Validate your business idea with MVP-Minimum Viable Product

Course summary

It is not that difficult to have a business idea even one that seems like a breakthrough and instant success. The reality bites and most startups fail fast and at the same time cost their founders a small fortune. That's why the recent development of so-called lean startups revolves around learning fast and at a small cost to build a product customers need and are willing to pay. The crucial part of this path is creating a prototype of your product that enables you to test the reaction of your potential customer. This is the MVP – Minimum Viable Product.

MVP has to be Viable which means that it delivers some noticeable value to the customer, solves his pain. Minimum means that it cannot be overcomplicated, it has to have a minimal amount of features for you to be able to draw the right conclusion on what works and what does not work.

Most courses stop at the landing page as the Holy Grail of lean startup and testing, the ultimate MVP, but the life is much more complicated and landing page in many cases simply is not enough? How do you test community and whether people will share and comment? How do you want to test physical products that have to be tasted and smelled?

On top of that, not all MVPs are born equal. Some test one part of your business model whereas others are perfect for testing different question marks that pop up constantly in your mind.

In this course, we will show you through examples what should be the MVP for your business model, how to pick the right one for your needs, and what are the added benefits of MVP. We will also give an estimation of the costs and time needed for the creation of MVP.

If you have not found an ideal suggestion for MVP for your business please post in the Group Discussion your business model description and we will prepare suggestions for you on the MVP you should use.

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried or supervised over 90 different performance improvement projects in different industries that generated in total 2 billion of additional EBITDA. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 124 000 students including people working in EY, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Adidas, Naspers, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Orange, and many others.

Why have we decided to create this course?

We work with startups on daily basis within our accelerator (StartupAkademia) and we have noticed that despite the tones of very good books on lean methods (i.e. Lean Analytics, Running Lean, etc.) startups have problems with applying this knowledge in practice. The interesting thing was that those problems were pretty universal regardless of the industry, business model, or even whether they were run independently or supported by big corporations.

What will this course give you?

The course is a practical overview of possible MVP for the following types of businesses: B2C services especially restaurants, online shop, off-line shop, webpage earning from display ads, SaaS, books. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will know:

• What are the different types of MVPs you can use?

• What are the pros and cons of a specific MVP?

• How much does it cost and how long does it take to create a specific MVP?

• When you should use one type of MVP and when entirely different one?

How the course is organized?

The course is divided into the following sections:

• Introduction. We explain what MVP is and why it makes sense to use it

• MVP examples. Here we go in-depth over MVPs for different businesses: restaurants, online shop, off-line shop, webpage earning from display ads, SaaS, books, and show you how and when they should be used. If you have not found an ideal suggestion for MVP for your business please post in the Group Discussion your business model description and we will prepare suggestions for you on the MVP you should use.

• E-commerce Business model - rough estimation. In this section, I will show you to go a step further and validate the economic logic of the business. We will do that by using a business model in Excel. We will do that for the e-commerce

• B2C Business model - rough estimation. In this section, I will show you how to check in Excel whether B2C business makes sense. We will also look at the main challenges.

You will be able also to download many additional resources

• Links to free presentations and movies showing examples

• Links to books worth reading

• Presentation