ZAVOD-IT

How to create a cheap MVP

I came to my friends after jacuzzi yesterday and got the very good conversation with their Germany neighbor who work on the logistic company. He gave me one more point that not everybody understanding Lean Startup by Steve Blank, MVP(minimum viable product), a market analytics etc. I thought everybody know about it because it's Silicon Valley, but people continue to find a technical co-founder for their startup and buried their ideas because don't have an opportunity to pay developer in-house. It's so funny when people looking for CTO many months and then get a result for couple months because it’s simple product. So, that's why this post exists.

So, firstly everything starts from startup idea. Everybody has few ideas for startup from current job. You just see some problems in your business process or see ways to save through automation and something like that. In other words, you have a hypothesis, which if confirmed, will make the world better, and you a billionaire.

How people do: leave from work, open a corporation, hiring a couple of employees who are trying to develop the product and a few months later the company closed, and not waiting for release because the costs are too high in the Valley. Developer costs $ 150-$ 200k per year. Again, get a job.

Other people never try to start their startup because it is too expensive.

Few founders can raise some money, usually $100-300k, but the costs are too high, the majority did not reach the next round, a bankrupt on the road. 

The good point, IMHO, to be a developer because you can create a project by yourself. But you have to have some liquid skills because if you work in a big corporation like Google and Facebook you usually use inside environment which doesn't exist in the external world. 

The compromise option that many people underestimate, but which often leads, in my opinion to the further growth of the company - is the creation of MVP without leave from your current job.

So, MVP can solve the problem, which you see, in a simplified form. MVP involves the implementation of the project at a sufficient level so that you can see that market need your product. At the same time, thousands of related feature that you see may be missed until the next period.

Algorithm is made your MVP as soon as possible, check the market idea and continue to develop or close the startup. If you business model works you can raise money on it, hire good developers, leave your job and develop new features. If you got bad traction you can just pivot it or to close and start next one. That's how it works. You all the time try new startup idea and looking for some great traction.

The cheapest way to create MVP to make it by yourself. It's very good if you have an opportunity to do it, but in many cases you can spend couple hours per day for you own startup, so development can continue too much time. Another side often your time cost too much and it's more reasonably to involve another guy who can make this job. It can be outsourced from India or Ukraine or other country and there are some problems with it because Indian developers usually write no so good code and Russian developers write it too difficult but it's theme for another post. 

Later this developers can become part of your team but in the first you have to check your business idea and get good traction.

I was involved in more than 100 startups, I have company Zavod It-startups, that's why I confidently talk about it.

By the way, we going to start to work with the German and who knows, maybe it will become him by the future billionaire…

Good luck!