TODO: How to validate the idea? → read The Mom Test

To validate a product, an MVP (minimal viable product) needs to be built. It is a prototype of the final product, that only offers the core functionality that makes the product stand out.

The MVP is built on 2 hypotheses :

• Value hypothesis: does the customer have the problem the product is trying to solve? Does the product actually solve the problem/deliver value to the user?
• Growth hypothesis: how will the company grow once people start using the product? (i.e. business model)

However, before building an MVP, it is important to talk to potential customers to understand their needs so to know what to build. There are important rules to follow when speaking to potential customers :

• Never mention the product itself : the user knows his problem, but not the solution. Interviewees tend to be optimistic and want to confirm the interviewer’s intuition, aka give a false positive.
• Only talk about the customer and his habits. It is much harder to lie about what is factual and it is facts that are needed to figure the problem. Also, it is useless to ask potential customers about hypothetical scenarios (e.g. how much the user is willing to pay, would he be willing to try solution X, or what is his dream solution).

The users who will test the MVP are the early adopters: they need to be passionate enough about the product to forgive its flaws (as it is still an MVP at this stage) and keep using it while giving valuable feedback.

Different types of MVP:

• Normal MVP: a normal, functioning and minimal version of the product.
• Video MVP: create a video to show (a mockup of) the product, as it is too complex to build (this is what Dropbox has done).
• Concierge MVP: a normal prototype of the product, except the logic is replaced by manual actions by humans. The product is just not automated.

To validate the product (knowing if the product is a must-have), the “aha-moment” needs to be identified i.e. finding what exactly the users like about the app and make the app only about that, by studying their behaviour and shaping the app around it.

The Must-Have Survey can measure if the product is already a must-have or not: