Product development
Top focus for all startups
Product development is one of the biggest challenges a startup has to manage in the early stages of its business.
It is the process of designing, creating and marketing new products or services to its end customers.
A startup, coming up with a new product or service needs to make sure his/her products is well differentiated and fulfills the needs of the market which in startup space is referred as Product Market Fit.
While we talk about products development, one topic that should be discussed is Minimal Viable Product (MVP).
The MVP is the basic version of a new product which ensures the maximum amount of learning about customers with minimum effort.
A core component of Lean Startup methodology is the minimum viable product (MVP) that helps in the creation of a build-measure-learn feedback loop.
After an innovator identifies a problem, he/she works towards finding a solution and eventually solves the problem.
An innovator would then develop an MVP to begin the process of expedited learning. On completion of the establishment of MVP, innovator measures how customers respond, and then learn whether to pivot or persevere.
Innovators should strategize these processes in such a way that would help them to speed up the feedback loop.
To put it simply, MVP should be able to help by focusing on the measurement and learning; it also must include actionable metrics that can demonstrate cause and influence question.
Some of the actionable metrics that are listed below: Expedite learning.Reduce wasted engineering hours.
Get the product to early customers soonest possible to gather valuable feedback.
Last week GP Accelerator held a mentor session at GP House on Product Development.
Tao Rodien, Head of Product at Ekhanei.com came as the mentor to talk about the topic with the top 5 startups.
Working in the field for over 10 years, he realized that one common thing in most tech-based companies is that they are very fast growing.
As a result, companies will face so many technical constraints in the long run.
To solve these Tao suggested startups to be MVP- minded. He said, Do things fast and focus on the most important things. In the long run, you will realize that simplicity is the key.
Tao suggested finding the right product fit and focus on that to get the list of works that should be done.
Some startups try to focus on too much in the beginning and get lost in the way.
The trick is to keep things simple for themselves and also for the customers. Customers want to avoid complexity.
He particularly suggested to startups to avoid complexity in the websites.
Startups, especially those in the tech industry, should focus on the performance of the platform.
When you look into the backlog, you need to find ways to improve so that users can easily get what they need.
Tao also suggested that the size of the homepage of any site should be a low as possible.
He said, In Bangladesh, where infrastructure is yet not so much friendly for the startup scene and internet is slow, using smalls things in the backlog is a must for the startups.
Users will leave any site if it takes longer to load. Thus it is very important to keep things small and simple.
It wont be a good plan for any startup to start with so many big plans and a mindset of achieving so much.
They need to make a list of things that should be done and rank those based on priority and difficulties.
This type of list should be made for products, tech, marketing, backlog, etc. and discussed in meetings to figure out which should be done prior. Focusing on too many things at a time will only make things complex for any startup.
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