In 2008, on the tail end of the most severe worldwide economic crisis in living memory, I co-founded a digital startup with my housemate. We bootstrapped the company by leveraging our existing freelance client relationships, creating websites, web apps, and online games to generate capital to fund the development of our own IP.
Our offices were based in a well-known city centre Bristol landmark (a contemporary art museum and hub for the local creative and technology scene) and part of an incubator programme run by a local university. We found ourselves surrounded by dozens of bright eyed startup founders, with big ideas and even bigger dreams, some of who continue to run very successful businesses to this day. We ran our own events and community groups and were becoming well-known faces on the Bristol tech startup scene. It was one of the most exciting times of my life.
However, in the end, we failed to successfully take our core product to market. And after three and a half years of blood, sweat and tears - we became a statistic: Over 70% of startups fail between year 2-5.
If I knew back then what I know now, I would have done things very differently. But would that knowledge have translated to product success? On reflection, probably not, but the lessons learnt were invaluable.
Since then, I have delivered digital products for well over 100+ clients of varying sizes and sectors in the digital space. Through my own startup experience, I’ve been able to gently guide other teams and founders around the common pitfalls that come with the territory and avoid making the same mistakes we made along the way.
There is a vast amount of literature available on navigating the world of startups, but one of the best (and with the most practical advice) is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I frequently revisit this book, and classify it as essential reading for anyone working in the startup scene.
The core concepts Ries touches on are as relevant today as they ever were. The most important premise, and one which also seems to be the least well understood from my experience as both a project manager and a product manager, is the concept of the 'Minimum Viable Product' (MVP).
Startup ideas, especially in the digital product space, often do not come fully formed. There is a large amount of trial and error involved. This equates to risk, whether it’s project risk, product risk, or business risk.
Inexperience and mismanagement of these risks is where our digital startup started to falter. My co-founder and I had a difference of opinions: I wanted to take what we already had built, sell it to as many people as possible, and refine it based on real-world experience (to start recouping some of the investment). He, on the other hand, wanted to improve the perceived quality of the product, chiefly by adding more features, with the hope of enticing more customers with new offerings. In our own ways, we were both trying to mitigate risk: he was addressing product risk, while I focused on business risk. But, it was our attempt to tackle too much at once, ultimately impacting overall project risk, that led to our startup’s failure.
Ries calls the riskiest elements of a startup’s plan (the parts on which everything depends) ‘leap-of-faith assumptions’, and it is these assumptions that need to be tested, and can be, with an MVP.
We were attempting to take a product to market, based largely on assumptions. Assumptions on how customers would use the product, what value they would get from it, and the rate of uptake from new users.
To mitigate risk, we employ strategy. Investing larger amounts of effort in your product in an untested market has higher risk potential (and often sees founders buying cheap, buying twice) than starting small, failing fast, and learning faster. These are core drivers to the MVP approach.
For startups, the role of strategy, and strategic thinking, is to help founders figure out the right questions to ask.
The process of 'validated learning' allows startups to be more scientific in their approach to asking questions. By utilising scientific methodologies (creating a hypothesis, testing it, and iterating based on the results), we can reduce the uncertainty of outcomes whilst validating your product in the marketplace.
Running these experiments grants entrepreneurs the ability to test each element of their vision, measure the results, and use that data to improve their product. This is encompassed in the simple premise of 'build-measure-learn, repeat'.
In Ries’ Lean Startup model, every product, every feature, every marketing campaign - everything a startup does - is understood to be an experiment designed to achieve validated learning. It gives founders the opportunity to step back from their vision and ask themselves, ‘Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?’.
Working towards an MVP, rather than trying to achieve the ‘perfect product’ from the get-go, helps entrepreneurs, founders and business owners start the process of learning as quickly as possible. An MVP doesn’t reduce your ideas to the smallest product imaginable; it unlocks the fastest way to navigate the build-measure-learn feedback loop with minimal effort.
The key lesson of the MVP, and one that should not be overlooked, is that any work beyond what’s necessary to start learning is a waste, no matter how important it may have seemed at the time. And sadly it’s a lesson that is often learned too late.
The MVP requires the courage to test one’s assumptions and the willingness to put yourself out there, often to be proved wrong but only to become better in the long run. And the only way to succeed in a competitive market is to learn faster than anyone else.
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At ASquared, we care about seeing great people with great ideas succeed. In our digital product agency we build products for startup and scaleup organisations who utilise the startup mentality. We use tried and tested techniques and approaches, alongside blue-sky thinking, to minimise risk and increase the chances of success. Why not get in touch and see how we can help you.
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