MVP era is over. Here's what's coming next

Intentionally, MVP's focus and purpose were limited. But since then thousands of startups used MVP's not to just validate and learn, but also describe their product state, get funding, and grow into something bigger.

MVP tries to be too many things at once, yet is not able to do at least one thing really well. Also, it's confusing since different people put different meanings into the word.

Minimum viable product was considered to be the cheapest way to validate a product idea for a long time. Not anymore. Now, a lot of people assume that an MVP has to be this all living and breathing product. Live and well on the market.

How long would it take you to develop such an MVP? I bet it's more than six months or even a year. Doesn't sound so minimum anymore, right?

MVP became too big of an effort for testing ideas and at the same time too small for a real product. More and more companies are moving away from an MVP mindset towards a better-defined process.

From Minimum Viable Product to Idea → Prototype → Beta → Product

Cost: low ⬇️ Effort: low ⬇️

Well defined understanding of a problem is already half of the solution. That's why it's really important to start with challenges, not ideas. It also reduces the risk to build something no one wants.

Obvious problems require inobvious solutions. If it's obvious, the chances, that it has been already done, are quite high. In my opinion, the best ideas come for problems you're frustrated with yourself. There's no need to be an expert on the topic, which can also be your competitive advantage. Being too deep in the industry you're solving for might bias your opinion and hide the elephant in the room. Unless you're capable of thinking outside of the box while being in it.

Solving a problem that you've experienced can make you an expert in this particular challenge. It also brings you much closer to the users and their struggle than people who know of the challenge, yet haven't experienced it themselves.

According to the WeTransfer Ideas Report, 72% of people end up using less than half of their ideas. Imagine if the conversion was much higher. Would the world be a better place or would there just be many more failures which we could all learn from?

Prototype

Cost: low ⬇️ Effort: low ⬇️

A prototype is the best and cheapest way to validate an idea. If we are talking about digital products, prototypes don't have to be programmed; a sequence of screens showing the purpose of the product is enough. The main purpose of this stage is to learn as much as possible, define a minimum viable audience, and do enough iterations until the unique selling proposition is clear and valuable enough.

Palm Pilot, on the picture above, is one of the first pocket computers. Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, cut out a wooden prototype of his solution, put a paper with an interface sketch on top, and would walk around pretending it was real. It helped him experiment with the computer size and also figure out its functions. 55% of time Jeff would pick it up to plan a meeting, 25% — for searching contacts, 15% — for a to-do list, and 5% — for taking notes. This example of prototyping is one of the favorite ones of Alberto Savoia, and it shows how useful it is to practice on "Pinocchio's" before committing to developing a real product.

When it comes to digital prototypes, there are so many ways of approaching it. Personally, I use Figma, Marvel App, and Principle to create high-fidelity prototypes that feel like real products. It helps to get more rational feedback from the users as they don't need to imagine how it would actually work and look in real life. If you're not a designer or developer either, no-code tools are your go-to. Love using Spreadsheets? Even better: now, you can convert them to websites (which you can then test) without writing any code.

Beta

Cost: medium ➡️ Effort: medium ➡️

Once it's clear what is worth developing, it's time to get our hands dirty with bringing the prototype to life. From the customer feedback, it will be safe to assume that we know the features, that have to be built. As they are the most crucial to the success of the product and customer satisfaction. Everything else can go into the backlog.

At this stage, it might be too early to release the product to the world just yet. However, a landing page that would tease the product and collect email addresses for early access could help organically grow both interest and audience. Giving beta access to up to one thousand users can help gather more feedback, polish the interface, and prepare for the big day.

Why is it a good idea to invite up to one thousand users? Inviting too many people at this point might lead to confusing feedback that might dilute the initial scope and idea. If you can make one thousand people happy, it's already a success. It will be your user base that can help you save on marketing as well.

Private Facebook communities can serve well for that purpose: a comment with feedback feels less of an effort for the user than writing an email. Also, you'll have a better chance of understanding your target audience and getting to know them. If your product involves a community of any kind, then it would already be in its nature to start connecting people with each other using tools they already know.

If you're working on an iOS app, TestFlight is an amazing tool when it comes to testing beta products. It's also a way to test alternative versions of apps you've already released. For example, Twitter has been testing a version of its app where they experiment with visualizing threads and layered conversations better. This way companies like Twitter can get feedback from a portion of its users before rolling out their updated products to hundreds of millions of people.

Product

Cost: medium-high ↗️ Effort: medium-high ↗️

Companies like Figma, Notion, Superhuman, spend a lot more time on products before they go public. Not because of perfectionism or fear of failure. The most attractive markets already have big players and high competition. Entering such a market with a raw product would mean shooting yourself in the foot. If we want to get a piece of the pie, we have to be at least as good as other companies. It doesn't mean we have to copy them: our product should do a better job at solving similar problems our competition is solving.

The first impression of a product is very important. It takes nothing for the user to close a tab, forget about your solution and keep using something they already know. If an additional couple of months of development can help create a better first impression, it's worth it.

It might be hard to keep the scope as limited as possible, as it's tempting to add more and more features, eventually growing into feature creep. Fast turnaround multiplied by good quality moving in the right direction is what every company should strive for. Or at least try to.

MVP served its goal. In the last decade, we've seen hundreds of products being released, yet a few stuck around. Popularisation of no-code tools and more accessible tech education will lead to even more products in the next decade. If we want to increase our chances of success, we have to use better-defined processes for solving problems and serving user needs.