You’ve got a startup idea, and everyone is telling you the first thing you need to do is build an MVP. They’re not wrong.
If you want to have the best chances of creating a successful product and business, it’s no secret that you need to start with a minimum viable product. Countless startups have become wildly successful because of their strategic and patient MVP process. Take Uber, for example.
But the truth here is that you shouldn’t just dive into this process. You need to do your homework first. If you want to get what you need out of your MVP, you need to take it slow. You need to start with the right foundation to ensure you’re maximizing this opportunity.
Here are some things you want to do BEFORE jumping into building your first MVP:
Read, read, and then read some more. Learn from others who have done this before. Read the books, and examine the case studies of successful startups. Check out the backstories of big companies like Uber to understand how the MVP process helped them achieve their current level of success. Your startup capital needs to be stretched as far as humanly possible, so don’t make costly mistakes that could have been avoided by taking the time to learn from other people’s mistakes.
Some of the most popular and recommended books for the startup space are Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup and Rob Fitzpatrick’s The Mom Test.
Make A Decision On What Success Looks Like Every person has a different version of what success means to them. What’s your vision? Are you chasing a passion project? Or do you dream of creating an app that will have a million downloads? Whatever your goal is, figure it out. Decide what your vision is and get clear on what you’re after.
Once you understand the vision of your product or business, discuss it with your network. Does it make sense to them? Can you easily articulate what your business vision is? If not, you want to return to the drawing board.
Find Your Ideal Customers & Talk To Them You’re going to do this a lot through the MVP process, but it’s something you want to start doing long before you actually have a product for people to test. You need to genuinely understand what your ideal customers want and need from your business and your product. You need to understand their pain points.
In order to build the best possible MVP, you want to have a solid understanding of what people actually want and need from you first. You’re going to make changes and modifications based on their feedback, but you want to ensure you’re starting with something useful that there is a demand for. If no one wants to test it, you’ll never gain any traction with your MVP.
Once you’ve read and learned as much as possible, have defined your vision, and gotten to know the pain points of your ideal customers, you’ve finally reached the stage of being ready to start building your first MVP. Taking the time to do your homework before you head down this journey will help you start with the right foundation and increase your chances of success.
Post originally appeared on gojilabs.com.