Do you wish to know how some of the most successful businesses started their product journey through the MVP process? They started small, tested market awareness, gathered feedback from the users, and then developed actual products. They did not sit quietly after this stage. These companies iteratively improved the performance and user experience to make the product a success. Who are these businesses? We have listed 10 giant companies with minimum viable product examples.
Table of Contents
What is The Minimum Viable Product (MPV) ?
The key idea behind the "Minimum viable product (MVP)” is producing a part of a product or service that is enough to give customers an understanding of the actual product experience. MVPs are widely used in the early stages of business. This approach allows businesses to determine whether a product will be accepted in the marketplace or not based on real-time customer feedback.
Importance of Minimal Viable Product for Your Business
Minimum viable product (MVP) has several benefits for companies at product development stage. When you first launch your MPV, it allows you to learn the customer's approach towards your product. You learn about their expectations better. Let’s discuss some more benefits of MVP.
Risk reduction: Businesses that first decide to validate their product strategy with an MVP have less risk of product failure. They gather feedback from early adapters that helps them develop exactly what they demand.
Monetization: Anything you produce should have a positive return on investment. Monetization of digital assets is a firm way to get expected return. Minimal viable product helps to build sustainable monetization strategy for the future.
Learning curve: The most important part of product development is learning about the product. Just product testing itself does not give expected results most of the time. Minimal viable product ( MVP) expands the learning curve for both developers and users.
How to Start a Digital Business with Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Are you an entrepreneur? Looking to develop the first MVP of your digital business?
We support startup businesses in developing MVPs. It may seem like an easy move, but it takes lots of dedication. Outsourcing back office support for developing minimum viable products reduces a lot of burden from the entrepreneurs.
Step 1: Develop the idea of your products
Step 2: Outline the total plan of developing the product
Step 3: Contact ASL BPO
Step 4: Discuss your plan, tell us your requirements
Step 5: Choose your back office executives
Step 6: Watch your MVP development in process
Before that, let’s see the minimum viable product examples of some giant companies who succeeded.
10 Minimum Viable Product Examples from Leading Companies
1. Airbnb
This billion-dollar company wasn’t built in a day. In 2007, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesk, two roommates from San Francisco, noticed problems finding accommodations. All nearby hotels were booked. They decided to find a solution to this problem.
The solution they had is to see if people are willing to pay at someone’s house rather than staying in the hotels. They targeted tech conference attendees. At the beginning, Airbnb only had a simple website named " AirBed&Breakfast" . Airbnb MVP was a success when they found three people to stay at their flat.
Today, the company is known as Airbnb, and their successful MVP has a lot more features than it had in the beginning.
2. Amazon
Amazon was created by Jeff Bezos and first began as an online bookstore; that was Amazon’s MVP. Consumers found millions of books under one platform. The MVP only had three main parts: a simple Amazon website, a list of books, and manual order filling.
During those times, when a customer orders a book, Jeff physically goes to bookstores to collect the book and deliver it to clients. Then, slowly, Amazon invested in developing more features like a book listing system, rating options, payment methods, etc.
Now, Amazon has its own stores, fulfillment centers, distribution centers, and many more.
3. Angellist
Launched in 2010, Angellist aimed to connect founders with investors. Later, it designed itself to help companies find employees. Currently, the company is known as Wellfound.
Angellist did not have to go extra miles to justify their vision. They already had a bunch of emails from their investors. The founders, Babak Nivi and Naval Ravikant, saw great potential for their ideas after checking on the feedback.
4. Buffer
Buffer is software that lets you schedule social media posts. Buffer’s first MVP was a simple website. The website only explained how Buffer works. Then, they collected the email addresses of people who subscribed to get service from Buffer.
Now, we all know that buffer’s minimum viable product succeeded. Buffer’s founder, Joel Gascoigne, was coding the upgraded features himself. It took him 7 weeks to create the first version of buffer.
5. Dropbox
Dropbox nailed it by introducing their minimum viable product as an explainer video on Digg. The CEOs of Dropbox, Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston, wanted to see if people were interested in file signing. They did not build any software or apps before ensuring that they had no risk investing in them.
They went from 100,000 people in 2008 to 4 million registered users in 2010. This was exceptionally successful.
6. Etsy
Rob Kalin conceived the idea for Etsy when he was in need of selling off his wooden-cased computers. He found that the price on eBay was too high. He discovered that the eBay price was excessive. He therefore made the decision to resolve it. He created a website for people to sell stuff they manufactured themselves. The MVP of Etsy began in this form. Kalin was able to quickly and cost-effectively validate his idea thanks to the MVP technique.
7. Facebook
The Facebook MVP was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Back then, the platform was built to connect students at Harvard University. The membership was open to Harvard students only. It only had eight basic features: creating a user account with a Harvard email address; adding friends; single photo users; invitation-only users; searching through student metadata; privacy restrictions; and the user’s friends graph.
In September 2006, Facebook opened its services globally for anyone with a valid email address. The official Facebook we know today started there.
8. iPhone
The very first iPhone was a minimum viable product. Nobody noticed the brand until the iPhone 3 was released. Apple kept their innovation a secret about how they differed from other brands that time. It was less expensive to develop the first iPhone.
The device’s MVP had a limited number of apps, no copy and paste, and no notification options. On the advantage side, the phone had a full screen browser. The MVP of Apple these days has turned out to be the most valuable product.
9. Instagram
Instagram was formerly known as Burbn and was launched in 2010 by Kevin Systrom. When Instagram was in MVP form, only a few options were available, like photo upload, applying filters, and sharing photos with friends available, like photo upload, applying filters, and sharing photos with friends. The app was only available for iOS users. It took the platform about 2 years to release the Android version.
The MVP approach worked very well for Instagram, as it covered the photo-centric features of other social media platforms. In April 2012, Facebook Inc. bought Instagram.
10. Spotify
Spotify is another outstanding minimum viable product example. This platform is the global leader of the music industry, but it wasn’t there from the beginning. In 2008, Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon identified the gap the music industry had with streaming songs.They built the first MVP, known as Spotify AB, in 2006 and then launched the beta in 2007.
Conclusion
What we have learnt from these companies is that you cannot just sit quietly after you see your minimum viable product succeed. You have to constantly improve your ideas as well as your product. Contact us to have a thorough discussion about your idea.