Reminder: Readings are your responsibility. You will be expected to come to class prepared, having read the material, and ready to participate in the discussion
Logistics
- Getting grading going.
- New team and new Moodle…
- “Does not meet expectations”, “Meets expectations”, “Exceeds Expectations”
Reading
- At this point you You will be expected to come to class prepared, having read the material, and ready to participate in the discussion”
- You have read chapters 1-7
- Who has the book?
- Who has actually read those chapters (not skim, not while watching youtube)
- Let’s discuss…
Let’s discuss
IMVU Case Study
* Context
* Messaging is a feature of multiple apps
* People develop habits around using one or two apps for messaging
* Original concept was to create 3D avatars as an add-on to bridge all those apps
* What pain point was this supposed to address?
* What are “network effects”?
* What happened when IMVU first launched?
* Discuss why that happened
Zappos Case Study
Dropbox Case Study
Takeaways from Chapter 6 - Test
Summary of Chapter 6
- Introducing MVP: designed to test a hypothesis. Not necessarily a prototype.
- Visionaries or early adopters accept in fact expect a product that is incomplete. They want to be ahead. Early adopters want to feel special: be the first one on the block with a product, or have an unfair advantage over other companies.
- Also realize that if you leave out features, customer will often fill in the blanks in their mind giving you info about what feature to add or not.
- How can you test whether 10% of trial users will install, if you can’t even get trial users?
- MVP: any work beyond whats needed to learn / prove the hypothesis is waste!
- Food on the Table: I thought it an odd idea: delivering customized recipes based on specials in the local grocery store. An extended scenario of an MVP is described. Lessons:
- While CEO was visiting customer to learn what recipes would be worth while, this very inefficient MVP is different from a restaurant where the owner is serving customers personally. In the former case, we are trying to learn. In the case of the restaurant, this is not a test, it is the real product.
- Aardvark uses “wizard of oz testing” which to me sounds just like concierge!
- Is the MVP philosophy at odds with ‘quality’?
- No. But don’t build quality, or beauty because you assume it is a customer requirement.
- Sometimes that’s not what matters initially.
- If you discover that your MVP is failing because people think its ugly or cannot figure out how to use it, that’s something else
- Remove any feature, process or effort that does not contribute directly to learning.
- MVP thoughts
- Customers don’t care how difficult or costly it is to provide something; and the thing they love most might be very minor in your eyes
- Role of courage: you need to dare to respond to what you learn even if it is not what you thought or intuited.
- Commit to iterate
- Even if the MVP fails decide up front that you will pivot and iterate
Discussion Questions for Chapter 4-6
- Preparation
- Someone to present Zappos, Kodak, HP, VLS cases, CFPB,
- What are some of the hypotheses that had to be tested in Zappos case? List them.
- Are people willing to buy premium shoes online?
- What kinds of shoes, and prices do better?
- Will customers will appreciate a very liberal return policy over a big discount?
- What kind of photography is required? Will videos help sales?
- What is a concierge product and in Zappos case?
- What are “Leap of Faith” Assumptions? What were they for Zappos? What were they for HP? What were they for Kodak? How are they different from other assumptions?
- Those which if not true will cause the business to fail or need to be rethought. The riskiest assumptions. Crux of the vision.
- Zappos: People will buy shoes online
- HP: Employees have a desire to do volunteering
- Whats an MVP? What are the kinds of MVP? What would an MVP be for your project?
- video
- web site
- sign up for beta waiting list
- concierge product
- mockup/prototype/3d rendering
- What does “Genchi Gembutsu” mean to you? “Go see for yourself”?
- Give an example of analysis paralysis
- Dropbox: Were there previous products? What was the key leap of faith value assumption? How could it be tested in an MVP?
- yes there were lots. But they were all hard to use
- that if the product was seamless to use people would in fact flock to it
- hard to test in an mvp because it was difficult to prove seamlessness
- but then they made a video to fake the product
- added tons of people to the beta waiting list.
- What did you think of Food on the Table service?
- What about Craig’s List, eBay? Can you think of products that are kind of known for their roughness? First release of iPod? Original cordless phones, original cell phones? Original laptops?
- Seems very complicated and elaborate
- Is it solving a real problem?
- What is the direct connection between the mvp and the hypotheses?
- An mvp should clearly be designed to validate a hypothesis.
- What are some MVP Challenges?
- IP protection might be impeded if you reveal your product too early. You might loose your ability to patent
- Competitors might learn about your product and rip it off. In fact the biggest challenge is to be noticed at all! Ideas are cheap!
- Damaging the brand? You should be able to insulate yourself by making sure customers know this is a test or a alpha product, but worse comes to worse, give it a separate identity. Change the name!
- Bad for morale: team gets discouraged by bad news or failure to penetrate
- Is the MVP approach at odds with a good quality? What are the risks and are they worth it?
- give the company or the name a bad reputation?
- the product concept may be good but because of bad quality it is not appreciated?
- OTOH in the startup phase we don’t know who the user or the product is so how do we know what quality is?
- Is the MVP approach workable for hardware products?
- Why not? Because it costs too much to create an MVP
- No: MVP is not necessarily a prototype!
Takeaways from Chapter 7 - Measure
Case Study
MVP Overview
- “It’s not necessarily minimal nor a product nor viable!”
- MVP is not a perfectly descriptive term
- Smallest increment of work that will test a hypothesis (or more than one)
- You need to be able to say what hypothesis it will test and how you will judge the result.
- The key is that it is MINIMUM!
- MVP is always always related to a hypothesis (or more than one)
- Who and where do you show your MVP?
- Product Reviews of other products might give you names
- Other feedback fora
- Think about: where do they congregate?
- Who are they?
- Find a way to observe them
Discussion: Does MVP mean that quality is not important
What role does the MVP Play
- Goal is to test articulated hypotheses
- MVP different from a prototype, beta test, mockup because of it’s explicit purpose
- Visionaries or early adopters accept expect a product that is incomplete. They want to be ahead
- Early adopters want to feel special: be the first one on the block with a product, or have an unfair advantage over other companies.
- If you leave out features, customer often fills in the blanks which may suggest missing features
Types of MVPs
This is a A catalog of approaches to collecting “out of the building” information on the journey to product market fit. Click on the links to learn more about each approach.
Thank you. Questions?
(random Image from picsum.photos)