Everybody wants to create the next new thing. The game changer. The viral video. The million dollar KickStarter campaign. The top trending article
People put so much emphasis and so much pressure on themselves to create the perfect product. They spend weeks and months and years designing and reformulating and editing and tweaking trying to get it just right. There’s striving for perfection.
But without actually putting your product to the test, without getting feedback from your customers, how do you know what perfection looks like? Just because something seems perfect to you, whether from an aesthetic or functionality standpoint, doesn’t mean that your customer shares the same definition. The chances are that they don’t.
You’re too deep in the mix to see the forest for the trees. You’ve spent so much time and energy and creativity and passion developing this product that there is no way for you to have an unbiased opinion about it. Your product becomes your baby. You’re too committed, and that is a good thing. But until you actually put your product to the test you have no way of knowing whether it will sink or swim. Without real honest feedback from customers, you can’t possibly determine what the “perfect” product is.
It can be scary to put in idea to the test. Often it’s much easier and safer and less stressful to keep the product locked behind closed doors without ever showing it to the public. No feedback seems better in your mind than bad feedback because it allows you to hold onto the hopeful idea that you’re going to have a wildly successful product. The only problem is that idea is based solely in your mind and not on the actual data from customers. Because of this, many people are willing to sacrifice months and years of their lives before testing their product because they’re worried about how the consumer will react. Don’t make this foolish and costly mistake. It’s better to kill your babies early and often.
So how do you remedy the quest for perfection?
Enter The Minimum Viable Product, or MVP.
The Minimum Viable Product goes against what traditional companies have been taught. Instead of trying to build the greatest, most perfect version of your product before putting on the market the MVP seeks to do something very different.
The MVP is highlighted in Eric Reis’ book, The Lean Startup. It is named so because it allows a company to put out a product with the bare-bone necessities and see how the customers react. This acts as a validating mechanism to prove the concept of the business. Instead of wasting months or even years developing a product before ever even knowing how the customers will respond, the MVP allows you to cut the iteration cycle down considerably.
Once you’re able to get a baseline reaction from your customers you can see where you need to focus your continual effort. Often a peripheral feature ends up being the part of the product that is most loved by your customers. For example Potbellies Sandwich Shop started off as an antique store that sold sandwiches to entice customers into their store… in short order they reinvented business and turned it into a full-scale sandwich shop.
By obtaining initial feedback from customers, you’re able to determine where to focus the business instead of building something that you want instead of what the customer wants. This allows you to go from an initial idea to an MVP to testing the product to an iteration. The quicker you’re able to go through the cycle of building and testing and iterating, the faster you’re going to learn about what your customers desire and how you can make it the perfect product for THEM.
Design a lean, stripped down product, put it on the market, see what people think, and then decide if you should continue down that road or if you should pivot onto another course. Rinse and Repeat.
People put so much emphasis and so much pressure on themselves to create the perfect product. They spend weeks and months and years designing and reformulating and editing and tweaking trying to get it just right. There’s striving for perfection.
But without actually putting your product to the test, without getting feedback from your customers, how do you know what perfection looks like? Just because something seems perfect to you, whether from an aesthetic or functionality standpoint, doesn’t mean that your customer shares the same definition. The chances are that they don’t.
You’re too deep in the mix to see the forest for the trees. You’ve spent so much time and energy and creativity and passion developing this product that there is no way for you to have an unbiased opinion about it. Your product becomes your baby. You’re too committed, and that is a good thing. But until you actually put your product to the test you have no way of knowing whether it will sink or swim. Without real honest feedback from customers, you can’t possibly determine what the “perfect” product is.
It can be scary to put in idea to the test. Often it’s much easier and safer and less stressful to keep the product locked behind closed doors without ever showing it to the public. No feedback seems better in your mind than bad feedback because it allows you to hold onto the hopeful idea that you’re going to have a wildly successful product. The only problem is that idea is based solely in your mind and not on the actual data from customers. Because of this, many people are willing to sacrifice months and years of their lives before testing their product because they’re worried about how the consumer will react. Don’t make this foolish and costly mistake. It’s better to kill your babies early and often.
So how do you remedy the quest for perfection?
Enter The Minimum Viable Product, or MVP.
The Minimum Viable Product goes against what traditional companies have been taught. Instead of trying to build the greatest, most perfect version of your product before putting on the market the MVP seeks to do something very different.
The MVP is highlighted in Eric Reis’ book, The Lean Startup. It is named so because it allows a company to put out a product with the bare-bone necessities and see how the customers react. This acts as a validating mechanism to prove the concept of the business. Instead of wasting months or even years developing a product before ever even knowing how the customers will respond, the MVP allows you to cut the iteration cycle down considerably.
Once you’re able to get a baseline reaction from your customers you can see where you need to focus your continual effort. Often a peripheral feature ends up being the part of the product that is most loved by your customers. For example Potbellies Sandwich Shop started off as an antique store that sold sandwiches to entice customers into their store… in short order they reinvented business and turned it into a full-scale sandwich shop.
By obtaining initial feedback from customers, you’re able to determine where to focus the business instead of building something that you want instead of what the customer wants. This allows you to go from an initial idea to an MVP to testing the product to an iteration. The quicker you’re able to go through the cycle of building and testing and iterating, the faster you’re going to learn about what your customers desire and how you can make it the perfect product for THEM.
Design a lean, stripped down product, put it on the market, see what people think, and then decide if you should continue down that road or if you should pivot onto another course. Rinse and Repeat.