Tips For Building A More Successful MVP
In July of 2014, I saw an opportunity to simplify the baby registry process while making it more fun and engaging for moms. This was my so called “a ha” moment for Gugu Guru and my first official days as a tech entrepreneur. The smartest thing I did to develop my business was hiring a seasoned entrepreneur as my close advisor. Her first piece of advice? Read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and get familiar with the concept of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
I couldn’t wait to create my product. As I built my MVP, I documented some critical steps to minimize the financial risks and avoid possible development missteps. These are the top lessons I learned in starting my product from scratch:
1) Use Existing Tools When Creating Something To Test. The root of my concept for Gugu Guru was effectively a quiz or questionnaire, so I bought a subscription to Survey Monkey for a few hundred dollars and created my own rough prototype, which I had never done before. If you can build it for free, even better. You don’t have to be technical. Use PowerPoint or PicMonkey – whatever you need to make something rough but that gets the general concept across for evaluation.
2) Tap Into Local Resources For Recruiting. You need to do research but research can be pricey – so get resourceful. I belong to a Facebook group of roughly 4,000+ moms in my suburban town. The group is primarily a place to buy/sell/exchange baby items. I posted on the group’s page that I was looking for women pregnant with a first child, or moms who had recently given birth to a first child to review a new website I was creating in exchange for a diaper bag. Many moms from the group replied but others also told friends and family they knew who fit the bill. The result was a great mix of suburban and urban moms that agreed to meet with me face-to-face and give me valuable feedback on my idea.
3) Don’t Accept Anything Less Than Total Honesty. I learned from my market research days conducting focus groups, that participants are sometimes concerned about hurting your feelings if they don’t like your concept. As soon as I sat down with my mom testers individually, I told them that I would not beat myself up if they hated the concept or conversely give myself a pat on the back if they loved it. I only needed to understand how the concept resonated with them - what they liked, what they didn’t like, and if it would be something they’d use.
4) Be Clear About What You’re Showing. I stressed and continue to do so with current testers, that prototypes are not the final product and are just crude renderings of a bigger concept. It’s important for everyone to understand that they are seeing a “straw man” and ultimately it’s their feedback that will shape the final product, or in some cases, tip the scales to classify an idea as a lemon altogether.
5) Show Different Options and Outcomes. When you’re testing a concept, leave as little to the imagination as possible. For instance, I showed the mom testers a couple different ways that baby registry product recommendations could be displayed to understand their preferences. The concept I thought would be the winner lost in popularity and my Plan B concept won. Moral of the story: just because it works for you and seems like the obvious direction to take doesn’t mean it actually is.
6) Answer Questions With Questions. When walking through your concept, throw someone’s questions back in his/her court as much as possible. If a mom tester asked me for instance, “Now if I click on this would the product details display?” I would answer with the question, “If you clicked on that what would you expect to happen?” Dig into your target consumers’ brains and find out what would be ideal for them as a next step.
7) Listen But Don’t Overreact. This is especially important to keep in mind when gathering qualitative feedback because your sample sizes tend to be quite small. Just because one person has a visceral reaction to something does not make his/her opinion gospel when it comes to product development – no matter how strongly that one person may feel about the issue. (As mentioned in #5).
8) Never Stop Testing and Learning. Once I gathered as much feedback as I could and we built the beta version of the site and did another round of testing prior to launch. We recruited 25 pregnant moms to use the site and subsequently take a survey in return for a gift card. We made even more improvements based on that beta test feedback and continue to always test and learn as we go. To this day, more than three months into launch, I send a survey link to every single mom that signs up for the site. (And most importantly during all of this, I always go back to Rule #7.)
Special thanks to Monica Banks, Founder of Gugu Guru.