Many startups fail simply because of no market need. In other words, they try to build a solution to a problem that people either don’t need or don’t want.

That’s why so many startups have adopted the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development process. It allows startups to validate their business vision at the lowest possible cost.

There are many famous companies that started out by building an MVP, but more on that later.

In this article we'll cover:

• What is an MVP?
• The Benefits of Building an MVP
• How to Build an MVP
• MVP App Development: Find the Right Technical Partner
• The Top 5 MVP App Development Companies
• 5 Examples of Successful MVPs

Let's start off with a quick definition of MVP.

What is an MVP?

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is exactly what it says on the tin: the simplest version of your product with just enough features to validate your value proposition.

Author of The Lean Startup, Eric Reis defines an MVP as:

“That version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”

The MVP is the minimum effort to test if your target market (your “everyone”) will actually love it. It’s a simple but extremely effective methodology.

The Benefits of Building an MVP

The main reason to build an MVP is to quickly transform your idea into a product with a small budget.

Your MVP should only include the essential features that solve your customers’ problems.

Then, you’ll be able to collect user feedback on those essential features and use it to iteratively build your final product.

In today’s business landscape, releasing your product quickly and within budget is a prerequisite to a startup’s success.

Building an MVP allows you to save time & money whilst reducing your risks. Here’s how building an MVP can benefit you:

1. Focus on Building the Core

Building an MVP allows you to focus on the key problem you’re solving for your customers.

2. Rapid Testing

Through developing an MVP, you’ll be testing from day one whether or not your idea will work – without breaking your budget.

3. Market Validation

By validating the market, you'll learn if you're targeting your MVP to the right users.

4. Shorter Development Time

The less time it takes to develop your MVP, the quicker you can get to market. The quicker you get to market the quicker you can start collecting feedback from your users.

5. Reduced Costs

A shorter development time means you spend less on product development. Aside from this, by building an MVP you will use a small portion of your resources in the beginning. This is much cheaper than blowing your whole budget on a fully-fledged app. It also reduces your risk, as you validate your idea before building out your full-product.

How to Build an MVP

Even though building an MVP means building fewer features, there is still a structured process that will put you in the best position to succeed, it all starts with market research.

Market Research

Knowing that the product you want to build is right for your market is the fundamental starting point for any startup. There’s no point building an MVP based on a solution that nobody needs or wants.

Look at your competitors, conduct surveys and get creative. The more information you have before you start the MVP development process the better chances you have for success.

There is an added bonus to doing this. If you know what your competitors are offering, you’re better equipped to make your product stand out.

As W. Edwards Deming once said:

“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”

42% of startups fail because of no market need, topping the list of CBInsight's The Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail.

Without a doubt, the first step in building a successful MVP is good data.

Find Your Unique Value Proposition

Simply put: if your MVP doesn’t show immediate value to your users, they won’t adopt it.

• Why is your product valuable?
• How will your users’ benefit from it?
• What are you going to do differently to make your MVP the best solution on the market?

You need to answer these vital questions to build an accurate picture of the essential qualities your MVP should offer.

Design Your User Stories

As with all aspects of the MVP and product development process, you should take a user-centric approach to your MVP design.

Think about how your user will interact with your MVP app from the moment they open it to the moment they complete their main objective.

List their journey through the app and use this to help you inform which features to prioritise as you build your MVP.

Define & Prioritise Your Feature List

Before you begin building your MVP, you need to list all the features you want to include.
Then you need to put them in order of:

• High priority
• Medium priority
• Low priority

To help you prioritize which features get built into your MVP ask yourself:

What’s the most important action you want your users to accomplish to showcase your MVP’s value proposition? Which features enable this? (These become your high-priority features.)

Which features will help your user accomplish the most important action, but aren’t vital to the process? (These become your medium-priority features.)

Which features would be “nice-to-have” but have little or no relation to the main action you want your users to accomplish? (These become your low-priority features.)

Save any features that aren’t absolutely necessary for your user to see your MVPs value proposition. When it comes to iterating on your product, you can build them using your priority list & user stories.

UX/UI & Clickable Prototype

Great UX/UI design is a critical part of any MVP development process.

Once you have defined your user stories and prioritised your features you should consider building a clickable prototype.

This prototype, while non-functional, will look and feel like the first iteration of your MVP. It allows you to simulate your users’ journey through your app.

There are many benefits to creating a non-functional version of your MVP before building out the first functional iteration. Here are just a few:

• Test your UX – By simulating your UX you’re able to validate your app’s functionality and design.
• Entice Early-Adopters – Approaching early-adopters with a prototype can help you in two ways, it allows you to:
  • Gain early feedback on your idea, design & functionality
  • Encourage them to sign-up for the first version of the MVP when released – which can be vital to your distribution
• Attract Seed Investors – No startup can survive without capital. Building a non-functional prototype can help you attract seed investment to help you build your MVP.

Build, Measure & Learn

Once you have all the above information in place, it’s time to move onto the development stage and build your MVP.

After you’ve built your MVP, it first needs to be tested. First, hand it over to your Quality Assurance (QA) Engineers. They will help you improve your MVP before you release it.

When the QA engineers have done their bit, it’s time for Alpha Testing. This is also known as the Friends & Family Release. This is the initial “public” testing you will do, and it’s often better to limit your focus group at this stage – hence friends and family.

Then it’s time to launch your MVP to the public in the form of a beta test (Many companies skip the alpha testing of their MVP and move straight to this stage).

This process usually takes 1-2 weeks. It allows you to add any final touches before releasing your MVP to your full user base.

Then it’s time to practice the Build, Measure, Learn cycle.

Once your Minimum Viable Product is out in the wild, it’s time to gather user feedback (Measure).

With that user feedback, go back to your product scope: your MVP’s user stories, feature list and UX/UI design. Use it to discover improvements you can make to your product (Learn).

Then, implement those improvements in your product. (Build).

Then, go back to the beginning. Keep doing this as you iterate your MVP and create your fully-fledged product. Doing this will mean you’ve built a user-centric product that’s the best solution on the market.

Later in the article, we’ll look at 5 Examples of Successful MVPs. Before we get to that, however, I wanted to talk about the options you have when it comes to finding a technical partner to help you achieve your MVP app development.

MVP App Development: Find The Right Technical Partner

When it comes to finding a technical partner to develop your MVP, you have several options. You can:

• Onboard a Technical Co-Founder or CTO
• Hire and manage a team of Freelance Developers
• Outsource your MVP development to a Software Development Company/MVP App Development Company.

Onboarding a Technical Co-Founder or CTO

Finding the right technical co-founder or CTO is an arduous task for any startup founder. It truly is a “business marriage” and if you choose poorly, it could kill your startup.

As an early-stage startup, building an MVP, it’s rare you’ll have endless pockets. Bringing on a CTO or tech co-founder can get expensive in terms of both cash and equity.

I wouldn’t recommend going down this route to build your MVP – unless you can find the perfect candidate on day one. It’s important to note, the longer you spend looking for your dream tech co-founder/CTO the longer it’ll take you to get your product to market!

Hiring & Managing a Team of Freelance Developers

As a non-technical founder, hiring and managing a team of freelance developers to build your MVP is no mean feat. Unless you have some knowledge of basic tech concepts it’s not even worth considering. Simply, you risk making the wrong tech decisions for your MVP and harming your startup growth.

When building an MVP with freelance developers you also have to have to take into account the potential for commitment issues.

Freelancers will often be working on multiple projects at one time. If one of the developers you choose to help you build your MVP is juggling too many projects, you may be left waiting a long time for deliverables. This increases your time to market – which is less than ideal when launching an MVP.

Outsourcing your MVP to a Software Development Company/MVP App Development Company

There are inherent risks to outsourcing anything that isn’t a commodity and outsourcing your MVP app development is no different.

Choose the wrong MVP app development company and you risk:

• Substandard work
• Loss of control over your MVP development process
• Communication & Timezone issues (notably when offshoring)
• Misunderstanding of your MVP scope and idea

That being said, if you choose the right MVP app development company, it can be a great way to:

• Decrease your MVPs time to market
• Reduce product development costs
• Access to great technical talent at a lower cost
• Access to industry knowledge from the MVP app development company

It’s quicker to find a good MVP app development company, compared to onboarding a CTO or technical founder. This will help you speed up your all-important time to market.

If you choose to outsource to an MVP app development company, you’ll only be paying for software development when you need it. This means you can save some money and use it on other aspects of your business.

High-quality, experienced MVP app development companies will only hire the best the software developer talent pool has to offer. This means you can take advantage of great talent, with the added benefit of saving money compared to hiring top talent developers full time.

Finally, an established MVP app development company will have built hundreds of products across multiple industries.

For you, this means you won’t just have access to top talent in terms of development, but also product, UX/UI designers & project managers.

This industry experience and expertise can prove invaluable as you build your MVP, as you’ll also get a team of advisors who have tackled many of the hurdles you’re going to face.

However, with over 15k listed MVP app development companies across the globe, it can be impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So let's take a look at some of the trustworthy MVP development companies with expertise, experience and a proven track record.

The Top 5 MVP App Development Companies

I recently published an article listing The Top 20 Software Development Companies in 2020. Many of which offer MVP app development.

Here are the top five companies that offer MVP app development to help you begin your search.

1. Altar.io - Custom MVP, Product & Software Development

Pricing - $50 - $99 /hour
Location - Lisbon, Portugal
Employees - 10 - 50

Altar.io is an award-winning product & software development company.

For the last five years, they have spearheaded innovation in the custom software and MVP app development space, for both startups and big corporations.

What makes them unique is they will act as your “extended team of co-founders”. Meaning they will help you form your product and business reasoning, UX/UI design and MVP development.

They have previously provided MVP app development for clients in fintech (retail banking, private banking, corporate banking and asset management), proptech, consumer (fashion and apparel, logistics, music), marketing & advertising (MAdtech).

2. Fingent – MVP Software Development Agency

Pricing - $90 - $99 /hour
Location - White Plains, NY
Employees - 300+

Fingent’s expertise lies in enterprise web and mobile solutions. It partners with clients to deliver solutions rapidly within budget limits.

This MVP app development company build custom solutions from its headquarters in New York. Their client base ranges from startups to big corp across all major industries.

3. ScienceSoft - Software Product Development Company

Pricing - $75 - $89 /hr
Location - USA
Employees - 300+

Sciencesoft is an MVP app development company based in Texas, USA. Established for over 30 years they have a wealth of experience outsourcing software development.

They have built MVPs for clients in banking, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, communication, entertainment and more.

4. DCSL Software - Bespoke MVP App Development Company

Pricing - $50 - $99 / hr
Location - London, United Kingdom
Employees - 50 - 250

Founded in 1994, DCSL Software has grown to become one of the UK's most trusted Bespoke MVP app development companies in the industry, dedicated to helping its clients create efficiency-driving operational software as well as products and MVP apps.

5. 10Clouds - Web & Mobile MVP app Development

Pricing - $50 - $99 / hr
Location - Warsaw, Poland
Employees - 50 - 250

10Clouds is a team of 100+ experienced developers and designers based in Poland, they specialise in MVP app development for both web and mobile.

This MVP app development company work with companies with all sizes to design, develop and grow digital products following agile and lean processes.

5 Examples of Successful MVPs

Finally, here are some famous examples of MVPs. Within these MVP case studies are interesting teachable moments that any entrepreneur could benefit from.

1. Uber

Back in 2008, Travis Kalanick and Stumbleupon founder Garrett Camp were just two guys with an idea, an idea. The problem they wanted to solve? The cost of black car services.

They built a simple, quick, low-budget MVP to test a simple theory.

“People can’t necessarily afford a black car service but they don’t like taxis — what if we can create something the bridges the gap and solves the problem.”

Uber was born. Originally dubbed UberCab their MVP allowed people in San Francisco to order black car services through an iPhone app and SMS on other devices.

The app has evolved through several iterations from this simple MVP platform over the years — with lots of newer features such as fare splitting and live driver tracking to name but a few.

2. Airbnb

We can’t talk about successful Minimum Viable Products without mentioning Airbnb.

In 2007, roommates and former schoolmates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia Moved to San Francisco to start a business. The problem? They couldn’t afford the rent of their San Francisco loft apartment.

Their solution? They opened up their apartment as cheap accommodation for attendees of a nearby design conference.

This not only solved their problem of paying the rent, but it also solved the attendee’s problem attendees who had lucked out on hotel bookings.

They took pictures of the apartment, uploaded it to Craigslist and had three paying guests in no time.

They quickly realised there was a market for this. They built an MVP to validate their assumptions and prove that people would be willing to use their product (called AirBed&Breakfast).

The rest, as they say, is history. Airbnb is now valued at $18B all from creating an MVP to solve a simple problem.

3. Dropbox

Dropbox approached their Minimum Viable Product a little differently to the examples we’ve discussed so far. They built an entirely non-functional MVP.

They created a simple video explaining how the first iteration of their product would look and work.

It was a success and enabled them to collect the feedback they needed to validate their core assumptions such as market need.

4. Instagram — Originally Burbn

Instagram’s predecessor, Burbn, was initially designed to allow users to check-in and share their experiences at various locations with friends.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing for Burbn founder, Kevin Systrom. The initial app, in his words, “felt cluttered and overrun with features”. Adoption was poor, and users found the app confusing.

There was one feature, however, that users loved. Easy photo-sharing. So Systrom made a tough choice. He took the Burbn MVP and completely overhauled it:

“We went out on a limb, and basically cut everything in the Burbn app except for its photo, comment, and like capabilities. What remained was Instagram.”

They iterated on their MVP and now boast over 500 million active daily users.

5. Amazon

One of the most famous MVPs in the world is Amazon.

In the early 90s, when Jeff Bezos saw the rise of the internet he came up with the idea of selling books online. While some entrepreneurs would’ve sunk their entire bank account into a fully-functioning e-commerce store, he did something different.

He left his job as an investment banker, moved back home with his parents and built an MVP in the form of a simple website.

Despite his MVP’s basic design and minimal feature set, the original Amazon platform proved Bezos’ assumptions. Selling books online at a low cost was something everybody wanted.

They have scaled to become one of the largest companies in the world; recently experiencing explosive growth during the coronavirus pandemic.

Wrapping Up

The key to building a successful MVP relies, in part on strategy & analysis.

However, more important than either of those things is the business vision behind the solution you are creating.

Keep your user at the forefront of your mind, and deliver value at every possible moment and you will be on the way to a successful Minimum Viable Product

Good luck & thanks for reading