An MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, is a simplified version of a product that includes only the core features necessary to meet the needs of early users and validate a concept. The idea is to quickly develop a version of the product that can be released to the market with minimal resources, allowing for real-world feedback.

Why a Person Would Make One:

Validate Ideas: An MVP helps entrepreneurs test their business idea without investing too much time or money. By gauging user interest and gathering feedback, they can confirm whether there’s a demand for the product.

Reduce Risks: Launching a full-featured product can be risky. An MVP allows for iterative development, reducing the risk of building something that doesn’t resonate with users.

Learn and Iterate: It provides an opportunity to learn what works and what doesn’t. Feedback from early users can inform future iterations, helping to refine the product based on actual user needs.

Attract Investment: A successful MVP can help attract investors by demonstrating traction and user interest, making it easier to secure funding for further development.

Outcomes of creating an MVP:

User Feedback: The most immediate outcome is feedback from early adopters. This can highlight strengths and weaknesses in the product, guiding improvements.

Product Refinement: Based on user feedback, the product can be iteratively improved. Features can be added or modified to better meet user needs.

Market Understanding: Creating an MVP provides insights into market demands, user behavior, and competitive landscape, which can shape marketing strategies and business decisions.

Faster Time To Market: An MVP allows for quicker entry into the market, enabling the company to start building a user base sooner.

Cost Efficiency: By focusing on core features, resources can be allocated more effectively, minimizing waste and maximizing impact.

What a successful MVP Looks Like:

A recent partner of ours had a problem. Their current processes required a lot of human input and back-and-forth communications, increasing the chance of errors. Optimizing and automating this workflow would reduce these errors and reduce the overhead required to manage these processes. So, SMB Texas and the company leadership hatched a plan. SMB Texas built an MVP of a mobile-first web app that brought together multiple data points into a single pane of glass, simplified communications, and tracked progress. Once MVP development was complete, the code was handed over to the partner, and their own developers have now expanded on the framework SMB Texas built and increased the value of the project by more than 20x.