This is the second lesson in the series: How Non-Technical Founders Can Bring a Product to Market.
OVERVIEW: An experiment not a product.
Transcript:
Welcome back! In my previous lesson I mentioned that the primary reasons MVPs fail are because founders both technical and non-technical don't understand who their early adopter is or the value proposition they are offering to early adopters. Instead, they jump into building a product, investing a lot of time and resources.
Unfortunately, the results of prioritizing building over validating an idea can result in little to no traction. This can be demotivating for most, and eventually lead to burn out.
Given that a startup is dealing with a lot of uncertainty and has limited resource, I advise startup founders to start with a concierge MVP.
A concierge MVP is an experience, not a product.
Instead of jumping into building a product you take the time to create a hypothesis of who your early adopters might be. Next you create a hypothesis of what value proposition would appeal to the early adopters.
Once both the hypotheses are set, you then proceed to create an experience that will help you test both of these hypotheses. Even if your ultimate goal is to create a technology or physical product you should start by crafting an experience. Then as you approach early adopters and receive feedback, you can focus your efforts on what needs to actually be built.
For example, I created a concierge MVP for my startup Femgineer last December. The experience I provided, was a 1-page ad on my site about teaching an 8-week online course on product development. It was just an outline. I didn't actually create any curriculum.
As people would visit the site they would request for info, ask questions, and provide me with feedback regarding the ad. As they did, I tweaked the ad, which was essentially the value proposition.
As I engaged with visitors and listened to their feedback, I also learned who my early adopters were and who they weren't. This ultimately lead me understand what I needed to provide to those who were my early adopters.
Once I had enough pre-sales of the course, I started to develop the curriculum, the product!
I took the same approach for my other startup BizeeBee, which is a CRM solution for fitness studios. Before building the CRM solution, I put a 1-page ad listing the product's benefits. For those who were interested in trying out the product, I would request them to enter an email address. Then I'd reach out to those who had given me their email address. I was able to have a series of conversations with them to understand what they were looking for, and once again receive feedback that I could use to then proceed build a product.
Note that it doesn't matter what type of product you are creating. The purpose of the concierge MVP is to give people a taste and collect feedback from them so that you can go on to create an actual product.
There are 2 other benefits to doing a concierge MVP:
1. You establish a very close connection with your early adopters, making it easier for them to open up to you and provide you with feedback.
2. Reduce your iteration cycle. You can quickly change the value proposition, or the type of early adopter you are going after, in your messaging if you find that what you initially put out isn't attracting anyone.
In the next lecture, I will provide more reasoning as to why it's important for both technical and non-technical founders to start with a Concierge MVP.
