Welcome to a special sneak peek of our exclusive Product Management course material!

In this unique section, we're diving into the art of creating a basic version of your dream product. It's all about starting small to see if people will love what you're creating.

David, our expert, walks us through how even the biggest companies in the world begin their journey to success with something straightforward and uncomplicated.

Ready to dive in?

What is an MVP?

📌 Welcome to Module 4 where we move on to validate our solution. Once we finish market and problem validation, the last thing is to test our idea in the simplest way possible. For that we use prototypes.In the below videos, David shares more about MVPs. Let’s get started.

📹 Video: What is an MVP?

📹 Video: MVP Example

What might your idea look like in real life?

MVPs are a tool to help product managers validate their solutions quickly without having to build the entire product. It allows a team to collect the maximum amount of learning about customers which are used to inform future product iterations.

To set the right expectation of what an MVP is, it’s better to clarify what the "P" stands for:

“A prototype is used in discovery, and a product is used in delivery.” - Marty Cagan in Inspired

• In the discovery phase, which is where we are, "P" stands for ’Prototype’.
• In the delivery phase when the actual solution is being built after being validated, the "P" can stand for ’Product’.

🔧 A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a minimum version of the final product and it’s delivered to the market right away. This means that it has to be simple and well-polished, without any bugs or other problems.

🪛 A Minimum Viable Prototype (MVP), on the other hand, is created for the sake of finding those errors and often is very different from the final product and far from perfect.

💡 Unlike a minimum viable product, minimum viable prototypes usually do not make it to the market, but they still get into the customer’s hands. Since the main goal of a prototype is testing, your potential users are among those who carry out the task. Numerous brands you already know, such as Uber, Airbnb, Instagram, and Dropbox, started as prototypes and gradually expanded and evolved into the products they are now. MVPs, whether a product or prototype, help you test what customers do vs what they say.

Note: In this course, when we say MVP, we are referring to a minimum viable prototype because this program is all about the discovery phase.

To summarise, Prototyping is:

• An exciting step where you take your ideas from paper to something practical
• The moment where you get a taste of how people will react to your idea in the real world
• The moment to embrace failure, and not stop at your first attempt but iterate further on your idea

In the next mission, we will go through examples of prototypes from famous companies and in the last mission of this module, you will create a prototyping strategy for your product.

MVP Techniques

The Effort of your minimum viable prototype will be based on:

• How much do you know about the problem or the solution?
• How much risk is your company willing to take?
• How much people, time and money do you have?

Note: You don’t need to have technical knowledge to build a prototype

“If you are not embarrassed by your first product, you launched too late.” - Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn

MVPs can be of 2 types:

1. Proof of Concept - this allows us to test that our concept works and there is demand for our solution.
2. Functional - provides more functionality than POC (proof of concept), that is, the tester can take simple actions with it.

Below, we will be going through some real-life examples of proof of concept and functional MVPs.

Proof of Concept MVP

1. Landing Pages or ’Registration of Interest’ pages:

Example: DoorDash

DoorDash initially launched as a landing page. They were called Palo Alto Delivery as they started testing in Palo Alto and had a simple page with restaurant names and menus. To order, customers had to call and place the order. Studying the number of people who called allowed them to test the demand for home delivery without building a complicated tech solution.

2. Digital Content like demo videos or blogs

Example: Dropbox

Dropbox didn’t make any product at all at the beginning. Instead, they pretended they had it ready by creating an explainer video. They wanted to check if their file-syncing idea was of interest to people. The feedback from users helped the then-startup receive the funds it needed to develop its offering.

• You can watch the original demo video here.
• Watch their current video here.

3. Marketplaces

If you are building a product, you can test demand first before actually building it or making big investments in setting up an online store or buying equipment. You can use various marketplaces online and you don’t need to have the product ready. By seeing how many people are interested or pre-order, you can assess the future success of the product. In recent times, dropshipping has become very popular as well.

Example: Pebble on Kickstarter

Pebble raised $10,266,845 through a crowdfunding campaign. They were later acquired by Fitbit.

Facebook Marketplace

You can use Facebook to test a new product. Look at the number of messages and saves to determine how popular a product is.

Functional MVPs

1. Concierge / Sticky Tape

Example: Amazon

Amazon started off with a simplistic landing page with no systems in place. Jeff Bezos would buy books from distributors or a local bookstore and ship them to customers every time his online store received an order. Once orders grew, he added more products and started investing in a warehouse and offering a personalised experience on the website.

Amazon is a huge corporation now, but that does not mean they have stopped prototyping. Product managers at Amazon constantly launch and test new MVPs - they just look much better nowadays.

2. Email Newsletters

Example: Product Hunt

A newsletter allows you to solve problems for an audience using written content - if people sign up and there’s traction, there’s a need for the solution.

Read more about how Product Hunt started this way here. Ryan Hoover (founder) used LinkyDink to build a quick prototype. He set up a group to share and discover new products with his subscribers.

Now, Product Hunt is a big platform that showcases the best new tech products.

3. Events and Communities

You can use the power of communities and events to test your solution.

A teacher might host a free workshop or webinar to gauge interest in a subject before building a full course. This also allows them to get close to users and get feedback before creating.

You can gauge interest by tracking event/email signups and registrations.

Example: EntryLevel

EntryLevel hosts regular events and workshops to gauge student interest in new topics. We hosted a workshop on building a resume to test how many students are interested in resume-building and job search services.

4. Plain Donut

This generally involves your own tech stack but is not fully functional and may be missing some features.

Example: LinkedIn

📌 MVPs are a great way to test assumptions and ideas.

According to Henrik Kniberg, author of the book “Lean from the Trenches,” when building MVPs, you should follow the second approach in the image.

When building MVPs, follow the second approach not the first

Why?

The first approach is the traditional method of development. In this case, all you can offer users are wheels, spare parts, the machine frame, and an assembled car.

Your team will spend a lot of time and money for assembling, but there is a chance, that the final result will not satisfy the customers (i.e., the market will not need your product).

The second method is better for creating MVPs. This allows you to concentrate on the user's problems (in this case, it is to get from one point to another). It also lets you introduce to them the prototype solutions.

For example, one might begin with a skateboard. Give users a chance to take a ride and get their feedback.

It will help you to improve the product step by step: to transform a skateboard into a scooter, then into a bicycle, then into a motorcycle, and finally into a dream machine.

The key thing is to test the product/prototype with users on each iteration. It will not be perfect, but it will help to solve their problems. And you will save resources for further development and discover how to make a better product.

‍

Now that you know the different types of MVPs, here are some easy-to-use tools that are commonly used to build MVPs:

In the next mission, we’ll learn the process to start creating a prototype and get started with the task for this module.

We've just scratched the surface of what it means to create a prototype and how it can pave the path for your product's success. From understanding what an MVP is to learning about different techniques and exploring real-world examples, there's so much more to dive into.

If you want to dig deeper into how MVPs work and how you can use them to turn your ideas into successful products, our full course is the way to go. We've got insights, strategies, and hands-on activities waiting for you!

Enroll in our Product Management course today and start building the skills you need to create products people will love: EntryLevel: Product Management: Fundamentals & Discovery

‍