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MenuHow to launch an MVP for an on-demand delivery startup?
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There isn't a lot of published information that I've seen (or can quickly find) on how washio and postmates validated their business model, but I definitely agree that starting fairly lean and validating your business first even if that means a lot of manual effort up front is a better approach than investing heavily in infrastructure before launch.
Of course, if you are very successful, that manual work will pile up quickly and managing it could be quite painful, but you can have worse problems than a successful launch.
Maff Rigby's 7-day startup recommendation is definitely a good one.
Hi,
There's startup weekends everywhere.
Join one and you can get some great ideas and possibly co-founders or employees.
As always talking to potential clients and asking them if they would buy is a great validation.
Slavi


An MVP is the minimum developed form of the product (your delivery application in this case) on the market. This holistic development & marketing approach helps the project development team to check (or invalidate) product hypotheses and understand how the key functionality of the product for the target clients could be perceived and experienced by them. The approach offers insight into how the budget is invested effectively to meet the overall company objectives. The development of an MVP is a process to define consumer suffering points and to decide the correct product characteristics to fulfil these needs in due course. When developing mobile apps, an MVP is a way to ensure where only key features are built to address a particular problem and, please, early adopters. Basically, an MVP is the fundamental model of your product to meet your primary goal. But there is still confusion between an MVP and a Prototype for many people. just to clarify, an MVP is a prototype at the centre and further in the development process. Once some ideas have been prototyped and concept proof, you will be completely ready to develop an MVP or get it developed from someone else. Ideally, you should build the minimal (which you can improve) version of your product and share it with more and more people to get people used to it. When you will get your MVP developed for your Food & grocery delivery application, the prototype will be the basis for what in future would become the least viable product. MVP ‘s development follows a method of evaluation that helps you to produce a product which can continuously be improved by validating (or invalidating) assumptions, understanding what consumers want and creating new software versions that better support your customers.
Viability is all about providing users with enough value that they feel satisfied with the product or service they are paying for. The assurance of product viability is one of the main features of the development of the MVP. It is much more important what a company does than how it does it. 60% of the average product’s functionality is not at all used in most of the cases. This function is unnecessary and a waste of resources for growth. By performing one key feature, a viable product responds to consumer demands.
Before you launch the app, ask yourself, Does Your App Need An MVP? What are the business Benefits of MVP? and Does Your Delivery Business Really Need An MVP?
Let us look at these questions one-by-one:
1. Does Your App Need An MVP?
Let us have a quick look at recent Go-Globe statistics on start-ups before discussing its requirements:
1. 74% of Internet start-ups with high growth fail because of premature scaling.
2. At the same time, start-ups grow about 20 times faster which scale properly.
3. About 29% of start-ups run out of their money before they have fully established themselves.
Every company begins with an idea but there is no guarantee that every idea will attract users ‘attention. Before you trace your idea in an app, ask yourself, “Is this idea just good for you or many?”
You may be losing your sleep up to this query, but do not worry, many entrepreneurs who are planning to launch their goods on the market go through this kind of situation.
But you can sleep without stress during the night with the aid of the MVP without being stubborn about the issue.
Whether small or large, the achievements of any new product are focused entirely on the efficient and unique concept and its effect. One of the main factors that can help the company thrive is input from potential buyers at an early stage, which gives you an idea of customer needs and so entrepreneurs get acute about the minimum sustainable company’s signature approach.
Thus, the need for an MVP can be defined into 3 major categories:
a) Well, building an MVP is not the only way to reduce the start-up costs of any company. And it is not the only incomprehension with MVP, you may have. MVP is a way of quickly starting a project and realizing what to do next.
b) MVP is an acronym for a Minimal Viable Product. This definition encourages the development of a barebone protocol to test the viability of key product ideas flows. This ensures that the MVP is close to the actual thing you want to do so that all customers’ input can easily yield validated and applicable useful product ideas or main principles.
c) Since MVP has a different objective, the concept or experiment doesn’t simply prove it – it validates a new idea and user input.
2. What are the business Benefits of MVP?
1. Fast Development: The more features you want to integrate into your application, of course, the longer it takes the developers to build the product. Since MVP should have the minimum number of features, the development of an MVP takes only one to two months. It helps you to ensure that another business or start-up cannot steal your idea or release an application that incorporates the same concept earlier than you.
2. Reduction in The Overall Development Cost: This is easy to understand and obvious as well. You spend a little less time designing MVP and therefore have a lower cost of developing because you do not have to integrate all functionality into the MVP in your final product.
3. Reduced Risks for Investments: The lower the investment risk does not pay off, the more likely your ideas are to be supported by investors. Basically, MVP is a prototype for your final product, and without huge investments, you can evaluate its feasibility among the target audience. In addition, if the target audience receives the MVP well and you decide to construct the final product, the potential investors can present the MVP proving that your concept remains viable.
4. In-field Concept Testing: One of the main objectives of launching an MVP, as stated earlier, is to see if the entire concept is viable and appreciated by users. Furthermore, if you plan to fulfil your target group needs and requirements for your final product, there is no other option but to launch and follow feedback from an MVP. In addition, you can adjust the original concept, by understanding why the users love or like to use their product. This means that you can determine the value for the users of your product. For example, Instagram did just that – the start-up was based on another idea rather than photos sharing.
5. Making A Consumer Base of Loyal Customers: This is also a matter of making changes. Sometimes your product can not be found interested by the original target group you were aiming at. To find the one to value the product, you may try to promote your MSP among various target groups.
6. Adding New Features Gets Way Easier: Upon the release of the MVP, developers may add one by one new functionality. Therefore, there is no great chance that any apps will have to be reworked. The fewer characteristics that you have in your product, the features that may need to be changed or eliminated. In addition, there is far less chance of bugs being present in the final product when the developers implement a new MVP feature.
3. Does Your Delivery Business Really Need An MVP?
a) Yes: Do not expect production time to be saved here as it is a little risky but quicker development method. Yes, only during the marketing & handling feedback sessions are you likely to minimize your time expenses. Thus, MVP is not always your ally as you plan and set your objective to rise. The results show that the product can be monetized when an investor approaches a pre-packaged product rather than selling hope for the product. The risk is higher than the expectations of investors. If your MVP is weak, you will do it. There can be no other thing.
b) No: The MVP system offers a range of advantages for company owners, which include brand recognition, resource management, early customer selection and value proposition. In short, the question answers: ‘Is my idea adding value and benefiting me to people?’ The theory cannot be confirmed by a feasibility study together with concept proof and prototyping. MVP is almost a trustworthy way to get an opinion from a potential consumer early on. It eliminates the risk of spending a lot of money on something that no one would want or can teach you if a much better product already exists.
Besides if you do have any questions give me a call: https://clarity.fm/joy-brotonath
Related Questions
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Any advice on starting up small businesses in two countries at the same time?
Please realize that my suggestion would be slightly different if I knew which two countries. However, without knowing that here's what I'd suggestion: 1. Since you're just getting started figure out which country provides the best legal benefits for starting a company. This should include tax benefits, legal protection, and ease when it comes to filing paperwork (incorporating, managing payroll, taxes, etc.). This will undoubtedly save you time and money moving forward, and staying lean. 2. Once you've established your home base country, you'll still need to hire people in the other country as you scale. You may want to think about using a service like oDesk or Elance, not necessarily to recruit people but to manage ALL the paperwork associated with hiring international people. They will of course be given contract status. If you are going to be providing employees equity then I'd suggest consulting a lawyer for how people in the non-home base country will be treated. 3. Reporting revenue. You need to be very careful about whether you are providing goods and services. If it's goods keep in mind that you might be subject to tariffs. If you're providing services then I think you might be in the clear, but please double check. Finally, some countries might have an issue with where the revenue was actually made i.e. are you sitting in your office in your home based country while servicing clients in the non-home base country, or are you actually in the non-home base country. 4. No matter what you'll need to setup a remote working environment for yourself. Invest in the best technology you can, and find clients who are willing to utilize your services on a remote basis. Here are a few additional posts on running a remote team that I've written: http://femgineer.com/2013/09/running-remote-and-making-progress/ http://femgineer.com/2013/03/how-to-transition-to-a-remote-team/
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What are some important milestones for a bootstrapped startup?
If you haven't fully tested your app with the 100 individual accounts Apple allows you to test via TestFlight or Hockey, then I'd suggest you should test thoroughly with your email list before launching to the app store. Things to look for at this early-stage: Activation and Breakage Points: From app download to user onboarding, where are people getting lost? Your goal is not only to have them download the app, but complete whatever steps for them to become your user. Optimizing the flow to ensure maximum conversion is a key first step. Engagement: How often are they completing the tasks you deem most important based on your business model? How can you increase this number? User Understanding: How clear is the app's UI and messaging? Where are they getting lost? Virality: While true virality is hard to measure at this stage (given the constraints of pre-launch testing), you can evaluate the potential effectiveness of any distribution tactics you might employ (contacts, OAuth's etc) in terms of user opt-in and conversion issues. Real analytical data is easier to interpret than user interviews but there is a such a treasure trove of good customer development intel from customer interviews. Those first 100 people who download the app should be personally interviewed about their experience, what they like, how much it solves their problem, how much of a problem that is for them in the first place and so on. Before you go live in the app store, I highly recommend you max out your installs in a private testing environment. I'm happy to talk this through with you in more detail in a call.
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I'm having problems with ideation for a startup, I'm a web developer, what needs of yours aren't being met? Or how can I find a big problem to solve?
It's really ill-advised to solicit your vision from anyone. In my 20 years of building, investing and supporting tech companies, I don't know of a single success story that has it's origins in someone with your approach. Running a tech startup is incredibly hard. It demands sacrifices few are truly able to make and come with it tremendous risks that most people are unwilling to take. It sounds to me as if you want the startup life because you have an impression of what it's about but haven't yet experienced it first-hand. I'd encourage you to first join an early-stage startup. Developers are incredibly in-demand. Find an entrepreneur who has some experience, funding and a compelling vision that you believe in and get to know what the journey is really like.
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Is there any typical questions for customers' pain points discovery or it's impossible to standardise?
I have built several multi-million dollar businesses using (2) very simple questions: "What makes you say that...." and "Tell me more...." No matter what someone says to you, you just keep asking one (or both) of the questions. If you do it 4 or 5 times in a row you'll learn everything you ever wanted to know.
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What support software do most marketplace startups use? Is it custom, or a SaaS product like Zendesk, Desk.com or Uservoice
Your support software should cater to your needs, depending on how your business operates. Fiver uses Vanilla forum and Zendesk. Thumbtack uses Zendesk. Not sure about AirBNB, their help center seems to be custom. Depending on how well funded your are, I would recommend starting with a free plan with one of the help desk SaaS products, or even using open source ticketing platform. Then, as your needs grow and you need integration with your marketplace, there's no reason you can't scale and migrate.