MVP Design and Customer Slicing

1. MVPs
A Founder Centric Module

2. Question
I’m building a community
of street artists and
connecting them to
brands who want to hire
them.

4. Question
You want to open
a new chain of fast
food restaurants.

6. Question
You have a crazy
product idea and
the manufacturing
setup is expensive.

11. C
ER
EX
If we had to launch
in 48 hours, what
would our product
look like?
E
IS
Question

12. t
Los Angeles Times Magazine, 1992
@robfitz

13. Quote source
@twitter

14. Three Types of
Learning

15. 1. Exploration

16. Question
I want to create an
online market place
for fine marble
sculptures.

19. 2. Pitch

20. Question
I have a web app
idea.
It will take 7 weeks
to build.

23. 3. Concierge

24. Question
I want to build a app
that recommends
the perfect
computer to buy.

26. www

27. EMAIL

28. Learning is progress.
Building stuff isn’t.

29. Let users & customers
help with the grand
plan.

30. Launch fast & iterate.
You haven’t really
started working on it
till you’ve launched.
Paul Graham

31. No, this is not an
indecent proposal. It’s
an idea to add a little
feature to Nupedia.
Larry Sanger

32. Strip features ruthlessly
to ship versions
quickly.

33. Rule of Thumb
The biggest strength
startups have is speed.
Every feature you add
reduces that advantage.

34. E
IS
We’re building a
better TV. What
features does
version 1 need?
C
ER
EX
Question

35. Rule of Thumb
You can’t focus your
product unless you know
exactly who it’s for and
what they want to
achieve.

36. Customer Slicing
?
Jobs
Obstacles
Goals
Current
Solution
How deep do you go?
They are real people (not attributes!)
It’s clear where to find them.
You’ll walk away if they aren’t a good fit.
Decision
Trigger
Interest
Trigger

37. C
ER
EX
If we just focused on a
specific customer group,
how could we focus our
product for them?
E
IS
Question

38. You have customers, they
pay you money for your
product or service and
you get profit, and it’s
such a weird notion.
David Hansson

39. C
ER
EX
What are your top risks?
What are the fastest ways to resolve them?
E
IS
Question

40. C
ER
EX
What are your fastest
risks?
How could this learning lead to coursecorrection?
E
IS
Question

41. An MVP is an
experiment that tests
a critical, falsifiable
hypothesis of your
business.

42. Question
I’m building social tools
to help conference
speakers get more
retweets, follows, etc.

45. You reach scale
by doing things
that don’t scale.

46. Question
I’m building a
marketplace for
event organizers to
find & hire speakers

50. £1040

51. Question
How can we make
a better startup
conference?

53. Question
How come thoughtleaders don’t talk to
each other?

55. Question
What topics
should we
schedule?

57. Question
Will people pay for
membership rather
than events?

59. Question
This is hard. How
can we do less
work?

61. Question
How can we seed
stronger
relationships in our
community?

63. Question
I’m building an
automatic business card
scanner for smartphones
and the tech is difficult.

65. Question
I want to start an
airline.

68. What are you most
worried about?
E
IS
Listen to the pitch as if
you were an investor.
C
ER
EX
Question

69. Design MVPs for
as many of the
risks as you can.

70. Sell it
Make it
Fake it
Ask them
Watch them
Compare it

71. THIS WEEK

72. What’s most likely to sink you?
What’s your most important metric?
What can you do this week to attack
it?

73. You keep working and you get
another brick. And then you’re like
“Ah! Now I have enough bricks - I
can do something with these
bricks!” And you have a wall.
Amy Hoy@amyhoy

74. Thx!
Salim Virani @saintsal
salim@foundercentric.com