budget and effort.
- Second, they release the product in the market, gather insights from customers and measure the results by validating their assumptions.
- Once you have learned insights and if they favor you, you can go for a full-fledged product development phase.
What Are the Key Benefits of Developing an MVP?
When it comes to MVP development, you are just creating something that you have never built before. Also, you have some kind of pressure while developing it about the reception of the product.
If you have even the slightest doubt about your product, you should go for MVP development first. There are some amazing benefits MVP development has to offer:
1. Get Validation from Real-life Users
This is the first benefit of developing an MVP. Here, you will get a chance to get feedback, suggestions, and inputs from real users who will use your MVP once it is released. You will have a chance to validate the feasibility of your idea.
If there are any issues, you will come to know about them at the early stage of product development. MVP development offers you a chance to pivot before it is too late.
You can save yourself from wasting a huge amount of time, money, and effort to develop a product that does not resonate with your potential customers.
Also, you can think about adding more features and functionalities to the product based on the inputs and suggestions you receive from users.
2. Mitigate Potential Risks
Developing an MVP is cost-effective, compared to developing a full-fledged app. Hence, it gives you an opportunity to test and validate your idea before you start developing it into a product.
Would you bear losses if you have developed a full product and it failed? Developing an MVP reduces your risks to a great extent.
3. Get Support from Investors
Your investors will look for real data and statistics when you pitch your idea to them. When you have an MVP ready with its positive reception in the market, convincing investors would be smooth sailing.
You will be able to instill confidence in them. When you present real data to them with an MVP, they will listen to you and think of a potential relationship with you.
4. Expense Reduction
Another reason why you should go for MVP development is to reduce expenses to a large extent. MVP development for startups keeps costs down. How does it possible? Let’s understand. When you go for MVP, you will be able to build a product iteratively during the process.
Now, you can reinvest revenues you generated in the initial release back into the product development. Also, it will help you build features that your customers are looking back, bypassing unnecessary features and functionalities.
5. Quick Development Process
Once you know which features to incorporate in the final product, everyone would be ready to quickstart the work. Everyone in the development team will know the roadmap of the product development and it will, in turn, quicken the development process.
6. Get a Competitive Edge
It is all about getting there first.
When you are brainstorming your idea, there are several entrepreneurs who also working on a similar idea. While they go for a longer development process, you can come up with an MVP and hit the market first to gain visibility and attention.
It will give you a competitive edge over your competitors. There are many such examples you can find on the internet where MVPs were released first and they are the market leaders now for that particular industry vertical.
7. Manage Your Resources Wisely
If you have a startup company with multiple ideas in mind, you would want to focus on products that are worth your investment in terms of cost, time, and effort.
Developing an MVP is the best way to figure out that truth. You can focus on revolutionary products and leave mediocre products.
The same thing goes for investors as well. They can back the right feasible products and turn down other offers. Hire MVP development services for startups and start building the MVP.
When to Go for MVP Development?
Do you want to know when to go for MVP development? Here is a list of situations when you should think of developing an MVP.
1. When You Are Not Sure of the Potential of the Idea
It happens with everyone. When you don’t know whether the product you want to develop is unique and unparalleled, you should go for an MVP first. The reason is to save resources in terms of money, time, and effort.
If your product is feasible, you will get good and generous feedback from users. You can then go for a full-fledged product development phase.
2. When You Have Budget Constraints
Most startups have funding issues. You have to take care of your overhead costs as well. In such scenario, you can go for an MVP rather than a full product development to ensure that your idea is feasible and receive well by your target audience.
3. When You Want to Launch the Product Early
If your competitors are also working on a similar product and you want to hit the market soon, you can go for an MVP to capture the market share. You can add more features to your product afterwards.
Conclusion
MVP development for startups is a wonderful idea. It avails many benefits to startup founders. All you need to do is to hire a company for MVP development and they will take care of the rest.
You will get some great insights about your product from reviews and feedback you receive from your customers.
In addition to that, you will also learn about new challenges and pain points of the users and incorporate features to the product to address them.