1. Minimum Viable Product
How to build an MVP
@JoeKratzat
Talk about a client that didn’t understand MVP and it ended up costing them. I want to help save you time and money and waste
Brag about software experience
Talk about how hard building software can be

2. Outline Who I am, what I do What is an MVP Why MVP? How to MVP
Should you build it?
What other options are there?
Sell your idea!
Scale isn’t your concern...yet

3. Joe Kratzat Working at Oracle Co-owner of Foxio, a software company.
In business for 5 years
Built many MVPs
We cost money!

4. MVP
A minimum viable product has just those core features necessary to release the product, and no more
MVP has core features, no more

5. MVP
A minimum viable product has just those core features necessary to release the product, and
no more
This don’t mean make your MVP poorly, but rather focus on key features that set your product part
Maybe a better word is simple. A simple product
Core features like “secret sauce” not login, fancy tech or scale
Example MVP let’s build a to move people from point A to point B

6. MVP core features no more
MVP for mobility (core feature) would be a skateboard, work up to a car.
Snapchat - The first iteration of the product was a screen where tapping anywhere took a picture that you could then send to someone else
No video, no filters, no social networking, no commenting and no storage
A skateboard is a product. It’s faster than walking, it’s simple.
Before we get to car we need to see if people want skateboard

7. Why have an MVP?
Be able to test a product hypothesis with minimal resources
Accelerate learning
Reduce wasted engineering hours
Get the product to early customers as soon as possible
The whole point is to make a product users will pay for.
Focused MVP allows building without waste.

8. Gall’s Law Simple then iterate
all complex systems that work evolved from simpler systems that worked. If you want to build a complex system that works, build a simpler system first, and then improve it over time.
Simple then iterate
Gall’s Law is why Prototyping and Iteration work so well as a value-creation methodology. Instead of building a complex system from scratch, building a prototype is much easier—it’s the simplest possible creation that will help you verify that your system meets critical selection tests.
Iteration and Incremental Augmentation, over time, will produce extremely complex systems that actually work, even as the environment changes.
Do it simply, gather feedback the iterate

9. How much does an app cost?
Let’s play out how much a simple app might cost.
How_much_to_make_an_app.com
Asks questions to figure out price

10. How much does an app cost?
iOS and/or Android?
Do users login?
Do they have profiles?
How are you going to make money?
Is there a rating system?
Does your app save information in a central database?
How nice should it look? Do we care about User Experience?
Do you need a custom icon?
The site asks these simple questions to give a rough costs breakdown.
Both ios and android
Simple only login
Create a profile
Not sure how it will make money
Database … yes
It should look stock (not super nice)
Have a custom logo
Guess the cost

11. How much does an app cost?
This only includes boilerplate features. We haven’t even begun to build your customer software
My point, custom built products cost money. Without focus, the costs go up.
So, should you build it?

12. MVP: Should you build it?
NOT YET
Building things costs time and money
Building extras wastes money
Do you have users yet?
Will they pay?
How are you generating leads?
If you have to, be focused
Should you custom build it? Not yet, you have no users!
In some cases: You shouldn’t automate things you can’t manually do
Put ads up for your product to grow potential users (think kickstarter)
If you have to build small as possible but complete (think skateboard). Be focused

13. What other options are there?
Do things manually
Manually your 10 customers a daily update
Manually mark users as paid or update their subscription information
Manually take action on an event (megacon event system).
Manually marking orders as paid, shipped, received.
Manually update things in the database, or have a simple admin section to manually do certain things.
If done right users won’t know, or care.

14. What other options are there?
3rd party tools
Use existing boiler plate before you custom build.
You don’t have to maintain things you don’t build. Very much like renting vs buying a house
Just some examples:
Auth0 for user login - they handle facebook, google all other logins
Fancy Hands - hire people for 20 min chunks for $5 (amazon’s Mechanical Turk)
IFTTT - Automate things without programing
Zapier - Automate other things (more businessy) without programing

15. Example
We want to build a site that allows users to make reservations online.
User logins in, is taken to a static website hosted in amazon (mobile optimized)
User clicks a button setup dinner reservation, which contacts your fancy hands to have them call restaurant and make reservation,
then using Zapier to send a text to the user via twilio with a confirmation
Strange example, but using 3rd party tools like this you can actually build real businesses (MVP).
Building restaurant integrations in software would take a lot of time
This kind of option is much more non-tech friendly. Some coding but not as much as you think.

16. MVP: Sell your idea Not building allows you to sell your idea.
Not to VCs to users/customers. They need to get to stage 4
Stage 1: marketing site
Stage 2: get users s
Stage 3: they use your MVP
Stage 4: they give you money

17. Start with simple marketing site
MVP: Sell your idea
Start with simple marketing site
Get users signing up (3rd party tool: LaunchRock)
Build hyper focused MVP (nothing more)
Demo the product as much as possible!
Get feedback
Start out by having awesome marketing site.
Start collecting user info before you even launch. Give insight into if idea is worth pursuing quickly
If you have to have a working product to sell make it hyper focused or demo only until you generate users
Example: demo at 5 across at Awesome inc
Figure out what users don’t like and fix (user retention)
lots of listening/watching/reviewing analytics/etc. without leading the the user by asking questions like “Did you think it was easy to navigate?”
informal, cheaper, Marketing research

18. Programmers worrying about whether their architecture will Web Scale is like buying a lottery coupon and fretting about which yacht to buy. - DHH (creator of Ruby on Rails)
Putting the cart before the horse

19. MVP core features no more
A minimum viable product has just those core features necessary to release the product, and no more

20. Recap What is an MVP Why MVP? How to MVP Should you build it?
What other options are there?
Sell your idea!
Lastly profit