How to Precisely Validate and Test Startup Ideas through MVP

The startups are known to resolve market challenges and fulfill business gaps by creating new approaches. They invent innovative solutions for a new or existing industry problem and issue.

However, while the process of introducing or launching a startup product nothing is assured. Most of the time, the product or solution is intuitively born out of a fresh idea. The market exploration can offer insights regarding the precise target audience and user persona. However, sometimes the market state of affairs for the perfect software product launch may not exist at all.

Despite all the challenges, a startup is introduced in the market. The leaders get together to initiate a new service, product, or solution on an enlargement path that navigates uphill through defined milestones in the business journey.

At this instant, one statistic, which is considered unsurprising wisdom in all startup groups, is that ninety percent of startups fail. However, the most common grounds for the lack of funds are not the only reason these startups fail. They even meet failures because they have not validated and tested their new product or business ideas in an actual marketplace setup. Most likely, they may not have verified their business concept or idea with a precise MVP.

How MVP assists Businesses?

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) lends a hand in verifying and testing your startup ideas, getting the correct opinions, and adding real-time validation practices across the new product at minimal costs. So, product development should be your subsequent stage after you verify your concept and ensure that your business idea is significant for putting in efforts and funds.

Source: From the Slides of My talk on GoodFirms

With this approach, an MVP assists business owners and entrepreneurs to have some level of confidence and certainty that their concept is practically possible prior to head to currently vulnerable marketplaces.

Source: From the Slides of My talk on GoodFirms

What Advantages can MVP Deliver to Startups? It explicitly allows you to:

• Cost-effectively verify and test the startup idea on targeted users
• Validate your business concepts in natural settings and environment
• Get opinions and feedbacks from probable customers
• Feedbacks further helps in iterating and creating an enhanced product
• Identify approaches to the market, promote and sell the product
• Get paying customers right from the present user base
• Save efforts, time, resources, and funds you could have exhausted
• Finally, an MVP, if done precisely, makes getting funding effortlessly

6 Ways to Validate & Test Business Startup Ideas through MVP

1. Define assumptions that can be tested

You can initiate these queries to back and support your plans.

A. Whom will you target as your primary customer?

If your answer is everyone in the B2B or B2C markets, you are putting your startup business in a multifaceted space. So, be sure to get a precise audience. For instance, if you think your primary customer is a particular business, find answers to queries such as - What sort of business will I target? Then, what will be the size of that business? What will be the target market? Who will be the decision-makers, or what will be the designations of the product purchasers?

B. What challenges are you resolving?

Most startup founders think about the product first, decide on product functionalities and features, introduce the product in the market, and then think why their product is facing dilemmas getting grip across the industry. Our recommendations are to begin with the challenge or the issues people face without your product in their hands.

With this approach, you will be crystal clear about the problems your offered product or business solution resolves. Further, by working on these business issues or gaps, you can test and validate whether your targeted prospects also see them as issues and think they are challenges that appeal to be solving.

C. How can your product resolve those customer challenges?

Only after working on these challenges should you move forward with the product features. Right here, you attach the product value to customer issues. Also, you need to answer further how resolving their problems will make their life easier? Does it make them explore more business opportunities or position them to look better across the market concerning their existing complex scenarios?

D. What are the significant features and functionalities of the product?

The features and functionalities require resolving explicit challenges and issues. They are more valuable if they save time, effort, resources and make more money. However, we persuade you to think about Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and restrict enabling multiple feature sets in the early stages as you require merely creating some specific or sufficient value for customers to purchase your product.

2. Test Assumptions to judge if they reverberate with probable customers

Customer and user reviews make you understand how you should develop the functionalities of your application. That’s why business analysts and developers contribute to creating an MVP and have feedback from the probable customers. The process enables iterations before the product launch and makes sure that the product offers a seamless experience to a diverse set of users.

You can even test your set assumptions by conversing or interviewing industry specialists and highly experienced business consultants. There are also beneficial approaches to test and validate business ideas by promoting your product through specific landing pages and low-priced advertisements

3. Initiate with your network and then move to Customers

We always suggest beginning testing and validations of your product with your own network and the group of colleagues, business partners, mentors, investors, and others to reach out to likely customers.

Some experts suggest that this approach can be a little biased as your network is friendly to your initiatives. However, we believe that some degree of bias is healthier than not communicating, interviewing, and getting a step closer to the facts.

You can begin with a list of questions but diverge from the queries as you get access to more data and insights about your products. You can launch your MVP to your target customer audiences and collect their opinions and feedback. Even with POC and Prototype models, you will get some really helpful insights to scale your software product further.

4. Discover precise value proposition

We recommend startup entrepreneurs focus on amplification of their product with explicit value propositions. A value proposition is the likely gains that a customer would get while utilizing your product. Value can be tangible or intangible. However, saving time or added revenue earned are straightforward to measure.

By methodically understanding and documenting these values by customer interviews, you can set your product separately from the contest across the market.

5. Appreciating your idea is not the same as purchasing your product

When people tell you passionately that your product sounds awesome, your foremost response should be to ask them why it is so? As it is significant to understand that someone appreciating your business idea or concept is not the same as purchasing that product. When you face such difficulties during your testing and validation procedures, it discards these “false positives” to a greater extent, which helps a startup entrepreneur in the coming time.

6. Pertain lessons from validated feedbacks and acquired knowledge

Many times startup founders mislay their vision related to the active marketplaces and the prospects that they are targeting with their product. Validated exploration and learning in MVP development assists in preventing these scenarios. By validating and testing startup ideas through MVP lends a hand to quickly compare the product concept with its impact on potential customers. It is a precise approach of validating whether the in-hand product has the proposed consequence on the customer or not.

If your answer is yes, the MVP can be effectively scaled up into a complete product that can be successfully introduced in the market. The advanced refinements can be carried out in parallel. Analytics and insights from the validated testing and learning will help startup leaders make enhanced products that can succeed and triumph across the marketplaces.

How to Build Your MVP?

We saw how MVP helps test your hypothesis and iterate your product's functionalities as per feedback. Now you can discover how to build your own MVP in two ways.

1. Using your in-house team

You can download and use a DIY MVP template to build your own MVP in three significant steps utilizing your in-house team. You can get the right direction on how to enable your product ideas and concepts through this template. Most importantly, you can minimize the number of risks involved by precisely authenticating the product concepts and develop an MVP with minimum funds. In this way, you can prioritize the decisive factors to validate the final product and build your next successful MVP.

2. Outsourcing your MVP development

You can connect with a mobile app development company, and this company can guide you with comprehensive MVP development. So, if you are geared up to take the bold step with a minimum viable product, you can outsource your project to MVP specialists to take things forward.

Build Your MVP now

Crafting an entrepreneurship realm right from ground zero does not happen immediately. In fact, most startups or business ventures fail to create success stories. They turn off even prior to having some momentum.

Our suggestions and advice to all startup owners or young entrepreneurs are to take business risks, jump off the cliff, and enjoy market testing and validation experiences for their products. It is taking odds, however, that are the characteristic of thriving entrepreneurs, and utilizing these techniques like MVP lends a hand to get closer to accomplishments.

Have you tested or validated your startup software, web, or mobile app development idea with an MVP? If not, don’t worry. We can assist you with a precise MVP development process.