An MVP Adds One Missing Piece: a chalk talk on selling the smallest valuable solution first in the context of your overall vision.
An MVP Adds One Missing Piece
Sell the smallest valuable solution first. Rather than spending months perfecting a complete product, startups should focus on solving one meaningful customer problem. Find customers who need a missing capability that saves time, reduces costs, improves quality, or delivers better results. By selling a limited but valuable solution, founders can validate demand, generate revenue sooner, reduce risk, and use feedback from paying customers to guide future product development.
Transcript
Entrepreneurs can spend months or years building their complete vision before discovering whether customers will actually pay for any part of it.
Technical founders want to do things “right.” We stay in the garage or our BatCave perfecting the product, telling ourselves we can’t sell until the full product is complete.
This is usually fear in disguise.
The truth? If you address a real pain point, customers will buy a partial solution that gives them some relief today. Their willingness to accept an early, limited version is one of the best tests of real need.
I advise startup founders to sell the smallest valuable result first. Instead of building every planned feature, focus on solving one meaningful problem exceptionally well.
Add one missing piece
Look for customers who already have most of the solution in place and provide one missing capability that helps them:
- save time,
- reduce errors,
- lower costs,
- improve quality, or
- obtain a better result.
This is like adding a small piece that plugs into existing infrastructure instead of asking customers to undertake a “forklift upgrade” that replaces everything they already use.
Don’t build your dream product first. Sell the smallest piece that delivers a valuable outcome, learn from paying customers, and let those lessons guide the evolution of the complete product. By reducing scope while preserving customer value, startups shorten time to market, reduce risk, generate revenue sooner, and increase the likelihood of building something customers truly want.
Related Blog Posts
- Chalk Talk: Write Down Key Hypotheses
- Expecting Too Much Too Soon
- One Mistake Entrepreneurs Make: A Great Product Will Sell Itself
- Don’t Assume Everyone is a Potential Customer
- Five Signs Your Startup May Be a Hobby
- Enhance Collaboration With Think-Write-Pair-Share
- Chalk Talk 1-2-4-1
- Chalk Talk: How Buildings Learn
Image sources: Theresa Shafer using ChatGPT with additional hand edits; (c) SKMurphy, Inc. all rights reserved.