Starting a business is hard, really hard. Most of the start-ups fail because of improper planning. As per CBS Insights research , the top two reasons are NO market need (42%) and Ran out of Cash (29%) . The stakes are even high at the early stages. Therefore, it is imperative for your company to build what is necessary.

Now let's talk about MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and how it will help prevent your business from a catastrophe. MVP is a common practice in today's world, especially in web and app development sector. This type of development is especially useful in the planning phase of a project or a business.

MVP is a development technique in which an app is developed with sufficient features to satisfy early users. The app is then tested on the market to see whether or not it has the potential to succeed. Afterwards, the final stage is only designed and developed after considering feedback from initial users.

To perform the initial testing, the product only requires the most essential functions; anything fancy and beyond minor functionality is not added. The MVP version of the product is one of the most reasonable tools with regards to both time and money. It helps to determine the product's potential. The MVP is used in almost every sector but mostly in tech.

MVP is important because it helps to get information on the product from a user's perspective. It will help you understand the user's impression on your product and also aids to define a demand. Founders are often overly excited about their ideas and eager to start building features without proper planning.

You will be able to get the following things from an MVP:

1. Check the product's potential by getting user's feedback.
2. Figuring out the user needs and current market demands
3. Present your ideas to investors and attract early investment.
4. Acquire potential client base and find the product's early investor.
5. Save money and time in product development by cutting off market research cost.

Developing a software product is expensive. The end product can cost anywhere from € 10,000 to € 150,000 or even more depending on the project while it might take more than a year to complete. Working without an MVP can have detrimental effects. How does it feel after spending hundreds of thousands of Euros and working hard for more than a year just to find out that there is no demand for your product? 

The MVP will help you to speed up your product's launch as soon as the essential functions are developed initially before you begin getting real feedback on your concept. MVP design and development usually takes about a month or two to complete with a budget of somewhere around € 5000- € 12000 or less. 

Now, let's get to this picture, which was first introduced by Henrik Kniberg. 

The picture above is only a metaphor. It is not talking about car development but a product development in general. Here, the main objective is to travel from one place to another in a more efficient way. You can see that the MVP here is just a skateboard which is way faster and cheaper than developing a car. As time passes, product owners and developers receive constant feedback from their initial users. As a result, they start adding new features add a handle so that the users could manoeuvre with more ease, or an engine so that users would get an extra power punch. With time, the same process gets repeated over and over in an incremental way until it leads to bicycle, motorbikes and cars.

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Many of the apps we all know today began their development with a properly designed MVP in mind. For example Instagram, which was first established as a photo editing and filtering app does a lot more than that today. Additionally, Facebook, Spotify, Airbnb, Dropbox, Snapchat were developed as an MVP first.