Hello // my name is Tom
I learned how important Minimum Viable Products are the hard way: failing my first company. My new company, Solved, has an extra difficulty: it’s a live marketplace - we connect people facing a software issue with software experts live.
Advertising on Linkedin, targeting skills and on Facebook targeting interests.That led to amazing conversions and costs of acquisition of $10.
How to assess the “V” in Minimum Viable Product at this point?
- Direct marketing: #FAIL
Reach was great but not the directories (software certifications) so it led to few contacts we couldn’t even convert into experts.
•First Step: make sure we could establish a proper connection between a client and an expert within a browser using the new WebRTC technology
This is Solved’s very first MVP
In this scenario, building a product on consecutive iterations is a life or death matter.
Here’s why - and how te marketplace // The number one challenge
How to assess the “V” in Minimum Viable Product at this point?
It’s a 1 or 0 situation: if your product works, then you should go on.
2nd MVP // fuel the supply side
•Solved is supposed to be used with any software but we reduced the scope to Ms Excel: it has a lot of heavy users and is complex enough.
•Basic product need: finding experts. We could have hired some, but it wouldn’t have proven that there is a scalable supply (freelancers working remotely).
•Next Step: crowding experts who are interested in taking calls and helping people remotely within an on-demand platform
1.Build a landing page
2.Drive traffic towards it
•Our pain point: on-site training is not efficient for big companies, and that small companies only have forums when it comes to software issues
•Basic product need: connecting employees with software experts live
we need to make sure the supply side and the demand side are validated simultaneously
and follow the same path of growth.
Supply
Demand
Supply Demand
Supply
Minimum Viable Products
Why they are a life or death matter when you are building a live marketplace
We share the story on how we’ve built our product Solved.io on consecutive iterations in order to prevent failure.
- Infiltrate communities: #FAIL
Contacting directly people in Facebook groups, Linkedin groups led to being banned by algorithms for phishing.
- Social media marketing #SUCCESS
Demand
software experts
collaborators who need help
1
software experts
collaborators who need help
2
software experts
collaborators who need help
3
First MVP // validate the technology