Amid the rising competition, it is challenging for a startup to sustain the market. Only a few market-fit ideas make it to the growth stage from the failed startup queue. The main reason startups fail is that they need to analyze the market requirements and how users will perceive their ideas.

According to Embroker, nearly 90% of startups fail due to scattered planning and inadequate project development strategy. 10%, out of which fail within the first year of their operations. This percentage can only be reduced if startup owners understand the importance of MVP development.

MVP helps startups validate their idea in the market and identify the best scope options for their startup. For the success of any product or service, user feedback is of great significance. However, the new bees in the startup space or first-time founders often need help strategizing their business plan and how to start.

In this article, we have listed the steps to strategize MVP development for first-time founders.

5 Steps to Strategize MVP Development for Startups

First-time founders need help to outline their strategies and launch their idea as a product or service in the market. For any business, customer approval, understanding market demand, and analyzing future scope are significant.

Many startup founders start with either too much planning or need proper planning, resulting in the startup's failure. MVP is the most crucial step for any startup to validate their idea among the users.

Here are the steps to strategize the MVP development for startups:

1. Define Problem Statement

The first step towards starting any business or planning for MVP development is framing the problem statement, and audience pain points your product will address. As per the common mistakes made by founders, it is vital to identify your target audience and the value you intend to provide. One of the easiest ways to do this is by finding a problem that requires a solution. To achieve this, there are various approaches you can use.

• Some founders discover the problem naturally, such as while working in a specific field and encountering an issue that has yet to be addressed, so they take it upon themselves to resolve it.
• One approach you can take is researching an industry that piques your interest and discovering the problems people are facing. This way, you can offer them a solution.

In addition, this can help you attract early adopters and secure your first significant customers, particularly if you begin testing it with a particular company.

2. In-depth Market Research

Market research is another essential aspect of MVP development. Understanding the target audience, their needs, and their demands is essential. Research your competitors, how they are targetting the audience, how the audience perceives them, and analyze their growth strategy. Expand your knowledge by undertaking market research and gathering information from key stakeholders, including investors, channel partners, and end consumers.

Defining clear business goals after the market research. Knowing your target market and finding the high demands can be particularly beneficial. Remember, learning from all these processes must go into building MVP and exploring the most suitable niche to offer your final product.

3. Prioritize MVP Features & KPIs

We know that MVP is the smaller version of a fully-fledged product. Hence, it must only include the core features of the app that justify your idea, and users can interpret it. Before building an MVP, differentiate product features into the core, augmented, and potential categories. Do a comprehensive analysis to identify the core features that offer the most value and deliver the best user experience.

Define the unique selling proposition of your product and finalize the core competencies on which you want to build the final version of your product. Key performance indicators also play a significant role in tracking, analyzing, and evaluating the success of the MVP process. These parameters will help you to make informed decisions on what to develop in the future and how many resources the development process will require. It is also essential that startups consume the learning of coding, prototyping, and developing the product and use those insights to showcase the product to potential customers, investors, and other stakeholders to improve its final version further. KPIs can also come in handy to measure incremental progress as founders set out the cycle of repeat testing to extract maximum performance from the product.

Read More: How Long Does It Take to Build an MVP?

4. MVP Prototype & Estimate Budget

The main aim of the prototyping phase is to create a prototype that can be used to test the feasibility of the future product.

The process of creating an MVP prototype can vary depending on the type of product you're building. However, there are some common steps that all MVP prototypes go through:

• Define the problem you're solving and your target market
• Identify your core features
• Create a wireframe or mockup of your product
• Build a working prototype
• Test your prototype with potential users
• Iterate based on feedback

Overall, a product prototype is a trial run. It allows you to test out your product and get feedback from people who would use it. This is an essential step in ensuring that your product is usable and meets the needs of your audience. The feedback you collect during this phase will help you to improve your product and make it even better before it goes to market.

5. MVP Development Process

Okay, now everything is done, and you are close to taking the first step toward turning your idea into a successful business. You've got a fantastic idea outlining the tasks, goals, and scope, and now it's time to build and test your MVP.

Consider all the previous analyses you have done and start with the MVP development based on the approved prototype of the app. MVP must only include the basic and core features and decide to stick with them.

After developing the MVP, the last step is the MVP testing and final iterations. To test your MVP, follow these two steps.

• First, let your team use the product for several days once it's ready. If everything is working correctly, grant access to the product to the first set of users for 7-14 days.
• Collect feedback, statistics, and behavior analytics and analyze the data set to determine which features need improvement, which functionalities should be removed, and what to add. You can create an optimal first version to launch and continue improving by testing the product.

How Third Rock Techkno Can Help Building MVP for Startups

MVP plays an essential role in validating and marking the scope of your idea in the market. Even after thorough market research, there are chances for startups to fail. Understanding user feedback and requirements is essential before investing huge into full-scale development. MVP will already create a certain level of user engagement for your product, adding to your final product launch. MVP helps analyze the scope of your startup idea in the market, whether your product service fits the market or not.

At Third Rock Techkno, we have dealt with multiple such startups for their MVP development needs. Our expert developers and project managers help startups with their MVP development strategy for a successful launch and leverage the full potential of the market demand.

FAQs

Q.1 What are the steps to develop an MVP?

We first research the idea for MVP development, identify its scope, analyze competitors, and define the required features. The digital industry has a vast scope, but it needs careful and keen consideration for launching any product or service in healthcare. Our MVP development process involves the following:

• Understanding the client's idea and identifying its scope
• Detailed discussion on the customer pain points
• Defining the user persona and MVP prototype
• Analyzing the established competitors
• Define the core features of the app and develop MVP
• Testing, feedback collection, and iterations of the MVP

Q.2 How should I estimate the development budget for the MVP?

Defining the app's core features is vital to estimating any app or web development budget. Suppose you are developing an app for digital courses for students. Now, if the MVP includes complex features like a payment gateway, third-party integration, video lectures, and more, requiring a massive database for storing multiple courses, it will affect the cost. The MVP of the product should include a few introductory courses, an easy payment method, and a simple login option.

Hire MVP developers, underline your required features, tech stack, and launching platform, and define your budget accordingly.

Q. 3 Is it important to develop an MVP before the product launch?

Yes, because MVP helps identify your product's scope in the market. Understanding user feedback is important before investing huge finances in full-scale product development. MVP development allows one to spend less and validate one's idea. You can analyze the market demand and whether you are developing the product correctly.