[Image Credit – 360 Degree Technosoft]
When you strike up with a good idea and a decision to execute it at any cost, you want to give your best shot at it. You invest your maximum effort and entire savings to make your idea work. However, that’s where you go a little wrong. Being a startup is difficult, you are short on the funds, manpower, and carry lots of risks. You cannot ditch the risk but what you can do is take a calculated risk to last long and become successful.
In the app development field, we can call this calculated risk as MVP. MVP stands for a minimum viable product. Let’s understand this terminology in layman words:
Minimum means the least, the most simple or poor, or something you cannot do without. Viable means dream product, or your vision, something useful, interesting, and what everyone desires. A minimum viable product is a compromise where you meet somewhere midway. MVP app is an app where you decide the minimum set of features that solves a definite problem of the users. There is nothing more and nothing less.
What motivates you is the popularity and the success stories of mobile apps like Instagram and Uber. What you remember is how they entered smoothly and accumulated the bulk of users and now at a stage where people are hooked with these apps and can’t imagine their devices without these apps. Well, there is only a limited set of people who remember the initiation of these apps. These apps were in the primitive stage and gradually struggled their way to the top-ranking mobile apps in the app charts.
Plenty of startups fail on the grounds of improper scaling. Before they reach an established stage, they run out of money and have to wind up eventually. These are why instead of a startup, the concept of lean startup is becoming very popular these days. It focuses on curtailing the app development phases and timing and make changes and additions based on early customers for cost control and risk reduction.
MVP app for startups is the primitive step of the long journey which is to be taken with extreme care and caution. There are plenty of apps who have passed through this same phase before they became popular.
Let’s check and learn something from them.
1) Airbnb
You don’t take time out to come up with the great ideas, they just pop at random times. Something similar happened with Airbnb. Two guys ran out of funds to pay the rent of their house. They mutually agreed to offer their home as a cheap place to stay for the people arriving at their hometown conference. They launched a simple website with pictures of their home and that’s it. This was their MVP. Gradually they realized it was something people were looking for and is in the hot demand and the app that we see “Airbnb” has a huge user base and offers different accommodation options across the globe with different experiences like cycling, food tours, VIP parties and so on.
2) FourSquare
In early 2010, this was the app that took the mobile app development to a whole new level with a location-based feature. The foursquare app that we see and use now is not even close to the one back in the date. It was an MVP with just 1 core feature of check-in and badges for completing various activities. Now, it has advanced features like city guides, stickers, and recommendations.
So, these two started the idea on a small scale and made it big. These were the real-life examples to prove MVP is an appropriate model for the startups.
Let’s explore some of the benefits of choosing MVP for your baby project.
1) Early Testing
Not every business has the potential to be big and successful. You can’t be sure until you test it. An MVP is a great way to put your business idea for early testing. Also, mobile app development is not just about the coding, it is also about bringing a considerate revenue to its owners. Whether the app has that ability or not can be given a test drive with a minimum viable product.
2) Cost Cutting
Bigger the project, higher the investment and resources. Choose any one problem of the users and provide them with a specific solution and see if users are buying it. This will ask for lesser investment and limited resources. Also, if the MVP works, it will provide funding to launch the next update without having to exhaust the savings.
3) Gather External Funding
MVP is the baby step for a long term plan. To expand the app idea, you might opt to get funding from the external resources. MVP would make it easy. There is a vision and an app is a way to achieve that. This way investors can see the live version of the idea and its potential and convince them to invest in it.
4) Polished Product
If you launch a full-fledged app that is feature-rich, there are chances of it being buggy and clumsy. If you launch the primary version at first, you get a chance to make improvements, add new things, and make your product better. You can also get reviews from users and make changes accordingly for generating a loyal user base.
5) Time Saver
You invest months in developing your dream app and when you deploy it, nothing great happens. Well, this is just a possibility you should think of. All the time you put in is good for nothing. When it is an MVP app, you don’t need to invest that much time and if it doesn’t work out, you can put your time into that will yield output.
6) Revenue Generation
The early adopters of the app will become loyal users and if they like what they use they might be willing to pay for it. Now, as this is at the starting phase, you cannot expect the bulk of revenue. But, a channel for generating revenue can be started from the early adopters.
Wrapping Up
If you are not so sure whether your idea needs to be an MVP app or a feature-filled app, consult a mobile app development company. Discuss your idea with them and let the experts guide you in the right direction.
