I highly recommend this take on how to build a successful MVP in the service of achieving your mission. Available as a podcast here.
It’s commonly believed that the top two reasons startups fail is because “there’s no market need” and “they ran out of cash.” These reasons are mental gymnastics to avoid a plain truth: startups fail when they don’t build a simple solution to a problem many people have.
Many startups fall into the trap of building toward a “mission” rather than a minimum viable product (MVP).
Your mission is your baby. It’s the North Star that got your people on board and inspires them daily. However, solely focusing on your mission is the same as being unfocused.
Bridging the gap between a big, ambitious dream and the reality of what you can accomplish with limited resources isn’t fun because it requires saying no (for now) to a lot of things that have you excited.
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During the crucial mission-to-MVP planning phase, the objective of a startup is to solve one job for one customer group such that customers consistently use your minimally viable product for an important part of their work or personal lives. In other words, you prove retention. It’s really all that matters at the earliest stage.
Company missions tend to fall to the extremes: either the mission isn’t ambitious enough or it’s too ambitious to build with your current resources.
It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product. Doing so is usually a long way away from realizing your full mission statement, and that’s okay.
An MVP tree is a way of methodically breaking your mission into smaller components and formulating MVP candidates that may get your company sustainable and scalable. Using the tree structure outlined below increases the chance that your first step forward (the MVP) will be successful with a small team, while taking you in the right direction to achieve your company’s big mission. An MVP tree has three main components—customer archetypes, jobs to be done, and execution—and we’ll walk you through them step by step…
Shawn Carolan, The MVP Tree – Guest Post at SteveBlank.com