4 Things We Love About Building MVPs
Nothing is more rewarding from a software development agency’s perspective than seeing our clients’ apps and businesses blossom on the market. After all, in today’s bustling startup scene, turning an idea into a working product people love and use is no easy feat! In fact, getting to this point in startup growth can be an arduous road full of challenges and potential mistakes lurking just around the corner. It certainly doesn’t have to, though!
At Bright Inventions, we love building MVPs for startups for a reason – it’s the most time-effective way to validate an idea on the market before our clients decide to go “all-in”. Below, we’ve opened up a little on the reasons why we enjoy building MVPs as much as we do.
Dive into MVP development
1. We love helping our customers turn good ideas into great software
As a software development agency, we’re thrilled with the opportunity to interact with some of the brightest, most innovative teams from around the globe. Our roads cross at various stages of startup maturity. Some businesses already have a ready-to-implement plan, while others are looking for both strategic and technological guidance and have no more than a rough concept that needs to be verified.
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day – the same goes for turning good ideas into disruptive solutions. In this case, a well-defined MVP serves as the foundation for great software. When we first sit down with our clients (either live or via video conference), our goal is to agree on a quick-to-market, cost-effective list of features for their first working version of the product. This way, if the MVP of the app is developed and launched, but turns out not to be successful, our clients can quickly rethink their strategy without having to click „undo” all the way. Respectively, if the MVP proves to be a great success, then they know they are going in the right direction.
Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Twitter – though it may be hard to believe given their current sizes, have all kicked off with a “barebone product” before taking the world and becoming what they are today. Now, those are some MVP success stories, aren’t they?
2. We help entrepreneurs see if their ideas stand a chance on the competitive market
I think it’s safe to say that we’re equally excited as our clients to see what the initial response to a released MVP is. You see, the great thing about MVPs is that they let our clients validate their assumptions about the target audience in a timely manner. Namely, while they might suspect that the software is an answer to a genuine need, they won’t know for sure until they’ve actually put out a working product and observed user’s behaviour.
MVPs put an emphasis on testing and observing market reaction to a new concept, and minimize assumptive work which is subjective and risky in nature. Putting out an MVP will tell you more than enough to understand how you can create an amazing product that will, in the long run, stand the chance against established competition.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
But how do we derive sufficient information about the users who started using our MVP? How do we know how they use it, or why and when they decide to abandon it? Here’s where an experienced software development company like ourselves can come in and set up an analytics tool that tracks the right data and user behaviour. It takes a lot of prior experience to observe and know where to look (despite years of expertise, we always learn something new ourselves!), but once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll gain access to invaluable data.
Observing how users interact with an MVP allows our clients to focus on what caught their users’ attention the most, and either delete or upgrade underperforming processes or features. It also sets the groundwork for planning an effective marketing strategy built around the actual value that proved to be most useful to users.
3. MVPs set the groundwork for fruitful cooperation
You’ve guessed it – building an MVP let’s both clients and ourselves test out way more than the product itself. During the time spent on drafting and developing the MVP, both sides get to see what it’s like working together. By the time we finish the first phase of the project, we can all picture what can be expected if we decide to work in the long run.
Do we have the same understanding of the app’s goal? Have we worked out an atmosphere of openness and creativity where we enthusiastically discuss each other’s ideas? Or maybe there’s something we could do better as far as the workflow goes?
Bottom line – through feedback collected during the MVP phase, we become even better business partners in the future.
Last, but not least...
4. On a personal and professional level, we grow through interacting with our clients
While clients hire us for help in developing their products, it doesn’t mean we can’t learn a thing or two ourselves throughout the experience.
You see – through working with various companies, we get to meet both like-minded people and those who totally revolutionize the way we think about things. After all, startup founders are some of the most inspiring crowd.
Working with our customers teaches us humility, shows how we can all challenge the status quo to create better products, and is a source of constant inspiration. We can’t picture a better environment for both self and professional growth.
Summary
As you can see, building a first working version of an app is one of the most valuable, rewarding experiences for an MVP development agency. Seeing how we help our customers succeed strengthens our sense of purpose and provides motivation for more to come.
