So you have your value proposition, you have tested your ideas with your ideal customer, you are all excited and raring to go, do you start hiring to build your product? Do you quit your full time job to focus on your side hustle? No you don’t. What is critical here is that you start bringing in cash from your customers to validate the product need while minimizing your own personal cash outlay.
Only after you have validated product market fit should you consider the massive outlay of cash like hiring or outsourcing your work. Today we will provide you with some ideas towards building a minimally viable product (MVP) which should allow you to test whether your customers truly love your product and are willing to pay for it.
What is an MVP?
An MVP is the simplest version of your product that can be released to early customers. It includes only the core features necessary to solve the primary problem for your target audience. The goal is to quickly and efficiently test your business idea with real users, gather feedback, and iterate based on what you learn.
How do you build a MVP?
Now that we have seen the benefits of a MVP, the million dollar question is how do we start building it? To help you kickstart that process, we have 4 MVP archetypes which you can adopt.
Landing Page MVP: Build a single landing page to gather customer interest and ensure you have loyal fans before you launch
Explainer Video MVP: Record an explainer video which showcase your product features and launch it to gain feedback. Dropbox famously did this before they launched.
Wizard of Oz MVP: Market a digitized / automated / AI product but fulfil the functions manually until you have validated the demand
Let’s do a quick deep dive into each of these models and a roadmap to implement each of them. To better illustrate each archetype, we will continue with the previous example of an investment banker wanting to start a consulting arm to help founders raise their next round of funding and improve their valuation.
Landing Page MVP
We could create a single landing page via WordPress / Squarespace etc which describes our product offering of helping founders raise funds, how this would change founder’s life with a call to action to schedule a call or collect email addresses as a pre-order mail list. The response rate and the emails collected will provide an indication of interest which we can use to consider whether this side hustle is worth doubling down on.
Steps:
- Design the Page: Use tools like Unbounce, Leadpages, or Wix to create a visually appealing landing page.
- Highlight Value Proposition: Clearly state what problem your product solves and its key features.
- Add CTA: Include a signup form, email capture, or pre-order button.
- Drive Traffic: Use social media, email marketing, and online ads to drive traffic to your landing page.
- Analyze Results: Track user signups and engagement to gauge interest.
Explainer Video MVP
I personally find the explainer video MVP to take a lot of effort for uncertain results, but given the rise of IG reels and TikTok, there might be value in creating short form videos especially if your ideal client consumes information via short form videos.
In this MVP, we will record a video explaining our value proposition, with a call to action of getting in touch (eg. via Calendly) to schedule a call to find out more and we can gather feedback from the video comments section.
Steps:
- Script the Video: Write a concise script that explains your product’s value.
- Create the Video: Use tools like Animoto, Biteable, or even your smartphone to produce the video.
- Distribute the Video: Share it on your website, social media, and through email campaigns.
- Gather Feedback: Ask viewers for their opinions and suggestions.
Wizard of Oz MVP
The Wizard of Oz MVP is a particularly good MVP model but it assumes that you are able to fulfil the service by yourself in the interim period. For most Henrys who are working 100 hour weeks at a high powered job, this might not be the most suitable in the early stage while you are validating demand.
For this MVP, we might suggest that we have a team of consultants or that our advise is based on deep contacts in the fundraising industry which is also powered by AI etc. Even though on the backend it is just you working on it, the different features can serve to attract different crowds and help you validate consumer pain points.
Steps:
- Set Up the Front End: Create a professional-looking website or app interface.
- Manually provide the service promised: Handle processes manually behind the scenes, such as manually doing website crawls, cold calling funders etc.
- Collect User Data: Monitor how users interact with your product and gather their feedback.
- Refine Processes: Use insights to improve and eventually automate the backend.
Conclusion
Building an MVP is a crucial step in validating your side hustle and ensuring you’re on the right track before fully committing resources. By creating a low cost MVP, you can gather valuable insights and move closer to product market fit while iterating on your product to integrate user feedback.
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