1 00:00:01,500 --> 00:00:05,000 I'd like to talk about how we validate our processes. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:11,800 One of the techniques that comes up, often is the minimum viable product. And what's interesting 3 00:00:11,800 --> 00:00:15,600 is that the meaning of the minimum, viable product has 4 00:00:15,700 --> 00:00:19,900 taken a lot of twists and turns since its Inception. These days, I'm 5 00:00:19,900 --> 00:00:23,800 seeing a lot of companies take it to mean Phase 1. The 6 00:00:23,800 --> 00:00:27,800 first phase of the actual product itself. 7 00:00:27,800 --> 00:00:31,700 But in reality, the minimum viable product is the 8 00:00:31,700 --> 00:00:33,900 smallest thing that we can make. 9 00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:38,100 Or do to test our hypothesis. 10 00:00:39,900 --> 00:00:43,900 That is the actual MVP. It is the first version of our product 11 00:00:44,900 --> 00:00:48,100 but it's the smallest thing that we can make or do 12 00:00:49,300 --> 00:00:51,400 to answer the questions that we have. 13 00:00:53,400 --> 00:00:57,900 And there are different types of MVPs that feed it to different types of experiments that help us 14 00:00:57,900 --> 00:01:01,200 validate whether our assumptions are 15 00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:05,400 correct or incorrect and I'd like to go through three 16 00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:09,900 examples of MVPs that feed into specific types of 17 00:01:09,900 --> 00:01:12,900 experiments. The first being a pre-sales 18 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:17,800 experiment where you can use something like a landing page. Your Kickstarter will talk about that. 19 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:22,800 The second is a call to action button sometimes called the fake door. And the last is 20 00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:23,100 the 21 00:01:23,300 --> 00:01:26,100 Years for The Wizard of Oz MVP. 22 00:01:28,500 --> 00:01:32,900 Pre-sales MVP and kickstarter's a terrific way to test this, but any kind of landing 23 00:01:32,900 --> 00:01:36,900 page or opportunity for customers to commit to backing. Your 24 00:01:36,900 --> 00:01:40,500 product is an opportunity to test your ideas. Kickstarter 25 00:01:40,700 --> 00:01:44,700 essentially, you have to create a marketing page. That sells your idea that 26 00:01:44,700 --> 00:01:48,900 convinces people to give you money for your idea. You 27 00:01:48,900 --> 00:01:52,700 actually don't have to create anything other than the marketing 28 00:01:52,700 --> 00:01:56,700 page for the site itself and whether you use a Kickstarter page or a 29 00:01:56,700 --> 00:01:57,600 landing page that the 30 00:01:58,100 --> 00:02:02,800 Vibes your product and asks, people to sign up or to back it or to tell 31 00:02:02,800 --> 00:02:05,400 their friends about it or to give you an email address. 32 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:11,700 All of these things are very low threshold experiments that 33 00:02:11,700 --> 00:02:15,900 allow you to practice a couple of things. The first and foremost is to understand how 34 00:02:15,900 --> 00:02:19,800 to tell the story of your product. For example, you may build a 35 00:02:19,800 --> 00:02:23,900 landing page or a Kickstarter page and you may not get any backers or any 36 00:02:23,900 --> 00:02:27,800 clicks or any conversions. Does that mean your idea is a bad idea. 37 00:02:28,900 --> 00:02:32,600 Maybe or maybe that you have not told your story in such a in a 38 00:02:32,600 --> 00:02:36,700 compelling enough, fashion that people are buying in. So you have the opportunity to 39 00:02:36,700 --> 00:02:37,900 iterate that forward 40 00:02:38,900 --> 00:02:42,500 Very quickly and very rapidly. You can get a landing page up and 41 00:02:42,500 --> 00:02:46,900 running in a half a day with halfway decent design. You can certainly get a Kickstarter page up and 42 00:02:46,900 --> 00:02:50,900 running very very quickly to see if people will give you money. And again you don't have 43 00:02:50,900 --> 00:02:54,900 to build a single part of your product. You're promising a service, 44 00:02:55,100 --> 00:02:59,900 you're promising a product, and you're asking people if they're willing, if it's if it's 45 00:02:59,900 --> 00:03:03,500 compelling enough of a proposition for them to give up some kind of 46 00:03:03,500 --> 00:03:06,200 information or potentially, even to give up money for it. 47 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:11,500 And that's a terrific signal from the market that says, yes, this is interesting to me. 48 00:03:12,800 --> 00:03:16,900 And in the process, you're learning how to market the product, how to tell the 49 00:03:16,900 --> 00:03:20,700 story, what words to use, how to be compelling 50 00:03:20,700 --> 00:03:24,300 in describing the benefits of this particular service or 51 00:03:24,300 --> 00:03:25,000 product? 52 00:03:26,300 --> 00:03:30,900 Get Low, Low threshold, low cost, lots of 53 00:03:30,900 --> 00:03:34,800 learning, lots of iterations. And what you're doing in the process is also you're 54 00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:38,600 collecting a list of people who are interested in using your product in the 55 00:03:38,600 --> 00:03:42,900 future. So when the product does exist, you can actually let them know that this thing 56 00:03:42,900 --> 00:03:46,900 exists and engage them further in later experiments that are of 57 00:03:46,900 --> 00:03:47,900 higher fidelity. 58 00:03:50,900 --> 00:03:54,500 Another type of any piece of the call to action button, sometimes called the button to 59 00:03:54,500 --> 00:03:58,800 Nowhere or the fake door. And the reason for this is that 60 00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:02,800 this the the idea behind this is that it's cheaper 61 00:04:02,900 --> 00:04:06,900 to create a fake version of a feature than it is to actually 62 00:04:06,900 --> 00:04:10,700 create the feature. For example, this is this is a company 63 00:04:10,700 --> 00:04:14,700 called speak their startup out of Washington DC and they create an 64 00:04:14,700 --> 00:04:18,000 online conference calling service surprisingly enough. 65 00:04:19,200 --> 00:04:23,900 One of the features that they were testing was the ability for you to put your number into the 66 00:04:23,900 --> 00:04:27,700 service and have the service dial you into your conference 67 00:04:27,700 --> 00:04:31,700 call. So no more remembering 800 numbers and long pins. 68 00:04:31,800 --> 00:04:35,800 Simply put your number in press the call me now button. And your dialed into the 69 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:39,800 call, it calls your number and dials you in this is an extremely expensive and 70 00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:43,900 risky feature for them to implement especially as a start-up with limited Runway and 71 00:04:43,900 --> 00:04:47,700 limited funds. And so the first thing that they did was they 72 00:04:47,700 --> 00:04:48,800 implemented a form. 73 00:04:49,100 --> 00:04:53,500 That provided the talked about this feature, that provided the ability to 74 00:04:53,500 --> 00:04:56,400 engage in this feature, but that actually didn't do anything. 75 00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:01,900 It's a fake button. They can get this form up and running in two hours and 76 00:05:01,900 --> 00:05:05,900 as people transacted through their system they got a 77 00:05:05,900 --> 00:05:09,800 sense of whether or not people actually wanted this feature. 78 00:05:11,300 --> 00:05:15,600 Within the context of use, of their application. So if you went to your 79 00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:19,400 customers and you ask them, hey, would you like this feature? Oh yeah, 80 00:05:19,400 --> 00:05:23,700 absolutely. That feature sounds great. I'd love that. But then when you 81 00:05:23,700 --> 00:05:27,800 actually build that feature, would they actually use it is unclear. People 82 00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:30,600 say into and do two very different things. 83 00:05:31,900 --> 00:05:35,700 The buttons to know where allow you to create the perception of a feature 84 00:05:35,900 --> 00:05:39,900 within the workflow of your application and it's 85 00:05:39,900 --> 00:05:43,700 a capture people's clicks, their intent to use the feature 86 00:05:44,100 --> 00:05:46,000 within the context of views. 87 00:05:47,600 --> 00:05:51,500 Now, of course, you can't put a bunch of these in your product because you end up with a Swiss cheese 88 00:05:51,500 --> 00:05:55,700 product with a bunch of links that don't do anything. And as a level of 89 00:05:55,700 --> 00:05:59,900 frustration that's going to drive your customers away. So your goal 90 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:04,800 is to get insight very very quickly that there's interest in this feature that people are clicking 91 00:06:04,800 --> 00:06:06,900 through to capture those clicks. 92 00:06:08,300 --> 00:06:12,800 And then to decide whether or not to invest in this, in the take this down. Now, in this case, especially if 93 00:06:12,800 --> 00:06:16,600 you're working with an existing product in an existing user base, you can 94 00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:18,700 figure out who click this button as well. 95 00:06:19,900 --> 00:06:23,900 And once they fall into your mouse trap, you can get back to them and say, Hey listen, you fell into 96 00:06:23,900 --> 00:06:27,600 this feature that we're just testing. It's not ready. Maybe we can give you a month's free 97 00:06:27,600 --> 00:06:31,600 service just because we appreciate your participation in our test, right? To 98 00:06:31,600 --> 00:06:35,900 sue things over at the click of the button will generate some kind of a form. This 99 00:06:35,900 --> 00:06:39,600 is oh you caught us off guard or we're not ready to with this 100 00:06:39,600 --> 00:06:43,800 particular feature but we'll let you know when it's ready. The 101 00:06:43,800 --> 00:06:47,700 goal again is to capture a threshold something that says to you 102 00:06:47,700 --> 00:06:49,600 based on the number of users that you've got traffic 103 00:06:49,700 --> 00:06:53,900 Looking through your system that says of the 10,000 people that use our service 104 00:06:53,900 --> 00:06:57,300 every day. If we get 50 people to click this button, it's worth the 105 00:06:57,300 --> 00:07:01,800 investment and so you can you can get that Insight very very quickly 106 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:06,800 and learn whether it's worth to invest further in this beyond the two hours. It takes to set 107 00:07:06,800 --> 00:07:07,500 this up. 108 00:07:11,500 --> 00:07:15,900 The last of the next type of MVP is the concierge or The Wizard of Oz 109 00:07:15,900 --> 00:07:19,400 and would be the concept here is that there's there's a person behind the 110 00:07:19,400 --> 00:07:23,100 curtain, running the service, there's a facade of a service. 111 00:07:24,700 --> 00:07:28,900 And if there's a person behind that facade manually running what appears 112 00:07:28,900 --> 00:07:30,400 to be a digital service. 113 00:07:32,400 --> 00:07:36,800 The example, I like to use is a service that has shut down. Now called City Pockets 114 00:07:37,200 --> 00:07:41,800 City Pockets was a service set up, during the Heyday of the daily deal 115 00:07:41,800 --> 00:07:45,500 craze LivingSocial and Groupon, and people were not redeeming their 116 00:07:45,500 --> 00:07:49,600 daily deals. They were buying a bunch of them and they were losing track of them. And so the 117 00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:53,800 service that was set up, here was called City pockets in the idea, was this, this was a 118 00:07:53,800 --> 00:07:55,500 wallet for your daily deals. 119 00:07:56,400 --> 00:07:58,000 So, you would sign up for the service. 120 00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:03,500 You would get an email address. You would forward all of your daily deals to this email 121 00:08:03,500 --> 00:08:07,900 address. The daily deal email would be automatically parsed 122 00:08:07,900 --> 00:08:09,700 into a database under your name. 123 00:08:11,800 --> 00:08:15,900 And you can come back here and redeem the deals as needed or the service would email you. And 124 00:08:15,900 --> 00:08:19,800 let you know that your deal is about to expire and you should come here and redeem it 125 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:25,900 Now the most expensive part of setting up the service was the automatic parsing of the database, 126 00:08:25,900 --> 00:08:27,300 the automation, of the database. 127 00:08:28,900 --> 00:08:32,900 And so the woman who started this company created a concierge MVP and 128 00:08:32,900 --> 00:08:36,600 she created literally two pages for this product. There was the 129 00:08:36,600 --> 00:08:40,600 landing page that promoted the service and taught her how to sell and tell her 130 00:08:40,600 --> 00:08:44,700 story with a sign-up button. And there was the sign up 131 00:08:44,700 --> 00:08:48,700 page, which allowed people to sign up for the service. Everything 132 00:08:48,700 --> 00:08:52,900 else behind the scenes was done manually. When you signed up for the 133 00:08:52,900 --> 00:08:56,000 service, she would generate that email to you. 134 00:08:57,100 --> 00:09:00,600 every time that you forwarded, a daily deal to that email address, 135 00:09:01,900 --> 00:09:05,300 She would manually parse out that daily deal into the 136 00:09:05,300 --> 00:09:06,000 database. 137 00:09:07,100 --> 00:09:11,900 And give you a heads up as your daily deals, were about to expire. Now for 138 00:09:11,900 --> 00:09:15,800 her, there was a threshold of 500 emails a day. When she got 139 00:09:15,800 --> 00:09:19,900 500 of these emails a day, she could no longer support that process 140 00:09:19,900 --> 00:09:23,400 manually and it was worthwhile at that point you get clear signal from the 141 00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:27,600 marketplace. That said it's worthwhile for you to invest in the 142 00:09:27,600 --> 00:09:29,400 automation of the service. 143 00:09:30,400 --> 00:09:34,300 Until then there was no proof that people would actually use the service 144 00:09:34,900 --> 00:09:38,500 to a level where it was worth investing. In once she hit that 145 00:09:38,500 --> 00:09:42,700 threshold, she hired a team and invested in the back end of that service. 146 00:09:42,800 --> 00:09:46,700 But until then that service was literally a landing page and a 147 00:09:46,700 --> 00:09:50,800 sign of page and a couple of people behind the scenes. Moving data around between 148 00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:52,500 databases and email programs. 149 00:09:55,700 --> 00:09:59,900 What she did here with d risk, her software project she could have built 150 00:09:59,900 --> 00:10:03,600 the whole thing from from the beginning. But if people didn't want the 151 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:07,600 service, or didn't use the service, that would have been waste. She didn't 152 00:10:07,600 --> 00:10:11,800 know if that was going to be the way it worked. And so she was slowly moving 153 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:13,100 from doubt to certainty. 154 00:10:14,800 --> 00:10:18,700 The definition of MVP that I laid 155 00:10:18,700 --> 00:10:22,300 out a few minutes ago, was the smallest thing that you can make or 156 00:10:22,300 --> 00:10:26,600 do to test your hypothesis. This is an example of the smallest 157 00:10:26,600 --> 00:10:30,400 thing that you can do to test your hypothesis is a non-technical 158 00:10:30,600 --> 00:10:34,800 MVP. The company here is order in 159 00:10:35,000 --> 00:10:39,900 there a white label food delivery infrastructure. Startup based in New York City, the 160 00:10:39,900 --> 00:10:43,900 idea being that if you'd like to offer food delivery either through your service or 161 00:10:43,900 --> 00:10:44,100 through. 162 00:10:44,300 --> 00:10:48,500 Your hotel chain. You can they provide the pipes, you provide The 163 00:10:48,500 --> 00:10:52,900 Branding, and voila, instant food, delivery services, with 164 00:10:52,900 --> 00:10:56,900 your name, on it. The gentleman who started this company was not a designer, 165 00:10:57,000 --> 00:11:01,400 not an engineer. Not a product manager. He was a Salesman 166 00:11:02,400 --> 00:11:06,900 and so he had a vision for this and he wanted to test the waters and so he did 167 00:11:06,900 --> 00:11:10,100 what he knew, how to do, which was sell, he wrote a 168 00:11:10,100 --> 00:11:14,100 contract that describe the service, it had a price for the service. 169 00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:18,600 Yes, and it said you don't have to pay me until I actually deliver the service, 170 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:23,900 and he went out, and he sold that contract, that contract was 171 00:11:23,900 --> 00:11:27,600 his minimally viable product, that was his MVP. And his 172 00:11:27,600 --> 00:11:31,900 threshold for Success was 10 signed contracts. When 173 00:11:31,900 --> 00:11:35,800 he had 10 signed contracts, he then went and hired the 174 00:11:35,800 --> 00:11:39,400 team and started to build this company, which exists 175 00:11:39,400 --> 00:11:40,000 today. 176 00:11:40,600 --> 00:11:44,800 He tested his hypotheses, doing the smallest things, that he knew 177 00:11:44,800 --> 00:11:45,500 how to do. 178 00:11:46,700 --> 00:11:50,900 And I would urge you to test your assumptions and your hypotheses based on 179 00:11:50,900 --> 00:11:54,800 the things that you're very good. At one of the things that we can make or do 180 00:11:55,100 --> 00:11:59,900 to test our assumptions to take us a step closer from doubt 181 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:04,500 to certainty and to de-risk the project as quickly and 182 00:12:04,500 --> 00:12:08,800 efficiently as possible. That's your minimum viable product and that's your 183 00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:09,700 experiment.