How to Create a Minimum Viable Product

by Guest in Guest Post, Startup Tips, YEC
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Minimum Viable Product, Startup Tips, Guest Posts, YECThere are only a handful of scenarios in the history of the U.S. that truly changed the way capital works: the Great Depression, Savings and Loan Crisis in the ’80s, and the most recent Great Recession, to name a few. The latest financial catastrophe has reminded the world that you cannot throw your cash into a hole and expect a money tree to grow.

More to the point, startup founders can no longer take an unproven idea and expect investors to line up with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of offers to help build something testable. You must be more proactive.

What’s beautiful about this so-called “problem” is that technology has advanced to a stage that allows us to create functional products we can prove and test before we go and seek substantial funding for our ideas. One of the most important principles in startups today revolves around the idea of a Minimum Viable Product, or MVP. An MVP is the absolute bare minimum service or product that will allow you to get users, buyers, clients, etc. to see how they interact with your main idea. The goal is to spend as little as humanly possible in order to begin getting user feedback (which may not come directly from the user, but from an embedded ‘analytic’ function) so that you can iterate or change your product/process as needed to make it better. A great book titled “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries is a must-read regarding the basics of the MVP.

For example, when we initially came up with the idea for BottleCamo, we needed to prove the basic concept worked first. So we made an extremely inexpensive prototype by using a hacksaw to cut a stainless water bottle in half in the garage, then stuffed it with neoprene. That was our MVP. It proved to be a lot more successful than we had originally intended.

Numerous resources exist to help you with your MVP. For example, if you intend to create a mobile app, try POP: Prototyping on Paper. POP will allow you to manually draw out your vision, with pen and paper, then upload images of the drawings and add functional buttons that link to other pages and features. In a very simple few steps, you can create the basic look and feel of your app as you click through to various pages and interfaces. With the back-end skeleton framework complete, you will be much more able to program the front end of your MVP vision.

Not building an app? Not to worry. As you decide upon the service or product that you intend to create for the problem you intend to solve, visualize all of the wonderful things you want this new company to do — and then throw them out the window. Start with one basic principle or functionality that is the foundation of the solution. When you’ve devised your principle, you can easily and inexpensively purchase a domain, quickly put up a website or landing page through WordPress, insert an analytic function in your site through Google Analytics and use Google AdWords to test keywords. This may seem complicated, but it’s not. (Tip: Just go to YouTube for detailed instructions on any of these steps.)

This will allow you to list an ad through Google and very inexpensively, see how many people are clicking on your ad and ending up at your website. This is the first step to proving your basic concept. Once you get past the initial steps, one of the best ways to truly test your model and message is through a crowdfunding platform like Fundable.com. This will give you the opportunity to pre-sell product to your early adopters.

After you have launched your MVP and have collected some early users and data, you can use that extremely valuable information to seek funding or take other next steps necessary to grow.

Congratulations — you’ve now mitigated at least some of the risk to potential investors and proven the basics of your business model.

A version of this article originally appeared on the author’s blog. 

Adam Callinan is the Co-Founder/Co-CEO of BottleCamo, the simple yet practical solution to the warm beer and broken bottle epidemics that have plagued the world for centuries. Adam is also the Founder/CEO of PiCK Ventures, Inc., the parent company of PiCK, a mobile wine technology company. Adam and his wife Katie live in Manhattan Beach, California. Follow Adam on Twitter @Adam_Callinan & @BottleCamo

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

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Start Up Superpowers: Offline Branding & Marketing

by Guest in Guest Post, Startup Tips
1 Comment 0 Like 2,761

Online interactions may reign supreme in today’s marketplace, but it doesn’t hurt to unplug the digital umbilical cord to promote start-ups.

Customers may submerse themselves in social media, online videos and ecommerce, but they live beyond the computer screen. This means the poster in the storefront window or brochure in the local coffee shop hold exclusive opportunities for a captive audience to your brand.

Printed marketing materials remain a valuable asset to attract and promote a target audience. They extend the reach of your business, expand your creativity and generate interest from new areas.

An iProspect study revealed two-thirds of online users are motivated to search by offline messages. Before you rely solely on the web to keep your start-up afloat, consider how offline branding can take you to the next level.

Why Offline Marketing Can Excel

Offline branding opportunities include posters, brochures, flyers, newsletters, magazines and booklet printing. These methods can be a critical tier of visibility to your business that you can’t get online. They are a tangible and personal way to reach out to potential clients.

Casting a wide customer net can fall short on bottom-line impact when compared to fishing for the right customer. While you may not be guaranteed a search engine query will lead a customer to a first-page Google result of your business, a brochure or business card in the right location provides localized, high-quality traffic.

These mediums engage audiences in a way that boosts your start-up’s credibility. They give people something tangible, with a physical address and phone number rather than just another unknown page in an infinite cyberspace.

If you integrate your branding into the fabric of the community through local team sponsorships or exposure in other trusted, established businesses, you increase brand awareness beyond your website.

Creative Offline Inspiration

For offline branding to thrive, promote where and how other competing start-ups fall short, and how your company can do better. Printed marketing materials can be creative, multi-dimensional and interactive.

Guest posts, startups,startup tips, marketing for startups

Photo by Sashi Bellamkonda via Flickr

This unique business card distributed at South by South West adds a new element to the traditional format. The promotional material provides a sample of the product along with a quirky message. This business can stand out among other cards because it provides a memorable experience to associate with the brand. You won’t soon forget this marketing tactic— that is, unless you have too many of these “business cards.”

Photo by Alan Levine via Flickr

The actual business card can be multipurpose. This USB business card offers a tongue-in-cheek approach to technology expertise while doubling as a means of digital storage. A user has a subtle brand reminder every time it’s plugged into a computer, which benefits the business.

Takeaway Tips for Offline Branding

Before starting an offline branding campaign, consider these tips that are applicable to any print platform:

  • Consistency is key. Be sure that logos, typeface and colors match your website as well as the products and services offered.
  • Maximize space by keeping things simple. Don’t clutter offline branding with too much information to confuse the audience, since you have finite space to work with. Don’t let verbose copy or convoluted design get in the way of what you’re trying to sell and how you can be contacted.
  • Offer a discount. Nothing works better than an incentive to walk through your doors or visit your site. Discounts are also a great way to generate word-of-mouth.

Offline marketing may seem like the older, less cool sibling of online branding. But never dismiss a medium that still has the ability to reach people and create impact.

About the author:

Catherine Draper

Cath has been working in SEO and Social Media since before Twitter was invented, although she loves the great outdoors just as much as surfing the net. Writing is just one of her many passions.

Want more on communicating for startups? Check out: When it comes to communications, startups need the whole package.