MVP – A Focus on the Problem

Last week’s OnRamp session (our first hybrid live/virtual session of the year!), led by Troy Wilford, presented a fantastic, interactive workshop on how to utilize real customer feedback to conceive and build a market driven MVP solution to the problem established. One thing that stood out in this and in the prior session on idea development in different applications is the intense focus on the customer problem, to extract a customer driven solution.

It was Einstein that said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solution.” While that time segmentation may be a bit extreme, particularly on developing an MVP, Troy’s session made it clear that listening to the customer first, and interpreting some needs (customer’s don’t always know what they want), are as important as product or service design. Then when your product is out there, if folks vote for it with dollars, you have the ingredients to move forward.

Now, Time to Work on the Numbers…

So you have developed your idea into a product canvas, and you have taken the next step, and evolved that into a minimum viable product or service, with real customer feedback and revenue dollars. Now you need to develop a business model, that is going to serve as the quantitative justification for potential investors and strategic partners. This Thursday, we have Allen Bryant, a seasoned investment banker and a partner of the mission based venture capital fund Knightsgate Ventures, take us through both how to develop a financial model for your new enterprise, and what funders will look for in terms of back up assumptions and validation. Numbers aren’t everything, but its what any funder or strategic partner will look for in evaluating the viability of the business side of your new business. See you again soon.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” 
– Albert Scheweitzer