Daria Lymanska
CEO & Founder

Too many requests! You have made too many requests!! No more requests!!!
– How many times do you have to hear that before you get really angry?Amazon Chime API’s request throttling tested our patience like this. But all we ever wanted was to make a simple text chat app work! In this article, you’ll find out why Chime was so unkind to us, what we did to turn things around, and how you too can follow the path we forged.

If you have an idea for implementing a digital solution, but its business model is not yet clear, you may need a lot of resources to find the right one. But how can you test the effectiveness of this idea in practice when each of the potential target audience’s representatives may perceive it differently? The answer is simple: you should consider minimum viable product or MVP development for startups. Below, we will explain its peculiarity and analyze the advantages of this approach.

What Is an MVP for a Startup?

An MVP for startups is a software solution with a basic set of functions and a simplified visual that clearly demonstrates its unique selling proposition (USP) and does not have any additional features (that is, if you remove something from its functionality, it will lose this USP).

The Importance of MVP Development for Startups

The main purpose of MVP development for startup is simple: since early-stage startups do not have clear, verified business models, it is important to make sure that they will be accepted by their target audiences. Otherwise, their owners risk losing a lot of financial and time resources on something that “does not work” for the end consumers. So, to avoid this, it is better to implement such projects gradually, optimizing and expanding them, taking into account feedback obtained from real users.

MVP Development Process

Here are the main stages of the MVP development startups process:

  • Defining the problem or goal of the target audience that you are going to help them solve/achieve with your product;
  • Conducting market demand analysis, which consists of a detailed study of the target audience, market trends, similar software solutions, etc.;
  • Rapid prototyping of the future solution and defining its key features that form the USP;
  • Agile development of an MVP;
  • Collecting feedback from real users;
  • Continuous product iteration after the MVP launch aimed at tailoring the product to the needs of its target audience.

Top 9 Benefits of Building an MVP for Startups

In this paragraph, we would like to introduce MVP benefits that are valuable for each startup owner.

Cost Efficiency

Creating a minimum valuable solution is, first of all, much cheaper than in the case of a full-fledged one. This means that the initial budget for your project will be moderate, and you will not have to sacrifice anything important – for example, the budget for marketing, the salaries of your full-time specialists, and so on.

Faster Time to Market

No matter how unique your idea is, there is always a risk that someone will follow your example before you. In turn, the implementation of the MVP will allow you to reduce the time-to-market and, thus, gain an additional competitive advantage.

Market Validation

A quick launch of the MVP will help you validate it in real market conditions as fast as possible. In the future, you will be able to optimize it based on real feedback from its users and then improve it with each iteration and make it more and more valuable to them.

Risk Mitigation

Getting a working solution up and running quickly will help you identify its hidden issues early on, all thanks to the fact that it will be accessible to users from all over the world. In fact, no other type of testing, no matter how many resources are involved, can provide the same thoroughness in identifying errors and inconsistencies.

Investor Attraction

By launching a “raw” but functioning product to market early, it will be available to potential investors, too. Agree that this approach to demonstrating your idea looks much more viable and capable of achieving your goals than presenting a business plan only.

Customer-Centric Development

Generally speaking, creating a minimum viable solution is one of the key startup success factors since its entire development cycle is tailored to “please” its target audience. Indeed, since user feedback has to be taken into account long before the solution is released (first, it is tested by the project team and then – by representatives of focus groups), it turns out to be truly focused on the needs of the end users.

Enhanced Learning

MVP in startups helps to conduct an end-to-end assessment of market needs and make decisions based on the data obtained. This way, you can use the obtained insights in the further evolution of your product, turning it into a full-fledged software solution step by step.

Flexibility and Scalability

MVP development for tech startup involves creating an initially scalable, flexible foundation that is easy to modify and to which you can quickly add new/remove unnecessary functionality without much risk (primarily, associated with the appearance of hard-to-fix bugs).

Building a User Base

Finally, when you launch a full-fledged solution, it will already have some audience interested in using it. Thus, you will be able to reduce your budget for early adopter engagement and, in particular, the time and money needed to research and create a portrait of a potential client.

Conclusion

Now, knowing all the advantages and goals of startup MVP development, you can understand whether this option is right for you. In particular, if you are inclined in its favor, you can contact us, a service provider with many years of experience creating MVP solutions for startups in different industries. We will accompany you throughout the entire lifecycle of your project – from the ideation stage to the release and support of its full-fledged version.