© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Lean Startup Machine DC Shardul Mehta May 31, 2014

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Hi. I’m Shardul. VP Product Management and Product Marketing

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. What’s an MVP? 2

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Not a buzzword 3 Lazy thinking You don’t sound cool It doesn’t make you “lean”

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. What is not an MVP Version 1.0 Beta “First market launch” Soft launch “First customer ship” Smallest collection of features you can deliver A half-baked product A buggy product A landing page Smoke test Mockup Prototype 4

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Not about product delivery 5 Say wha…? But it is about delivering product

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. It’s about validated learning 6 So customers’ problems are squarely at the center, not our solution

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Reality check Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about solving their problems. 7

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Fundamental truth Your solution, while interesting, is irrelevant. 8

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Whoa… mind bender? 9

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Not really Think problems – Not solutions Think learning – Test your assumptions Think hypotheses – Be deliberate about learning 10

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. So what is an MVP? 11

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. That version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. - Eric Ries 12

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. MVP, despite its name, is not about creating minimal products… In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics or analytics. The definition’s use of the words maximum and minimum means it is decidedly not formulaic. It requires judgment to figure out, for any given context, what MVP makes sense. - Eric Ries 13

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. MVP breakdown 14 Product Useful Deliver real value Tangible ✗ Landing page ✗ Smoke test ✗ Mockup, prototype Viable Solve real world problems What will customers “pay” for? ✗ Half-baked, buggy ✗ Smallest collection of features ✗ Don’t ship s**t! Minimum The absolute necessary features needed day 1 to solve customers’ top problems ✗ Version 1.0 ✗ “Beta” ✗ First market launch

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Key concepts Maximum amount of validated learning Be systematic about identifying riskiest assumptions Formulate testable falsifiable hypotheses Use MVP to prove or disprove your hypotheses 15

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Concierge MVP “Manual” version of your ultimate solution Short-term solution to gain critical insights on your customers – They’re needs  what do they actually care about? – They’re actual behaviors  what will they actually pay for? Short-term solution to gain critical insights on your solution – Most important elements your solution will need (features) – Most important benefits your solution provides (value proposition) – In terms of importance to the customer (not you) 16

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Online Payment Forms 17 Concierge MVP Manually-coded HTML forms to take payments Almost 100 built! Most common types of payment forms desired What’s most important to them in a form Frequency of changes Reporting Potential early adopters! Learnings MVP Code put through rigorous UAT Sales preparedness Learnings Buyer vs. User personas Sales model Pricing Value prop & competitive positioning Generate revenue $0.5 million payments Target customer segment Messaging, positioning Usage New problems/opportu nities to validate Timeframe: 4 months

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Reconciliation 18 Concierge MVP E-guides Excel macros Remote & in-person training Deep insights into problems Deep insights into current workflows Deep insights into data Learnings Demo Specific hypotheses Data validation via prototype Customer interviews with mockup Learnings Types of users UX design Data algorithm Early clients MVP Specific hypotheses Validation from early clients Test other aspects of the product strategy Roadmap for GA product

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Q&A

© Shardul Mehta This work by Shardul Mehta is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. Important Stuff! 20 This material is licensed to you under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. View the license at View the license at