As a starting point, I would like to discuss Minimum Viable Product (MVP) fundamentals. In the arduous journey of increasing a company’s value, there are three primary constraints that co-exist in continuous tension:
- Time – how to deliver your product or service as quickly as possible to your customers.
- Quality – how to meet (and exceed) customers’ expectations by providing unique and superior solutions, allowing them to continue justifying their long-term “willingness to pay.”
- Money – how would you reasonably manage your resources and extend your runway?
Unfortunately, due to the nature of their constraints, you can’t maximize all of these simultaneously. Any company, especially startups, must balance and compromise between these three:
· To minimize “Time to Market,”- you must compromise on product quality and/or invest more resources.
· To increase product quality and customer satisfaction – you must realize it may take more time than expected and require additional resources.
· To operate within your resource limitations and extend your runway- you might need to reduce desired quality.
This seems like a good point to share some advice from two highly successful startups: The Beatles and the “Rolling Stones.”
“You can’t always get what you want” (The Stones) – in other words: you have limited resources.
“Take a sad song and make it better” (Hey Jude, The Beatles) – in other words: dream big to fulfill your vision.
Finding the balance between these two paradigms is a common challenge every startup must address. It impacts both internal operations while dictating a roadmap, type of execution, and, eventually, its budget. On the other hand, it solidifies an external interface with customers, partners, and investors.
A cyber security company (client of mine) had a dilemma: continue selling its existing product or start developing their next “blockbuster.” The team addressed their predicament by defining which capabilities drove the greatest leverage upon the company’s value proposition. It turned out that the existing product, which was targeted toward government agencies, maxed its performance boundaries and had relatively low scale-up potential. On the other hand, there was a definite “shining star” that could open up new possibilities in the medical devices market.
Once the decision was made to develop the company’s next hoped-for blockbuster, the term “MVP” popped up. I cannot overstate the importance of MVP across all stages and cycles of a growing startup. Basically, it’s a never-ending story. From the initial decision to select one solution over the other to develop an upgraded product version until realizing that a new product should be re-invented, the MVP is always impacting the team’s thinking.
That MVP should bridge the gap between Keith Richards / Mick Jagger and John Lennon / Paul McCartney. In some cases, it’s more art rather than science.
