Deciding on the right idea for an MVP
Do you write down your ideas? Do you start with a problem or solution? How you formulate ideas could shape the way you choose the right one.
Throughout my life I've had a lot of different ideas, most of the time they were not written down, but just stayed in my head. Picking an idea was rather chaotic. Somewhere down the line I started to write down ideas on the list and within some months to a year I had dozens to pick from. It was hard to choose what I should work on first. This article is about how to formulate and choose an idea.
How to come up with ideas for an MVP
At first I was writing down ideas in the form of a list, and usually it was revolving around solutions to a problem. After reading Paul Graham's blog I noted that it's important to understand the problem itself, so I added the column called “problem”, that was placed before the solution. I've tried to change my mindset to noticing the problem first.
The verb you want to be using with respect to startup ideas is not "think up" but "notice". © Paul Graham
The way how I think about ideas changed with time, I've become more aware about my own limitations as well as my skill set. For example, in the past I had developed products that no one was interested in, it taught me an important lesson that I have to envision how I will validate it.
Problem = customer's pain. Easiest way for me personally to spot a problem was to be my own potential customer. Whenever I encountered a problem based on my own discomfort, I was trying to research it further to see what solutions are available on the market and does it really fix my problem.
Here's an interesting quote from Paul's blog that I wrote down: “Live in the future, then build what's missing. Once you're living in the future in some respect, the way to notice startup ideas is to look for things that seem to be missing and what seems interesting”.
I think it's important to note that ideas do not have to be entirely innovative, sometimes to make things work it's enough to improve an existing solution by adding the feature that's missing. Think Photoshop -> Photopea (built by 1 person).
“When you have an idea for a startup, ask yourself: who wants this right now? Who wants this so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one made by a two-person startup they've never heard of? If you can't answer that, the idea is probably bad”. © Paul Graham
Choosing the idea for an MVP
Having said all that you never know which idea would work. It's all about testing, failing and getting back up again. Here's how I choose which ideas to start with.
Having a spreadsheet that lists all ideas I have: problem, solution, who wants that, validation (channels I will use to validate), time to build, rating
If one of the ideas didn't work you take the next one and continue the journey. I've built mvpbase.com to help you save time and money on developing ideas by utilising boilerplates and listing the developers who specialise in building MVPs.
Great articles to read: https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html https://paulgraham.com/newideas.html
Related articles:
How to start an MVP in 2024 as a solo entrepreneur.
