I'm a non-technical founder. I didn't study computer science or learn to code growing up. My career path into being the CEO of 2 tech companies came from domain expertise in the industries I was trying to solve problems for, and the rest I’ve had to learn along the way.
I remember the first time I heard ‘MVP’ in a meeting, back in 2011 after I’d finished building an ‘app’ for WINK models. Cool, I thought, I know what this is. I've dated football players, I’ve repped ex athletes as an agent. I’m all over this lingo.
Wrong. MVP in the tech world does not mean Most Valuable Player. It's the minimum viable product.
Something I clearly should have learnt before I built a tech product the first time…!
Lets just say the process of building the WINK app was painful, expensive and fraught with problems. The project blew out by about 9 months, and ended up being about 10 times over budget (!!!!). And yes, some of that was because I used the wrong development agency, and didn't know what a product manager was. But it was also because I had no f*cking idea about the concept of an MVP.
An MVP is the minimum viable product is a version of a product with just enough features to be usable by early customers who can then provide feedback for future product development. It's basically the absolute bare bones of a product (website, app, etc) that you can build to test and see if it works before you go adding all the fancy features, bells and whistles.
That is clearly not what I did with the WINK App. I literally built everything - calendars, scheduling, photo uploads (and edits and comp card creation…), superannuation payments, bank payments, email reminders, SMS alerts, multi day mutli shift campaigns with different pay rates., the ability to search by what sort of drivers licence someone has (WHY??). This huge bigger than ben hurr system that is AMAZING now.. But was way more than we needed, cost far more than made sense, and was a huge risk to implement..
So now, I’m all about the MVP. With my new baby, #gifted, we’ve been completely brutal about what makes the cut in the MVP. This time around I’m fortunate enough to have an incredible product manager who is much better at evaluating features and their worth than I ever will be, and alongside our team of star in house developers, we’re working with Vool.Studio who are aligned on our vision to make a great product (and not just here to charge us lots and lots of money which can be the case with lots of design & dev agencies). I can't recommend them highly enough.
Someone once said “If you’re not embarrassed by your MVP, you spent too much time on it before launching”. So yes, it really should be a bit cringe worthy. There might be parts that are still manual, or sections that are ‘coming soon!’ despite your burning desire as a founder to have it all there on launch. But if you learn anything from my mistakes, it's that you’ll have a much better idea of what should ‘Come soon’ if you take the MVP approach.
So that’s why I think the minimum viable product is the most valuable player in the development process. It deserves the fancy trophies, the big blingy ring, the adoring fans. It’ll make your product better, it will make your customers happier, and will save you tens of thousands of dollars in costs, and time, and energy. So to really drum home the analogy, the MVP is the one player you absolutely need to have on your founding team.
