1. Minimum Viable Product
CEED Go-To-Market - day 2
November 5th 2012
Tilen Travnik, D·Labs

2. @tilentravnik
• Dad, husband, geek
• 10+ years of internet product
development
• CSM, CSPO, MBA (not to be
taken seriously)
• Assembled and ran 10+
product teams
• Clients: Telekom, Marand,
Studio Moderna, Zemanta ...

3. Books

4. Spaghetti Challenge 1

5. A bit of theory

6. Definitions
• The Minimum Viable Product or MVP is a
strategy used for fast and quantitative market
testing of a product or product feature
• The minimum viable product is that version of
a new product which allows a team to collect
the maximum amount of validated learning
about customers with the least effort.
Wikipedia & Lean Startup

7. More definitions
• MVP is a tactic for reducing wasted
engineering hours.
• MVP is a strategy to put the product into the
hands of earlyvangelists asap.

8. Why MVP often fails
• You haven’t figured out how to provide a
simple value proposition that differentiates
your product from your competition.
• You haven’t identified who the early adopter
for the product is.
• You have statistically calculated the correct
feature set and did not use judgement.
femgineer.com/2012/10/2-reasons-mvps-fail/ & Lean Startup

9. Unjustified Fears
• Legal issues, patents (get a professional
oppinion)
• Branding (big brands launching ebarrasing
products)
• Tefth of ideas
• Fear of false negative

10. Data Sources for MVP
• Sell a wireframe
• Sell an idea
• Watch people use competition
• Usage data
• Helpdesk
• Whatever you do ... Get outside the building!

11. MVP Grooming
• Burn-rate
• Pareto principle
• MoSCoW
• Prediction Markets

12. Do not add features that will
only get one more customer!
Steve Blank, Startup Owner’s Manual

13. Quality of MVP
• If you do not know who the customer is, you
can not know what quality is (Ries).
• There is a difference between being sloppy
and not having features.
• Good UX is a priority.

14. Set a release date for
your MVP before starting.

15. Developing the MVP is the only time
when you will have total influence
over your product.
After you launch the MVP, your
customers will inform the
development.
Steve Blank, Startup Owner’s Manual

16. MVP Approaches
Case discussions

17. The Video MVP
• Only make a sexy video (or other add), no
product.
• Alow users to sign into a waiting list.
• Cool case: Dropbox

18. The Concierge MVP
• You make nothing, not even an add.
• You literally search for customers offline.
• You become a service for your first customer.
• Cool case: www.foodonthetable.com

19. Google's G+ MVP
• Sometimes MVP needs to be a mature
product.
• Google can match Facebook in features, but
can not steal user engagement.
• Slightly less cool case: Google +

20. Some more cases
• House builders MVP
• Spinout MVP
• ...

21. Spaghetti Challenge 2

22. MVP Workshop

23. Hand in your homework

24. Pitch your MVP in one
minute

25. Organize into groups

26. Re-write your feature list
(20 minutes)

27. Userstory workshop

28. MoSCoW

29. Userstory workshop

30. Crowdfunding of MVPs