F*ck MVP
You want to create a successful SAAS? You want to become a Founder and build your own project? The first idea which comes to your mind is to start working on MVP, right?
If you came from a worker background, you likely get used to do the job straitforwardly. That is a reason why a lot of details may be hidden from your view. If you put a big value on a product, if you think that the product you do is the most important part, the most vital part of the company success, you might consider MVP as an essential first step of your possible project or startup. Surprisingly it's not always correct. The importance of the product itself is too much overrated.
What if I told you that you probably don't need MVP?
What if I told you that you may have success with your startup even without a product?
What if I told you that you may even be profitable having no product at all?
In order to prove this statement the following investigation was conducted. Me and my good friend and colleague heard about a project called Monad. It is a new EVM-compatible blockchain which promises 10,000 transactions per second. It is in pre-alpha state. No release date provided for even a testnet. The most interesting part is that Monad Labs raised $225 million in funding round. Usually such projects are great fertile grounds for first startups which fill the vacuum in the ecosystem. That was a perfect environment for a tryout.
Our first step was to establish proper communication with Monad representatives to confirm that they are interested in expanding their ecosystem. Luckily they have a friendly discord community so that was pretty easy to do. We made a contact with a community team and received all the necessary access rights, positive feedback for our intentions and a simple algorithm for how to become a member of their builder community.
Now we had to choose a vertical. In order to do it we made a brief analysis of existing projects already included as proud members of the ecosystem. Since I had substantial experience working with NFTs in the past on the world's largest dapp store I proposed to build an NFT-creation tool with a potential to grow to an AI-flavored marketplace.
Before you start any business it's essential to check your competitors first and we've found one. It's Poply.
Guess what are the first steps majority of people do when they evaluate the project? Correct! They assess the product itself. The service which business provides. If you click on Launch App - there is nothing (at the moment of writing of this article) except of a domain error which means that there is no product yet.
What is even more curious is that there is also a Roadmap on the landing page. Let's take a look what it says. Q4 2023 - MVP product. It's almost Q4 2024. Pretty interesting, don't you think so? I remind you that they are already included into the ecosystem. Which is already a decent success for a startup. It means not only acknowledgment by Monad Labs and possibility to receive various bonuses, maybe even grants or investments but also a source of the leads which is even better for a beginner start up.
With such "analysis" one might say that proper MVP will certainly allow to surpass such competitor. Let me prove this belief is false. For this we spent couple of weeks to create an MVP of Simulax Our MVP allows user to connect Metamask and easily create NFT on sepolia testnet. We created a landing page, roadmap, blog and the product itself. Once we released it we had a goal to get on the above mentioned ecosystem list.
We started communicating with Monad community representatives again, filled couple of required forms and even participated Zoom meeting for community builders.
Finally we received a feedback regarding our project:
More robust MVP and socials required
In order to understand better the context behind this feedback I am obliged to provide you some facts.
- No one from Monad even visited our service part
- No NFT was created by them though it is super fast and free
You know why? Because F*ck MVP. No one needs your product. But wait. What should you do then?
Everyone needs community! Believe me or not but our "auditor" was looking for discord, twitter and other social activities. You know why? Big players starve for customers as well as small startups.
Being included into the ecosystem is supposed to be a fair sales deal. You share your leads and leads are shared with you. Win-win situation and in the world of limited resources which is the default case for every startup you better
- focus on your community
- focus on your marketing
- think about sales
And only then once you've got not only the idea but an established community start thinking about the product. Start thinking about the MVP.
Some food for thought. You can even become profitable with community only. Who is stopping you from accepting paid integration?
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