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Startup Agility 139

FEATURES – This includes any attempt to enhance or otherwise re-
shape an existing product or service. Eric Ries and other developers
often refer to making feature-level changes as “shipping code.” He
notes that, in the early days of IMVU, the virtual chat and social net-
working site, he and his team would ship new code many times a day,
putting new features in the hands of users and instantly tracking the
response.9 This kind of continual interaction with early adopters cre-
ates a learning and development cycle that can dramatically reduce
early-stage venture risk. It allows the product or service to be shaped
by real user feedback and data, rather than by laboratory speculation
or wishful thinking.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES – In 2007, as Modality began building pro-
totypes of its first products, Mark Williams and co-founder Nate
O’Keefe began locking up rights to publisher-owned educational
content. At the time, they had opinions but no hard facts about what
kinds of content iPod owners would covet in digital form, so they
hedged their bets by securing rights along a wide spectrum. These
included Netter’s Anatomy for medical students, BrainQuest for grade
school kids, Princeton Review SAT test prep for high schoolers, Cliff ’s
Notes for college students, Law in a Flash for law school students, and
Frommer’s Guides for travelers. Over time, as certain products caught
fire and others struggled, it became clear that Modality’s early “sweet
spot” would be in the health sciences education market, primarily
medical and nursing education, the source of more than 80 percent
of revenues by the end of 2009. Modality’s ability to iterate rapidly
at the product level, resulting in a portfolio of more than 140 titles
for sale by the spring of 2010, allowed the company to find, cultivate,
and better understand its growing core customer base of healthcare
students and professionals.

As Eric Ries emphasizes, an early key to venture success is to
avoid the tendency to overdesign your first product—avoiding the
mistake of assuming you know what the customer wants—and, in-
stead, get early prototypes in the hands of customers who can use,
enjoy, kick, or otherwise tear them apart. His phrase for this early of-
fering is the “minimum viable product.” A minimum viable product

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