We are deep in the product development phase at Work Market as we release our initial feature set to Beta customers. The process started in June and July, and really took off in September when we had the full engineering team on board.
Today, so many startups focus on MVP, or Minimum Viable Product. Wikipedia has a good definition of MVP, and Eric Ries is probably the most well known writer on the topic, having built a speaking career around the concept.
Me? I think it’s all horse shit. It’s a cheap way to avoid going after the real deal and make something that is a serious market-changer. At Work Market, we’ve been speaking to customers every day, working with prototypes and mockups, and keeping them involved in the process. And what we are hearing is that the minimum product isn’t minimum at all. They need enterprise software with hundreds of advanced features that work for one task or thousands of tasks at scale. Customized, global, market-changing.
The point is that ‘minimum’ is a misnomer. And Eric tries to make this clear. The problem is that the phrase has run off the tracks and companies throw it around like they know what they are doing. MVP is all about the customer first and if your customer has a lot of needs, then your MVP is really the Most Valuable Product.