Tips I Learned from My 10+ MVP Validations.

Hello everyone, it's Morgan, the founder of Gemoo.

In the past year and a half, I have been focused on creating tools for making and sharing multimedia content. I have made several products, including Gemoo Recorder, a tool for team collaboration and communication through video messages; Gemoo Snap, a tool for making beautiful social screenshots; FocuSee, a tool for making automated product demonstration videos; and a series of free online tools for editing images, videos, and audio. Some of them gained high popularity on Product Hunt.

In October, these products brought 356.8K visits to our website. I am really thankful for this and feel fulfilled in my role. The increasing number of visitors and users of our products shows that we are doing the right thing. Though it has been challenging, the feeling of accomplishment from creating a product that meets people's needs is worth it.

So, I really would like to share something about MVP product validation.

What I Learned from My 10+ Product Releases

My team and I released more than ten products in the last year and a half, and each time has been more successful than the last.

Less is More

From my experience, the key to an MVP product ain't about looking pretty. No, it's about how fast you can show off your product idea and its core value to users. That's when you can find out if users are into more than just good-looking web pages and fancy UI designs. You wanna know if they dig the actual solution your product offers? 'Cause otherwise, it's hard to tell if customer conversion is 'cause of the product idea itself or just 'cause of the flashy design.

Landing pages, demo videos, and minimalistic functional beta versions are good ways to quickly validate your product idea. They don't have to be perfect with some bugs, as long as you can show them to your target users and get their honest feedback. Sometimes, user feedback during this period can be discouraging at times, but it helps you see if your product is really worth it. Instead of wasting time and energy on products that just won't work, it's better to abandon them as soon as possible.

Example：

We recently made a music-synced video generation tool called Wordance. We validated it by giving people a basic version to try. We wanted to keep it super easy to start it, reducing the learning curve. So, we didn't include a bunch of fancy stuff or complicated editing features.

All users have to do is enter some text by typing or copying/pasting, select a music track (we have some built-in options), and boom! They get a cool video with their text and music all synced up. Through user feedback, we could see if people really needed something like this for their everyday lives and work.

And based on that, we added some extra stuff like different fonts, colors for the text and background, some simple text effects, and even the option to add a watermark. We also made it super easy for users to adjust their video clips by just clicking ‘Apply all’ so they don't have to spend a ton of time tweaking things one by one. 👇

Easy Access is Crucial for Validating Product Ideas

Easy access is also crucial to swiftly validate your product ideas. So, we opted for a web app to make it extremely simple for users to get started. With it, users don't need to download anything or create an account. They can simply jump on their web browsers, give the product a try, and begin creating videos immediately. This not only speeds up the process for our users but also enables us to collect more valuable feedback from them during the trial period. It's a mutually beneficial situation!

When it comes to the inspiration for the product, I believe it lies in user feedback on existing products and your personal user experiences.

Example:

The idea for Wordance actually came from my own experience using Capcut to make a teaser video for my FocuSee. Undoubtedly, Capcut is one of the most awesome web-based video editors out there. It lets me create videos with text that syncs to music. But the thing is, it takes me more than 20 minutes just to input text, adjust their positions, choose music, and add animations on the editor's timeline. And all that just to showcase a few simple ad lines. And they provide an excessive number of fonts and effects to choose from, resulting in additional time spent switching and previewing text effects. It's a bit of a drag, to be honest.

I mean, the most important thing is the meaning behind the text, right? The effects are just a bonus. That's why my team and I got together to create a tool that lets users quickly make these awesome music-synced videos or clips, whether they're for their teaser videos or for specific scenes in product videos.

In Short

Through the above approaches, Wordance quickly gained many seed users within one week of its release. They also provided many valuable suggestions, which we need to learn how to filter. However, having too many features in a product can sometimes become a burden.

All right, that’s all I shared today on how to validate MVP ideas. If you agree with my thoughts, feel free to leave comments, and let's discuss. Alternatively, you can DM me at MorganKung7.

BTW, if you are interested in my new product, you can try Wordance to create your own videos for free. I would love to hear your feedback on it.