// Bravery over comfort
From blank canvas to MVP to Award in 6 Months.
People who embrace discomfort, display vulnerability, and communicate the truth about their lives should be given an honour called "the discomfort award."
This is especially true for entrepreneurs who experience failure, which, let's face it, every entrepreneur does at some time. These are the people that prefer daring over comfort, accountability over blame, and the capacity to incorporate critical lessons from mistakes into their life.
I was fortunate to meet with a few successful entrepreneurs over the last decades and, when you look deeper into the person, they all have a story. They all have a different narrative of success – a different story to the one that the world sees.
When I started VioScore in December 2021 we started from a blank canvas. An empty page of an idea.
My co-founder and I designed ten pitches and we needed to give up a lot to make this happen, and there was no guarantee of any success. When we sent these decks out, we got funding in a few weeks. When I went to the investors to collect the cheque there was a “knot” in my stomach - it didn’t feel right. On this trip, everything went south for a while.
I studied my own behaviour while on the trip, and my little team worked hard spending hours debating ideas and concepts. Working away on their laptops in the background, the team put their heart and soul into a concept we called “AI Buddy for Life.” It would change the world! The meeting with the investors was a festive drink. Nothing on the business front was discussed. I was assured that in the end it would all be okay. Everything was on track, they said, just two weeks later than originally planned.
I knew this was odd and had a bad feeling about it. But we had put all our work into one investor who came recommended through a very trusted relationship. This was subsequently followed by silence from them for two weeks. Questioning from two members of the team, about where we were could not be answered.
After two weeks the investor called me when I was on the beach in Spain. I will never forget it. “Our focus has shifted and your MVP is not ready, and we will no longer finish the investment round.” All documents singed, but no money.
My mind went 1,000 miles an hour. Within minutes of the call coming to a close, I admitted to myself that I am a failure. I am unsuccessful. My team, my partner won't trust me anymore since I let them down. For me, it was undoubtedly a face-down moment. After two months of working over seventy hours a week, my team was abruptly at zero by a group of people I knew. And my private life was in stress. A mere 4 months later, we had a call yesterday that we are shortlisted in the top 100 most exciting new Fintech companies in the world and are invited to an awards show in October. I can’t disclose the award now, but in 4 weeks we will announce it on the website.
What happened, and what is the oh so famous MVP?
If you're reading this, you undoubtedly have some feelings about an MVP or you are developing one, or you have in the past.
Let me ask you a quick question before we get into further information about the subject. What do the biggest Unicorns in the world have in common?
They began as a Minimum Viable Product; in case you hadn't guessed (MVP). Amazon sold books, Facebook linked Harvard students, and Uber allowed customers to use credit cards to pay for cabs before they became industry titans.
These three companies saved time and money by testing the basic features before they went full scale. In the following article, we’re going to tell you how to approach MVP application development, discuss its benefits, and tell you how to find the right MVP development
What is MVP App Development?
The idea of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), which emerged in the startup community, is increasingly applied by businesses of all sizes to try out new ideas. One of the first people to bring it to the general public was Eric Ries from LeanStartup. He observes that the aim of MVP app development is to produce a product with its most fundamental features and give it to evangelists and early adopters in return for feedback. To put it simply, MVP can be defined as a minimal version of a product that helps innovators get product validation from real customers and with the least effort.
What steps need to be done in the middle?
1. Secure Funding
Investors must know where their money is going before investing. This is hardly shocking, especially considering that in 2019 the launch failure rate was close to 90%. Additionally, according to Investopedia, 50% of startups fail by the fifth year, up from 21.5% in the first year and 30% in the second. Giving investors a quick-to-market plan for your app development will undoubtedly aid them in making an educated choice and assist to somewhat reduce the risk.
2. Save Money
MVP essentially involves releasing goods with the most essential features and consulting users. You make changes to the basic concept in response to their suggestions. Consequently, you reduce the possibility that you'll create features for the program that are either useless or must be entirely removed. This translates to lowering the cost of software development.
3. Checking Product-Market Fit
I see a lot of companies don’t spend time and money on this. Whilst this is crucial, we can all think we have developed the most amazing product but without research in the target audience there is a good chance of failure.
Included is a bit of research that we did.
4. Real Feedback
The best way of testing out an idea is to share it with target users and check how they respond to it.
Go and get a co-creating client - a client that will help you shape the product.
After we developed the MVP we sent our product out on TestFlight to a few people to try it. We got a lot of positive feedback and that got us to gain a lot of potential interest from investors.
We had some serious chats with the people in the company and not all stayed, which is understandable. Life of a small startup/scale-up isn’t easy. It isn’t for everyone and requires a lot of persistence.
It requires a lot of sacrifices from you, the team and your partner. And you’ll know it’s worth it in 3 years.
One of my friends said, “Prepare for 4 years of sacrifice and 40 years of celebrations.”