The document provides tips and tricks on building a minimal viable product (MVP) from lean startup practitioners. It defines an MVP as having the minimum feature that will encourage users to engage with the solution and test the idea with minimal resources. The document emphasizes testing ideas through landing pages, prototypes, customer interviews and other low-cost methods before investing significant time and money into full product development. It outlines 5 steps for transitioning from waterfall development to building an MVP, including identifying key features, removing non-essential elements, using iterative development and being prepared to fail often to learn quickly.

1. Tips & Tricks on
How to Build MVP
From Lean Startup Practitioners

2. What is
covered?
⊙What is MVP with real-life examples?
⊙Why do you need MVP?
⊙How to recognize if what you are
building is MVP or a full product?
⊙What is Minimal Quality for a Minimal
Product?
⊙Tips and Tricks of how to test idea
⊙5 steps to go from waterfall to MVP

3. MVP

4. What is MVP
Minimal
What is essence
of your idea?
Think of 1 (one,
uno, ein) feature
that will make
users anticipate
to use your
product or
service
Viable
Does the idea
make sense for
people /
business? The
math must make
sense
Product
Here’s where the
tricky part comes
in. Is what you
have really a
product or
service that you
can show to your
target audience.
Or will you turn
them away by
it’s low-quality?
These 3 magic
letters M V P
stand for
Minimal Viable
Product

5. Minimal
What is essence of your idea?

6. MVP paradox
Pain that solution addresses
>
Pain to use solution

7. Viable
Does the idea make sense for customers? And...
The math must make sense.

8. Take an abstract food ordering platform.
UK market in 2014 was estimated to ~40 000 fast food
restaurants, ~20 bln total revenue.
Startup is ambitiously aiming at 20% of the market.
Monthly payments for
registered companies
Creates entry barrier for new
businesses (have to become
profitable first) vs secured
MRR (monthly recurring
revenue)
Possible
business
models
Transaction fee for each
order made on website
Win-win scenario,
customers do not lose
money.

9. Example of basic
calculations to
estimate viable
idea
You don’t need a
university degree to
figure out math here.
Probably your mid-
school children are able
to do this
User base 40 000 *0,2=8000
User revenue 20 000 *0,2= £4 000 mln
ARR (monthly subscription £5
per company)
8000 * £5 *12 = £480 000
Average transactions volume
per year (assuming transaction
cost ~ £40)
£20 000 mln/£40 = 500 mln
% Transactions volume online
(guts feeling)
25%
Volume of online transactions
in targeted fast-food market
500 mln* 25% = 125 mln
Cost of transaction to get to
£480 000 ARR (as for
subscriptions)
~4 cents

10. Product
Product or service in MVP is something
your users can use to solve their TOP pain

11. Did early PayPal provide a possibility
to pay with its currency online?
No, they started with possibility to send
money via email as this was the most
widespread way of communication in late
90’s.
They integrated into Ebay after they got over
~0.5 mln of users and grew user base to ~4
mln in 6 months. But it wasn’t a part of their
MVP. If they had not got the traction using
simple email service, they would not have had
that credibility for online consumers at Ebay.

12. Dropbox MVP
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/drop
box-minimal-viable-product/
“Extremely easy to use, flawless files
sharing experience”
Business model: freemium/premium
Did guys have product to test? Yes
Was it stable or reliable? No
How did they get the funding? They tested
MVP and got fantastic traction after
publishing video with humorous inserts on
how Dropbox works.

13. Yipit
Get rid of everything, except your idea.
Guys at Yipit spent first 9 months
analyzing manually daily deals and
creating tailor-made digests for each one
of their users.
Result: raised $1.3 million in 3 months.
Leaders in their segment.

14. Why do you
need MVP?
⊙Test the demand: what features users
resonate with?
⊙Test the price: what users are ready to
pay for?
⊙Test marketing: will customers be
able to find your business?
⊙Test audience: do you reach the right
audience?
⊙… and find answers to many more questions that
you might have
?

15. You need MVP
because it will cost you less time & money
and
because your investors want to see the real traction

16. How to
recognize if
what you are
building is
MVP or a full
product?
Product
or
MVP?
Does it contain
the feature
that you
assume will
drive the early-
adopters to
your product?
Can you learn
about user
experience
from it?
Yes? Looks
like you’re
building MVP
:)
Does it contain
extra features
to what your
early-adopters
asked for?
Do you know
what you need
to release
product to
mass market?
Yes? Beware!
Full-stack
product
launch!

17. What is
Minimal
Quality for a
Minimal
Product?
OK, I want to build
MVP.
But how can I be
sure that it is not
low quality that
drives people away?
Now go back
to MVP
Paradox.
People will
use your
solution only
if it solves
their PAIN
#1.
If they don’t,
then you:
a. targeted
wrong people
b. targeted
wrong pain

18. Test MVP
MVP will not build you business
in 2 months.
MVP will help you to learn what you need
to build your business in 2 months.
There are multiple ways to test your idea
whether you are a developer, or not.

19. Do “comprehension
test”
Explain your idea in 5
minutes to your friends,
relatives, strangers in a
pub. Ask them to retell
you the idea in their own
words.
Result => Make sure that
you are able to explain
your idea to people.
First steps to
testing idea
Create very simple
landing page
Landing page is not a
must, however it comes
handy for many types of
testing.
Consider using tools for
creating landing pages.
Even with free options
you can get a lot, and not
spend time on building
the whole website.

20. 5 Tips and
Tricks to test
idea
if you’re
Not a Developer

21. Test the
demand with
Google Adwords
Create a simple landing
page and test what users
are interested in. Run
A/B or multi-variations
tests to see what words
work best for your UVP.
Pretotype
There are a few tools that
you can use to prototype
like Balsamiq, inVision,
Proto.io.
Prototype
Use cheap platforms like
fiverr.com to find
someone to get dynamic
prototype in place.
Try to pitch your
idea using
crowdshouting
Thunderclap is fantastic,
simple yet extremely
powerful tool to get the
message to the people.
See how many people
support your idea so
much that they are
ready to share it via
their social networks.
Do the interviews
Go out, shut up and
listen to your potential
users. When you’ll know
what the next person is
going to say to you, then
you’ve just gained
trustworthy knowledge.
Tips and
Tricks for
non-
developers

22. 5 Tips and
Tricks to test
idea
if you’re a Developer

23. Forget that you’re
a developer
and go two slides back. You
need to learn about
1) product (pains)
2) market.
If you have created MVP
already, then proceed to
next tips.
Carry out
“hallway” tests
Show the solution to the
people who are not familiar
with your idea. Ask them for
opinion and feedback.
Do the interviews
Go out, shut up and listen
to your potential users.
When you’ll know what the
next person is going to say
to you, then you’ve just
gained trustworthy
knowledge.
Test if the solution
clearly solves
problem you
targeted
You can use mTurk for
surveys to ask strangers
how they perceive the
solution. The budget
here can be below $10,
and you can get the
results within a few
days.
Do user experience
testing
You can use guys like
usertesting.com. Costs a
bit more (up to $40) but
you get user-experience
test report with video
within a day.
Tips and
Tricks for
developers

24. And finally:
Try to sell
the solution
If people don’t buy, test MVP
to understand why.
Check out prev slides to see
what techniques you can
use.

25. 1. I’ve been building a product for 6 months.
How do switch to MVP now?
2. My team is driven by high-quality of our
solution. Can we use MVP approach?
3. My idea is vogue right now. How do I create
MVP from here?
Some of the questions people are
asking:
Check out 5 steps to move to MVP. See how
they can fit with your reality and team.

26. steps to
move to
MVP
⊙Identify what feature will encourage users stick
with your solution or even share it with friends.
⊙Get rid of everything that is not essential for your
early-adopters.
⊙Build-measure-learn from small batches of
functionality. Learn to understand how your users
react to the changes and adapt accordingly.
⊙Understand your target audience. Start with very
specific group, where your conversion would be
quite high.
⊙Be prepared to fail often. Make conclusions and
move forward to try new ways.
5

27. Thanks!
Want to know more?
About testing ideas, Building MVP,
Experimenting, Analysis
Visit our blog and subscribe to updates. We
have unsubscribe feature just in case :)
And yeap, we know the design sucks. But it
is not about design, is it? :)
You can also contact us via email
team@red-button.co

28. Images that
we used
https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5342/9151044000_9f0315951b_b.jpg
https://encrypted-
tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSq3afsrS64v4G74gJfMJ246kWoS5o76-
Z0y6wYGAFvoBdeJbBJDg
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7158/6688652773_23bd26b5cf.jpg
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8152/7460432496_10aaff5ee0_o_d.png
https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8068/8232512969_95290b0c2b_b.jpg
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8446/7932314722_ff91ec2254_o_d.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Facebook_like-hang-tag.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Tr%C3%A5dtelefon-
illustration.png
If you don’t want to come back to previous slide, here’s
the link to our blog.
http://red-button.co/blog/