It can be scary to release a product into the world. Especially if you go the “Minimum Viable Product” route.

“What if nobody buys it?” “What if people hate it?”, etc.

Today, though, I want to reach past all of that to what’s really driving your deepest, darkest fears as you’re bringing a product to market.

(And no, it’s not “finding a copperhead in the basement” or “Holy $#*^ I’m way high up here!” or “mayonnaise”)

The biggest fear most people face when releasing a product into the world is simple:

Embarrassment.

Especially in the world of Minimum Viable Products, “embarrassment” is what’s behind all kinds of problems, including:

-Not shipping what you’re working on

-Procrastinating

-Focusing on lower-leverage tasks instead of bigger tasks that might move the needle more

-Fear of failure comes down to embarrassment at the end of the day too.

Now, I’m quickly becoming an old fart. 

I care less and less about what other people think about me by the year.

So when it comes to embarrassing myself, I am qualified to tell you, “It’s not so bad.”

The world doesn’t end if your MVP ends up not “hitting it big.”

However, there are a few things you can do to prevent any embarrassment you might have from your MVP.

Not only that, but this article will show you some of the best things you can do to make your MVP more successful, and ensure that you end up in a better place once it’s launched.

At the very least, by the end of this article, you’ll view your MVP as a “starting point.” 

Best case, it rocks, people love it, and you only make it better.

Worst case, it’s an expensive lesson that propels you “on to the next one.”

So let’s dig in…

Creating Your MVP - Hiring a Tech Co-Founder?

If your product is anything having to do with coding, software, an app, a game, anything “tech-related,” odds are you’re going to need someone else to build it.

You’re going to need to spend either money or equity (and sometimes both) to bring someone technical on board to complete the build.

Both paths are “fine” but come with their issues.

If you spend money, you better have a good amount of it available. You’re going to want to:

• Get at least 5 quotes from devs or dev houses
• Add 10-20% to each quote
• Add probably $5k - $10k for marketing spend (bare minimum–quite a lot more depending on the market)
• Make sure that you have more money lined up for future builds and iterations

Of course, one of the ways to get money to use for all of this is to… sell equity in your company, oddly enough.

But saving up, finding a co-founder to be the financier (which sounds like a lot of attending wine parties at art galleries in Europe), getting a loan from family or the bank–all of these can work.

If you spend equity, it gets a little more complex.

More than anything else, you want to ensure that a technical partner you bring on has a vision/skillset that aligns with the company's long-term vision.

Let’s say you’re looking at 3 potential paths: a web app, a mobile app, or a mobile game. Let’s say you pick one path to begin with–a web app. You’re 40% certain that you’re going to stick to that route.

While you definitely want someone who can build a web app… if there’s a 60% chance you’re going to end up on another path…

It becomes very tough to give that person equity in the company if they potentially can’t help you down the road.

Not only that, but for an early-stage startup, often devs will want more equity because they have leverage.

Either consciously or not, they know they can do something you can’t.

And if you need potential flexibility, like in the “path” scenario above, a true “full-stack” dev or engineer knows how in demand that skillset is, and will want to “get their value.”

That’s 100% correct from their point of view…

But that doesn’t mean you have to jump in right away if it’s not a good long-term fit.

Once you settle on a technical partner, the next thing you’re going to do is:

Maybe the “V” Should Stand for “Validating”

This is essentially what you’re doing here.

You’re validating:

-Is there interest in my idea?

-Do people enjoy the product? Even at an early stage?

-Can I market this?

-Will people keep coming back?

-Are there any changes I have to make?

That’s it.

Now, I’m a marketing guy, so the above may be a little skewed…

But overall, you are using this MVP to answer questions.

You’re gathering data.

The more data you can gather, the more “paths” from above you close off… and the closer you get to the “one true path”...(though that sounds oddly cult-like now that I see it on the screen)…

At the end of the day, your goal here is to get eyeballs on your product and get users to try it out.

Now here’s where our old friend, Embarrassment, often rears his big, bloated red face.

“But what if people don’t like it?!”

“What if I get laughed at?”

“What if I can’t market it?”

“What if the Easter Bunny calls me a $%&@#?!?”

A lot of “what ifs!”

So this is one of the most important steps in the process:

Ship the Damn Thing!

Just ship it!

You probably should get it out into the world once you think it’s about 60-80% where it “should” be.

Start getting users, start getting feedback.

Oftentimes, their feedback will guide your future iterations more than anything else (more on that in a minute).

Unfortunately, you’ll never know until you get something out there and either hire a carnival barker-type to get some folks into the tent to see the goat boy… 

(Mugs for the camera like Jim in The Office)

…or do some carnival barking yourself.

So here’s my advice:

Make something that you’re proud of putting some marketing spend behind. 

Even if it’s not anywhere near what you see as “the final product,” you should be able to release it, put your name on it, get it out in the world, pick up the megaphone, and start barking.

Or, better yet, if you bring on a carnival barker-type, make sure their skillset and long-term vision aligns with yours as well.

When I started working with our founders, I think it was a really good fit for a few reasons:

• Good personality fit
• Good skill fit–I’m pretty “full stack” as marketers go
• I was happy to “prove my skills” up-front
• Even on my first call with Beard, I saw the vision, saw what this could be, and kind of started obsessing over it right then and there.

Make sure they’ve “bought in” and…

Create Some Benchmark Metrics to Hit

This can be a little tricky depending on if you’ve been in the space or not.

If you’ve been in the space before, it can be easy. You should know your numbers pretty well coming in.

If you haven’t though, this means plenty of research.

Good places to research:

Pitch Book has some really good resources, including pitch decks.

Business Insider also has a deck library from people in the industry.

Asking people in the industry or formerly in the industry is ideal if you can.

Even using our good friend ChatGPT is better than “nothing.” Just try to validate what it says after the fact.

By the end, you should have metrics for (at the very least):

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

• Lifetime Value (if monetized)

• User Engagement (DAU, WAU, MAU)

• Frequent “choke points” or “stop points” where people stop engaging.

For example, in our web-based MVP, we were able to determine that we had a pretty darned good CAC running good old-fashioned Facebook ads.

That now becomes the “benchmark” moving forward–we’re pretty sure we can acquire a customer for at least $X, and potentially less if we hone in and a different campaign hits.

We also found out that people stop engaging without regular push notifications–some users said pushes reminding them to make picks would be a huge help.

You can use metrics, user behavior and the like to figure out some of your next action steps. It also helps to…

Talk With Your Users (Especially Power Users)

These folks are the ones who really like what you’re doing, and are actually engaging with your product on a (near) daily basis.

Figure out what they like about your product, any changes they want to see, even things like where they want to see your product in a year, three years, etc.

Oftentimes, a lot of powerful data will come from these power users.

And they’re usually “flattered” that you reach out, especially if you’ve built any personality into your brand.

We discovered some interesting data from reaching out to our top power users, including:

• We were forcing people to pick sports in web app that they had no interest in
• We had TOO MANY choices for a different game in-app
• People wanted to "just" pick their favorite team every day

This definitely helped us "sharpen the axe" and hone in on our next iteration of the game.

Once you’ve launched it, the toughest part is still yet to come:

Be Brutally Honest With Yourself: Improve, Iterate, or Pivot?

So you’re product is launched…

You’re getting users…

You’re getting feedback…

You’re hitting (or not hitting) your numbers…

What’s next?

You’ve got a big decision to make:

You need to take a good, long, hard look at the data…

And decide:

Do I Improve What I Have? In other words, “Is this the foundation I want to build on moving forward?”

Do I Iterate? This is a bigger change–maybe you know you still want a house, but it’s a different layout than what you originally planned. So, you might need to “rip out the foundation” and start fresh.

Do I Pivot Entirely? “I want to build boats, not houses.”

This is a big decision. And there are a host of issues with each question.

For example, sunk costs are a real thing. 

If you’re under-capitalized or think you’ve “completely tapped” your sources of funding, it can be scary to tear everything down and start over.

I guess my tip there would be, “It’s always possible to raise more money” if you can show progress, a solid team, and some kind of validation.

If you’re pivoting entirely to something else, you probably don’t have much to validate it?

But to the extent that you can pull any kind of validation or learnings from an abandoned project, you want to do that for your next venture.

You want to look at this one from the longest possible view possible–get as far away from the project as possible…

And honestly, it helps to have a great team you can lean on here too.

It helps to be able to bounce ideas off other like-minded, bright folks who want to get to the same destination you do.

Like I said, there’s no “one way” to get to any given destination.

There are definitely ways to get there with more money in your pocket, and less money in your pocket though.

Key Takeaways:

• To get your MVP, you’re either going to have to pay money or equity (or both).
  
• If you’re trading equity for a technical co-founder or partner, make sure their vision of the business aligns with yours long-term.
  
• Maybe the “V” should stand for “Validating” since that’s what you’re really doing here.
  
• Make something that you’re proud of putting some marketing spend behind. Even if it’s not anywhere near what you see as “the final product,” you should be able to at least get some users at a decent CAC.
  
• Create Benchmark metrics, like CAC, DAUs, WAUs, MAUs, and churn metrics.
  
• Talk with your power users.
  
• Be brutally honest with yourself: Improve, Iterate, or Pivot? There are multiple ways to get to your destination, but there are definitely ways to get there with more and less money in your pocket.
• It can be scary to release a product into the world. Especially if you go the “Minimum Viable Product” route.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments--thanks for reading!