Page 60 - The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch - PDFDrive.com

to think about how you can mimic the customer experience as much as possible,
as quickly as possible.

Here are a few examples of well-executed MVPs that went on to make great
companies.

AppSumo

Noah Kagan wanted to make a deals site for software apps. He could have
focused on building the platform for managing the deals or building the email
list. Neither of those things were necessary to give customers a realistic taste of
the product he had in mind.

Noah’s vision was to provide customers with time-limited, heavily-discounted
deals on digital goods. He was active on Reddit and found that Imgur was selling
pro accounts on the site for $25 per year.

He emailed the founder of Imgur and asked him if he could sell the plan for a
decent discount. He then bought a bunch of very affordable ads and sold 200
deals. It lacked all of the fancy systems that AppSumo has today, but to the
customer it was very much in line with what you experience now.

In one weekend he was able to see that he had a way to market the idea, people
would pay, and he could make money. AppSumo was a $1m company within
one year.

Underground Cellar

Jeffrey Shaw wanted to build a daily deals website for wine with a twist. Instead
of offering discounted deals, he would offer a randomized free upgrade with
every purchase.

He assumed that the motivation for buying on the site would be about the
excitement and surprise as opposed to the cost savings. The way he tested this
was brilliant and represented a creative (and valid) MVP.