A Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is the idea that for any product there is a minimal version of it that is viable, or sellable, as a product.
I’ve explored the idea before when it comes to Cue, and my focus was on figuring out what needs to be in the product in order to charge for it.
And it’s important to figure that out.
But there is something else I need to figure out first.
And that is: what is Cue’s Minimum Validatable Product?
The idea here is that you need something that can be validated as an idea (and execution of that idea) that will actually work.
It’s smaller than a minimum viable product, because what you’re going for is something that works and is useful enough that people will actually play with it.
They don’t need to use it regularly, but they do need to be interested enough to try it out.
If they use it, that’s feedback. If they don’t, that is too.
It’s enough to go do the non-scalable work of getting people you know to try it out, and then asking why they used it, why they didn’t, and what they would like to see changed.
For that, the cost of entry is a little lower. Things like time zones, keyboard support, payments, and responsive design just aren’t as important.
But the core experience needs to be there: daily planning and ticklers. Some of the other parts of the vision necessarily need to come later, so they can be shaped by feedback, and only after the core experience has been validated.
So it’s time for me to refocus on those experiences, while also putting the necessary plumbing in place so that I can do that validation (gotta be able to log in, for example).
And with that, I’m back to work.