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Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#21

Post by consultutah »

Ade_Lack wrote: post #19
consultutah wrote: post #11

Personal bias, but http://chatvoting.com is my latest MVP. There are a ton of features I want to add, but it does exactly what I originally intended. If you want massively successful MVPs, twitter is probably the king.

How did you decide which feature(s) to go with and which to leave out?

There were 4 features that are necessary for the app to do anything: 1. Create a poll 2. Pick a number 3. Process SMS msgs 4. Show results

For this first release, I didn't do anything outside of those 4 features. Soon I'll be adding the ability to open and close the poll by SMS, get results by SMS, and many more things, but for now it is "done".

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#23

Post by robjohnson »

If you discuss MVP in terms of Customer Development and the Lean Startup methodology, I think that Eric Ries puts it best by saying that whatever you, as the entrepreneur, think the MVP is, is already WAY too big. Whatever you think the minimum viable features are for your product/service, you should cut it in half - and then do that 2 more times. That's your MVP.

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#24

Post by dools »

Ade_Lack wrote: post #17
dools wrote: post #7

Well, I'm obviously pretty biased here because I made it, but I really enjoy using http://cueyoutube.com/ It was a "sunday night" project, and the first thing I've ever done where I thought I did just the right amount of work and no more. It hasn't, like, gone viral or anything but has a few likes and a few people using it - who knows maybe some more will use it. But it was a great feeling - to really get something u…

Nice work. What language, platform, framework did you use?

For cueyoutube - there's no backend! It's just a static page with some JavaScript on it (mostly jQuery but totally hacked together because I can't stand JavaScript :)

I actually copied and pasted most of it from other sources (which I've listed on the page).

The playlists are "saved" by sharing them - each playlist exists only as a URL containing a comma separated list of video IDs.

I've been sharing on Twitter using the #cueyoutube hashtag.

Unfortunately, however, my primary webserver is down due to a drive failure - I'm waiting for the VPS image to copy to a new host now. Bummer :( Should be back up in about an hour with any luck.

There are some suggestions from people over at http://cueyoutube.uservoice.com/

I really want to only work on the site in response to user demand, you know? Like I want to keep it as an MVP always. If people like it, then they will use it and make suggestions and I'll react to that.

I'm really enjoying the "throwaway" nature of the playlists themselves (ie. you don't login, you don't give them a name, you don't "save" them, you just create, share and move on with your life), but also the "throwaway" nature of the project - it's good to have something that's useful but that I'm not so heavily invested in (unlike Decal, which I'm like, totally invested in to the point of insanity).

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#25

Post by dools »

hundredwatt wrote: post #22

A friend of mine sent this to me a few years ago: """My favorite video on bootstrapping/minimum viable product: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv17lF60OHY It's well worth watching the whole thing."""

"U-2 Reconnaissance Aircraft at Osan"

Some sort of airforce RickRoll?

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#27

Post by dools »

Ade_Lack wrote: post #15
naner wrote: post #10

CD Baby just started out with some links to purchase albums IIRC. Derek then manually filled orders and sent items out.

I'm finding more and more apps and services started out with key parts of the eventual back end initially being processed manually.

I think that's one of the most important things about MVP - don't bother automating processes until they are actually taking up your time.

As a consultant I see a lot of people put way too much effort into developing bespoke software to automate or "improve" workflows that don't even really exist in their business yet, only to find out that the real bottlenecks exist in places they never even knew (and that they've wasted a bunch of money building something they'll never really use).

It's like a "real life" analogue of the adage "premature optimisation is the devil".

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#28

Post by dools »

MattBearman wrote: post #12

As we seem to be allowing a personal bias, I'll submit my MVP - http://bugmuncher.com I've built the minimum in order to get it live in 2 weeks. I've got a HUGE list of features to add in future, including customisation, multiple highlights, automate the subscription process, API, etc.

Have you checked out the interview with Jerome Breche on Mixergy? Your product sounds a lot like what he started off building (Snap-a-Bug) and then he pivoted to start snapengage.com

It's a great story, you should check out the interview.

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#29

Post by leftnode »

MattBearman wrote: post #12

As we seem to be allowing a personal bias, I'll submit my MVP - http://bugmuncher.com I've built the minimum in order to get it live in 2 weeks. I've got a HUGE list of features to add in future, including customisation, multiple highlights, automate the subscription process, API, etc.

Please hire a professional designer to redesign your website as soon as possible and ditch this ThemeForest theme. I see it everywhere now and it looks forced.

For the record, I used the exact same theme when I launched my product, but quickly ditched it.

Re: Ask HN: What are some great examples of a Minimum Viable Product?

#30

Post by MattBearman »

leftnode wrote: post #29
MattBearman wrote: post #12

As we seem to be allowing a personal bias, I'll submit my MVP - http://bugmuncher.com I've built the minimum in order to get it live in 2 weeks. I've got a HUGE list of features to add in future, including customisation, multiple highlights, automate the subscription process, API, etc.

Please hire a professional designer to redesign your website as soon as possible and ditch this ThemeForest theme. I see it everywhere now and it looks forced. For the record, I used the exact same theme when I launched my product, but quickly ditched it.

I've got an awesome designer lined up to do a complete redesign/re-brand when I have the time/money to see it through.

Having said that, I've had a lot of compliments on the theme, and for $20, I've got no complaints :)

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