In the last few years I have paid a lot of attention to the world of startups, in particular technology companies.
During this time two concepts popped up as mantras of every new tech entrepreneur –
“Lean” and “Minimum Viable Product”.
Eric Ries, author of the Lean Startup is the figurehead behind the lean movement as it applies to startups. Before Eric companies like Toyota were pioneering lean as it applies to manufacturing.
I began to look at how lean could be applied to blogging and internet marketing.
I wrote a blog post about applying the minimum viable product principle to creating information products, which essentially stated what many marketers have been preaching for years – just get something out there.
My Chocolate Business Idea
Like all entrepreneurs I have new ideas every day. Most are fun to think about, but I won’t seriously pursue.
Every now and then I think about something that I get excited enough about that I start telling other people and make plans for how I could launch it.
People who know me well know that chocolate is my weakness. I love my 72% dark chocolate, especially combined with a quality 30% milk chocolate.
Hmm, chocolate…
What people don’t know is that I have plans for a unique chocolate business.
It will be a passion project obviously, something I want to focus on once I get all the writing that is inside me out into the world.
Every now and then I get so excited about the chocolate business that I almost create it.
I start looking for domain names, plan how I will go about sourcing my goods, and send random Skype messages to Carly my tech person about building the website.
This happened just a few weeks ago, but then a day later I put a stop to it all.
I realised I was already breaking the rules of Lean.
If I really wanted to test my chocolate business using lean methodology, there was a very simple way I could do so…
My email newsletter could be my gateway to a minimum viable product, or commonly known as MVP, for my chocolate business.
What Is An MVP?
An MVP is something you can use to test an assumption and get genuine feedback from real customers.
Ideally it is a stripped back version of the actual product itself, something you can “ship” quickly and start making sales.
It might also be a very early version of a tool you create to test whether people actually use it, and how they use it.
In this case of my chocolate business I realised I could email you, my newsletter readers, and appeal to the chocolate lovers amongst you with a very basic first version of my product.
Obviously this isn’t the right target email newsletter since you didn’t sign up for chocolate related information, but I’m pretty sure I could find a few chocolate loving subscribers to effectively start a new business.
(I bet there is a strong crossover of bloggers who are chocolate eaters!)
I don’t need a domain name, or a website, or even a business name yet – I can just ask whether you want what I am offering and see who bites – pun intended!
As you probably realise, I did not send that email about chocolate (yet!).
I decided to reign in my enthusiasm and hold back until my current projects are finished before starting something new (entrepreneur rule 101: focus).
What About Your MVP?
You may not be entirely clear what kind of business you are going to have…
- Maybe you will sell software
- Launch a membership site
- Teach an online course
- Sell physical products
- Or offer services
Thinking in terms of MVPs is definitely a good idea, no matter what your business model is.
The problem I see with many of my coaching members is not knowing what kind of business they should go after.
They have fuzzy ideas about products, topics to cover and techniques to use. It’s all a bit confusing, and definitely overwhelming.
So how can you come up with a concrete MVP if you are fuzzy about what exactly you want to offer?
The answer, I believe, is to build a list.
The best MVP, especially when you are not concrete about what kind of product or service you want to offer, is to create an email list.
A list gives you access to people.
You can send one email to get straight to the core purpose behind creating an MVP: To ask whether people want something and get them to prove it by making orders.
If I have an idea for something new, I can email my newsletter and ask if you want to buy.
If I didn’t have my email list, then I have to work a whole lot harder to drum up attention, or spend money on ads, to just ask the question.
MVPs are all about question asking and response collecting from real customers. If you don’t have a platform where people are listening to you, it is a lot harder to get those answers.
Start With An Email Newsletter
If you don’t have an email list yet, stop reading this and go sign up with AWeber now and get started.
AWeber is the system I used for my very first email newsletter and I am so glad I did. It changed my business for the better in so many ways.
When I created my first email newsletter I was pretty “fuzzy” about what I would sell.
I wasn’t sure about my product and I wouldn’t learn about the MVP concept for another five years.
I certainly had ideas – too many really – but I knew if I built a list around a certain subject (blog traffic in this case), that when the time came I would have people ready to go. People who had relationships with me because of my email newsletter.
You have the benefit of my hindsight. You can build your newsletter today and have a platform to test your MVP.
That is such an advantage.
I bet every single new startup company in Silicon Valley would love to have an email list of several thousand people who have already stuck their hand up as showing interest in the area they are planning to build a business in.
Can you see the power in that?
The great thing about this is you can begin today no matter what phase of your business you are in.
Start with a blog and a newsletter optin form via AWeber and begin connecting with people who share an interest in your topic.
Then when you have an idea for your first product, pitch the MVP straight to your list.
Instant feedback and Instant customers.
Stop procrastinating and start your newsletter list today, even if you are not sure where you want to go and your MVP idea is not quite concrete.
You will be glad you did, and trust me, you always gain clarity over time.
…And don’t be surprised if sometime in the near future you receive an email from me about my new chocolate product MVP…it will happen!
Talk to you soon,
Yaro
P.S. If you are not sure what to start your newsletter about, aim for a top level subject within the realm of the area you will eventually have an MVP in.
You can always refine the niche of your newsletter later as you gain clarity.
For now, just have something available to people about the industry you are focused on, and get an AWeber newsletter up and running.
Steve Blank (steveblank.com) has an excellent blog on startups. He emphasises the ability to ‘pivot’ (a.k.a. learn and change your mind as you grow).
About the MVP. I think what you are saying Yaro is that the MVP is not (necessarily) a stripped down version of your product. It is a way to test the market you are interested in. It does not need to be a stripped down version of what you plan to sell. It just needs to be something to test the market you want to be in.
Oh yes “Pivot” is one of the other new catchphrases from the world of Lean, and an important one.
Regarding the MVP – yes that is true, your MVP might be just an assumption you want to test, although it will relate back to the product (for example one function of a software tool you plan to build).
To clarify, the email newsletter is the channel you use to test the MVP, it’s technically not the MVP itself. With my chocolate example whatever chocolate product offer I choose to make is my MVP, while my newsletter is how I ask you if you want it.
One way you can look at the email newsletter is as part of the MVP development process. You might not be sure exactly what even an MVP is yet, but you know one thing – you will need a channel to communicate with people once you have that MVP.
Why not make your email newsletter the first step today towards the MVP. It will make your life a whole lot easier when the MVP is ready to go.
Yaro
There is a rising demand for chocolate in the world. The price of it is going up, especially for dark chocolate from my understanding, since it takes more beans to produce it. I heard this from the news. I wanted to make an app for chocolate lovers and checked on Apple apps to see if there was some that already existed. There is some already. My idea is not clear, but I think you are onto something.
I am a chocolate lover too, especially dark chocolate since it is more healthier than milk chocolate and I like the taste.
What does “MVP” stand for?
Rick
Hi Rick,
Have a read of the newsletter above and it should be pretty clear what MVP stands for 🙂
Yaro
I checked out the newsletter again and MVP stands for “Minimum Viable Product.” I’m sorry I asked an obvious question. I didn’t read it good enough to pick that up.
Good luck with your chocolate business. I wish you well.
Rick
Yea, it is a great idea to have a list and some sort of giveaway, even if that gets you between one and ten subscribers a day. The relationships that start this way can be really beneficial to the subscribers, you – the entrepreneur, and even if people who haven’t been it touch with you before.
Loved this and the post about Toyota (and some Japanese companies) used it to dominate markets – think you published this 1 – 3 months ago Yaro.
Hi Yaro,
Brilliant post!
I learnt the same thing in business school about minimum viable products and Lean concept and couldn’t agree more.
Just never realized how I could apply it in my own business. 🙂
Great stuff!
Hi Erik,
You are welcome – it’s good to hear business schools are keeping up with the trends!
Yaro
Hello I enjoyed this article. I am recently getting into the world of blogging and growing a real interest in an online business of some sort. I find it very overwhelming trying to find a niche and trying to sort out the TON of information that is out there between marketing ideas, and just blogging in general. Finding niches I am not sure what my niche is I just know that I want to work for myself and in my home with a computer. I have so many ideas and interest that I find it so hard to focus on one area. Would you have any more advice on this? Any insight that you can share further is much appreciated.
Hi Leah, I suggest you click the “How To Start” link at the top of this page and through the sections on choosing a topic. That should give you some direction. In the end though you won’t really know until you start testing something.
Good luck!
Yaro
I think an MVP may work for software or services but not quite for a physical product, especially when it’s a commodity. Not all concepts transfer well between industries.
For commodities, branding makes a huge difference. And when you come into the industry with a cheap crappy version to poll the market, it’s almost impossible to rebrand yourself into the luxury segment. For such markets, the catch phrase is “you only have one chance to make a first impression”.
I’ve realized this is also true for music, which is my “business”. I can create a good song but still need to work on the execution. It’s a bad idea to release the song and get some comments on the song itself because 99% of the people cannot distinguish song quality from sound quality and will dismiss the song because it doesn’t move them. I’ll get a response from that other 1%, which are musicians or songwriters like myself. And later, when I get a full version out of that same song, people may still remember that first crappy version and still not be moved.
As an employee I’m in the software business and yes, agile and lean are the ways to go, but even there you need to be careful about things like architecture, design, scalability. You need some good foundational work before you get your MVP out.
In niches where the target audience is willing to accept first versions, knowing there will be more and better later, you can go much sooner. When you are solving a problem that hasn’t been solved before, people will put up with the deficiencies.
I’m quite sure that one needs to understand their market first and then decide how far to stretch the lean principle.
You raise some points I have thought about myself Knotwilg. I feel the same about products that require a level of quality before you can decide whether they work. For example a luxury car. You can’t “lean test” the a luxury feature until it’s developed to at least a certain standard.
I like the concept as a whole though because like the theory of constraints, it helps you to “think smaller” when it comes to problem solving, which makes testing easier.
Yaro
I am so glad to have found EJ ! I know you meant it for a BIG audience, but it felt like it was just for me – I think that’s got to be the winning formula for a blog, and now I’m inspired to start mine, thank you.
Barb
As for the Chocaholic….I know why you love the dark chocolate…like me….it is good for you so you think you can eat more….lolol….
Hi.
so I have no experience whatsoever with newsletters and so I’m wondering can you set up the newsletter and simply share articles from the Web on topics that would be relevant to your potential product that would appeal to the market you are going after? Some Facebook pages do this sort of thing. They share links of articles from other sites which are not written by them. For example if my product is something to do with groceries could I set up a newsletter where I share articles like “10 tips before stepping into the grocery store” from a website. Especially if you don’t know how you’d be able to engage and keep your audiences attention if you’re not a good writer or not an expert per say.