An mvp Takes Guts

What’s the biggest risk to your business?

Countless times we’ve asked entrepreneurs this seemingly simple question and countless times we hear the same response:

• Generating buzz.

• Customer adoption.

• I need users.

• Growth.

• Scale.

If you have anything at all of interest, getting coverage in today’s crazed, page views–ruled media culture isn’t that difficult. What’s hard is finding anyone who cares.

Okay, so many of you read the first sentence and ignored the second. “Really?” you’re saying to yourself. “I can get media coverage?”

Sure. Have you actually tried sending an e-mail to an editor at your favorite online rag? They are begging for stories. Yes, you still need an angle, but it’s a link-bait life and your story doesn’t even have to be real.⁵ But if you have not proven the viability of your product, please, please don’t.

A startup we spoke with in New York City serves urban pet owners. It’s the sort of idea the media loves. It’s cute. They received tons of attention, all of which they felt was worth bragging about. Here’s what their adoption looked like after all the TV coverage:

Page views	Sign-ups	Engagement
10,000/day	2,500/month	5/week

What does scaling acquisition do for this company?

Regardless of what you might think, the biggest obstacle to your idea is that no one cares. The hardest thing for you to admit is that though your friends and family tell you that you have a great idea, it’s actually worthless. Your baby’s ugly. You have too many features. You have too many ideas packed into one product.

When you pull a product off the shelf of a retail store, how many problems does it solve?

Guess what? That you solve a problem that you yourself endure is great and all, but it doesn’t make a business. When you got out of the building and went around and said to your potential customers, “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . .,” or “I got this great idea . . .,” or “What do you think of . . .,” or “Would you pay for . . .,” you didn’t really get any market validation.

We once worked with a team at a Lean Startup Machine workshop whose leader insisted that people are motivated to overcome personal obstacles through public urging by their closest friends. There’s no doubt that for some this is so, but feedback among mentors and other workshop participants was resoundingly negative. Feedback outside the building conducted by team members was overwhelmingly negative. Yet the feedback the leader himself found was unanimously positive. What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s very easy to find evidence to bolster the views you already have, especially those that you are emotionally attached to. Very few minds are changed in political or religious arguments or in great-idea discussions.

It’s difficult to let go of ideas, to face the facts, as it were. It’s difficult to go through a process that seeks to invalidate your idea. By the time you are building your MVP—again, as opposed to a viability experiment—you should be well beyond emotional evidence being the rope you’re hanging your hopes on, to mix a metaphor.

Whereas your viability tests were your best attempts at “all right, if this doesn’t work, my ideas and assumptions are seriously wrong,” the MVP is your first attempt at “all right, if this doesn’t work, my implementation is wrong.”